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 the family of Winifred G. “Penny” White after White, a student in the GSD’s landscape architecture program, suddenly died of leukemia in 1976. The goal of the grant program is to “help carry forward Penny’s ideal of a culture which emphasizes a close relationship between people and nature in a cohesive living environment.”
Now in its 44th year, the fund has announced 15 winning proposals selected through an evaluation process based on originality and innovation of projects, as well as their contribution to pressing challenges related to the fields of urbanism, landscape, and ecology.
“From the role of female divers in the cultivation of submarine landscapes to the invisibility of disabled communities in urban environments, from big data analysis on the role of urban parks in pandemic times to archeological research in landscapes of self-determination and antislavery community construction, from the reconsideration of cultural identity in post-natural disaster recovery strategies to a prototypical farming experiment towards the restoration of Indigenous knowledge to the land, the research topics and strategies of this year’s selected student proposals address a range of conditions, technologies, and processes that are critical to the advancement of the discipline of landscape architecture today,” the Fund’s 2021 selection committee said in an email to the GSD community.
The following GSD degree candidates will receive project funding for 2021:
Ayami Akagawa (MLA I ’21) for “Feeling Rooted: Recovery from Natural Disaster and Identity Expression in New Home through Incremental Green Infrastructures in the Philippines”
Chun Chen (MLA I AP ’21) & Sohun Kang (MArch I ’21) for “Landscapes of Women of Seas: Ama and Haenyeo”
Echo Chen (MLA I ’21) for “Cultural Identities in Intangible Heritages: An Ethnologic Study of the Rural Communities Featuring the Covered Bridge in Southeast China”
Jake Deluca (MLA I AP ’22) for “Un-Living Record: In Analysis of Our Social and Psychological Relationship to the Cemetery”
Ian Erickson (MArch I ’24) for “On Becoming Productive: Representing Shifting Regimes of Value Extraction in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Territory”
Lianliu Guo (MLA I AP ’22) & Tianyu Su (DDes ’23) for “How Healthy Are They Doing in the Parks?: Understanding Urban Parks’ Perceived Health Impacts on Visitors Using Large-Scale Spatial Data”
Aijing Li (MUP ’22) & Claire Wang (MUP ’22) for “Parks on the Edge: Big Data Analytics on Park Visits in Segregated Neighborhoods”
Alison Maurer (MLA I ’22) for “Renewal and Reciprocal Labor: Exploring Iceland’s Ecologically Driven Economic Recovery”
Caleb Negash (MArch I ’22) & Sam Valentine (MLA II ’21) for “Hope in the Dismal: Interpreting Landscapes of Self-Determination and Self-Liberation in the Great Dismal Swamp”
Lara Prebble (MLA I ’23) for “Learning Through Play: Exploring the Roles of Outdoor Learning Environments in Finnish and Sámi Finland”
Julia Rice (MLA I ’22) for “Perspectivist Agriculture: Reimagining Modern Food Systems through Indigenous Knowledge”
Polly Sinclair (MLA I ’21) & Ada Thomas (MLA I ’21) for “The Spatial Imagination of Satoyama: Engaging Field Methods for Expanded Knowledge Production in Landscape Architecture”
Shi Tang (MLA II ’21) & Xiaoji Zhou (MLA II ’23) for “Deaf Space in Landscape Design: Making Deaf Visible Through Spatial Investigation and Community Engagement in Wuhan, China”
Michele Turrini (MLA II ’21) for “Sacrificial Land: Working with Peripheral Communities in Bangkok’s Decision-Making Watershed”
Morgan Vought (MLA I ’22) for “If You Don’t Build Anything, You Don’t Exist: Redefining Tribal Recognition in Western Courts through Critical Ethnobotanical Cartography”