Today, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design announced the finalists of the 2015 Wheelwright Prize, a $100,000 grant awarded annually to a single architect to support travel-based architectural research.
As profiled in Architect magazine, the 2015 Wheelwright Prize received nearly 200 submissions from 51 countries. The jury selected three finalists who will present their work and research proposals publicly at the GSD on April 16.
The three finalists, listed in alphabetical order:
ERIK L’HEUREUX — Pencil Office, Singapore
Erik L’Heureux is currently an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore, where he researches building envelopes in equatorial climates. He taught previously in the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. He is a registered architect in the U.S., and is NCARB-certified and LEED-accredited. He has won numerous design awards including the 2013 World Architecture Festival (WAF) Category Design Award, the 2013 FuturArc Green Leadership Architecture Merit Award, 2012 AIA New York City Design Merit Award, and 2011 President’s Design Award from Singapore. He co-curated and designed the exhibition “1,000 Singapores: A Model of the Compact City,” which first appeared at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010, and which will be presented later this year at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris. He is also a contributing editor to Architectural Review Asia Pacific and has published in several publications worldwide.
Wheelwright proposal: Hot and Wet: The Equatorial City and the Architectures of Atmosphere
MALKIT SHOSHAN — FAST, Amsterdam
Malkit Shoshan is the founder of the Amsterdam-based architectural think-tank FAST (Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory). Her work explores the relationship between architecture, politics, and human rights. She is the author of the award-winning book Atlas of Conflict: Israel-Palestine (Uitgeverij 010, 2010) and coauthor of Village: One Land Two Systems and Platform Paradise (Damiani Editore, 2014). She is a member of the editorial board of Footprint, the TU Delft architecture theory journal and her work has been published in Volume, Abitare, Frame, Haaretz, New York Times, and other publications. She has also exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2002, 2008), the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2007), Experimenta (2011), and the Het Nieuwe Instituut (2014). As a research fellow at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, she is working on a long-term research project entitled Drones and Honeycombs, a study of the architecture and landscape of war and peace.
Wheelwright proposal: Architecture and Conflict: Pre-Cycling the Compound
QUYNH VANTU — Studio Quynh Vantu, London
Quynh Vantu is a licensed architect and artist with a studio-based practice devoted to spatial experimentation. Drawing from her upbringing in the American South, Vantu is particularly interested in the notion of hospitality and thresholds of social interaction. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a Worldstudio AIGA Grant (2009) and the Stewardson Kefee LeBrun Travel Grant-AIA NY (2009–10). She has been awarded several artist residencies, including at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska (2010); Olafur Eliasson’s Institut für Raumexperimente in Berlin, Germany (2010–11); the Gyeonggi Creation Center in Dabudo, South Korea (2012); the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine (2012); the McColl Center for Art and Innovation in Charlotte, North Carolina (2014); and the Norrköping AIR in Sweden (2014). She was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study in the UK (2012–13), and of a University College London Scholarship to pursue a PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
Wheelwright proposal: On Movement: The Threshold and Its Shaping of Culture and Spatial Experience
Image: Finalists’ work (left to right): Quynh Vantu’s installation Variable Measure (McColl Center for Art and Innovation, 2014) invites viewers into a space with walls, ceilings, and corridors defined by light and haze (photo: Ben Premeaux). Malkit Shoshan’s exhibition” Zoo, or the Letter Z, just after Zionism” (exhibited at NAiM, 2011) features a cage that transforms into a house and falls apart (photo: Johannes Schwarz). Erik L’Heureux’s design of a factory building facade (Singapore, 2009–12) features a lightweight EIFS (exterior insulation and finishing system); the profile of the “deep veil” is a changing geometry geared at increasing performance (photo: Kenneth Choo).