The Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Department of Landscape Architecture has announced this year’s recipients of the Penny White Project Fund. This grant program was established by White’s family in 1976 to “help carry forward Penny’s ideal of a culture which emphasizes a close relationship between people and nature in a cohesive living environment.” (Winifred G. “Penny” White had just completed her second year in the GSD’s landscape architecture program when she died suddenly of leukemia in 1976.)
Eighteen projects have been announced in honor of the fund’s 42nd anniversary. The winning proposals were selected through an adjudication process based on originality and innovation of projects, with an eye to their contribution to pressing challenges related to the fields of urbanism, landscape, ecology. The regions of research for the selected student projects span the planet and address a range of critical conditions, technologies, and processes relevant to the advancement of the discipline of landscape architecture and contemporary urbanization today.
“From the fracking landscapes of oil extraction in the Argentinian Patagonia to the peatland ecosystems of carbon sequestration, from the submarine landscapes of digital networks in the Mediterranean to the melting glaciers of the Rocky Mountains, from post Cold War era military landscapes in Asia to small agricultural communities in Mexico, from queer ecologies to rivers with legal person status, this 42nd edition of the Penny White Project Fund has awarded an extraordinary set of proposals,” remarks the Fund’s 2019 selection committee. “Working with a wide variety of geographic conditions and research methods, these 2019 projects constitute a great reflection on the many different ways that design contributes to a more just distribution of the world’s resources, and will help to expand the Penny White Project’s legacy towards a better understanding of the complexities of our contemporary environment.”
The following GSD degree candidates will receive project funding for 2019:
Colin Chadderton (MLA ’20) for “Sensors in the Landscape: A Literature Review of Current Sensor Deployment in Landscapes, and Three Case Studies of their Application in Peatlands”
Kira Clingen (MLA ’20) and Edyth Jostol (MLA ’20) for “Falling Stands: The Role of Climate Change, Cultivation and Culture surrounding Cryptomeria Japonica in the 21st century”
Armida Fernández (MDes RR ’20) and Luis Enrique Flores (MLA ’19) for “Designing with Communities of the Agricultural Industry in Mexico”
Dana Hills (MLA ’20) for “Newborn Lakes in Glacier National Park: Investigating the Succession of Lakes Created by the Acceleration of Glacial Melting”
Zoe Holland (MLA ’20) and McKenna Mitchell (MLA ’20) for “Earth, Wind, and Fiber: Imaging Marseille’s Digital Landscape”
Cecilia Huber (MLA ’20) for “Patchwork Horizon: Patterns of Resource Conservation and Farm Subsidies in the American Prairie Landscape”
Kimberley Huggins (MLA ’20) for “River as a Person”
Malika Leiper (MUP ’19) and Connie Trinh (MLA ’20) for “Urban Fabrics: Garments, Textiles and Urbanization in Cambodia”
Ting Liang (MLA and MAUD ’19) for “The Socialist Utopia: Reconciliation Between City and Countryside Field Investigation of Preexisting People’s Communes in Rural China”
Jeffrey S. Nesbit (DDes ’20) for “Soil for Space: A Critical History of Earthmoving at Cape Canaveral”
Adam Kai Chi Ng (MLA ’19) and Qiaoqi Dai (MLA ’19) and Xiwei Shen (MLA ’19) for “Eco-Immigrant”
Stefano Romagnoli (MLA ’19) and Soledad Patiño (MAUD ’20) for “Fracking Landscapes: The Vaca Muerta Case during the World’s Energy Transition”
Kari Roynesdal (MLA ’20) for “Queer Ecologies: Controversial Human + Plant Communities”
Zishen Wen (MLA ’19) for “Brownfield on Extraterritoriality: Waste Disposed of in Global, Recycled in Rural China”
Chohao Victor Wu (MLA ’19) for “Camouflage Island: Re-Imagining the Contested Landscape of Kinmen”
Ziwei Zhang (MDes ULE ’20) for “Whose Maps are These? Mapping versus Indigenous Forest Spatiality in West Kalimantan, Indonesia”
This year, the Penny White Fund has also awarded two projects as part of the Penny White GSD-Courances Design Residency program:
Michael Cafiero (MLA ’20) for “Regenerative Connections”
Yoni Angelo Carnice (MLA ’20) for “The World Was My Garden”