Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to name Mauro Marinelli the winner of the 2025 Wheelwright Prize . The $100,000 prize supports investigative approaches to contemporary architecture, with an emphasis on globally minded research.
Marinelli’s project, Topographies of Resistance: Architecture and the Survival of Cultures, examines the role of architecture in sustaining and revitalizing rural mountainous regions that face challenges related to climate change, infrastructure, and cultural erosion. The study develops design strategies that promote autonomy, sustainability, and local identity by comparing contexts in the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas. Through analysis and field experiments, Marinelli seeks to generate architectural approaches that empower communities and challenge urban-centric biases.
The Wheelwright Prize supports innovative design research, crossing both cultural and architectural boundaries. Winning research proposal topics in recent years have included social and spatial relations in contemporary Africa ; environmental and social impacts of sand mining ; and new paradigms for digital infrastructure .
The Wheelwright Prize will fund two years of Marinelli’s research and travel. He plans to focus his work in the European Alps, the South American Andes, and mountainous regions of China. “This support enables me to investigate how architecture can actively engage with the fragile cultural systems of high mountain communities. I intend to contribute tangible insights to both the cultural vitality of mountain territories and architectural discourse,” says Marinelli.
“I am thrilled to announce Mauro as this year’s winner. The architecture of our shared future must respond thoughtfully to specific cultural contexts, geographic conditions, and ecological forces—including humidity, wetlands, woodlands, coastlines, and many others,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the GSD. “Mauro’s research fosters precisely these kinds of responses, emphasizing self-sufficiency, local identity, and architectural approaches uniquely suited to the climatic, demographic, and economic vulnerabilities shared by mountainous communities around the world.”
In addition to Whiting, jurors for the 2025 prize include: Chris Cornelius, professor and chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning; Grace La, professor of architecture and chair of the Department of Architecture at the GSD; Jennifer Newsom, co-founder of Dream the Combine and assistant professor at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; Tosin Oshinowo, principal and founder of Oshinówò Studio; and Noura Al Sayeh, head of Architectural Affairs for the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities.
Marinelli was among four distinguished finalists selected from a highly competitive and international pool of applicants. The 2025 Wheelwright Prize jury commends finalists Meriem Chabani, Mohamad Nahleh, and Alfredo Thiermann for their promising research proposals and presentations.
About Mauro Marinelli
Mauro Marinelli is an architect and holds a PhD in Architecture and Urban Design from Politecnico di Milano, where he has served as adjunct professor of architectural design since 2016. He has been visiting professor at IUAV Venice (2024) and visiting lecturer at Università Federico II Naples (2025), and has been invited to lecture at numerous other institutions. In 2017, he co-founded franzosomarinelli with Mirko Franzoso, an architecture office based in the Alps, focused on contemporary design in fragile territories. The studio’s work has been exhibited in numerous architecture exhibitions and published internationally, with a strong focus on contextual sensitivity through material and spatial research.
About the Finalists
Meriem Chabani
Algeria-born, Paris-based Meriem Chabani is the founder and Principal of NEW SOUTH
, an award-winning architecture, urban planning and anthropology practice prioritizing spaces for vulnerable bodies in contested territories. Her work on complex sites includes the Swann Arr cultural center in Myanmar, the Globe Aroma refugee art center in Brussels, and the upcoming Mosque Zero in Paris. She currently teaches at École Paris Malaquais (FR). In 2020 Meriem won the Europe 40 under 40 award. She is a recipient of the Graham Foundation Grant. In 2025, she was named one of the leading creatives in France by Le Monde.
Mohamad Nahleh
Mohamad Nahleh is assistant professor of architecture at The Ohio State University. His research and practice engage the fields of environmental history, cultural anthropology, and postcolonial literature in expanding the role and imagination of the night in architecture. Recognizing the night as a space rather than a time, his work unsettles the current interchangeability between “night architecture” and “light design” by charging architecture with the urgency to overcome the Western metaphors of light and darkness. Nahleh holds a bachelor of architecture from the American University of Beirut and a master of science in architecture studies from MIT, where he also taught for several years.
Alfredo Thiermann
Alfredo Thiermann is an architect and assistant professor for History and Theory of Architecture at the École polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne. He has taught and lectured at Harvard University, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and other institutions. His work has been published in Harvard Design Magazine, A+U, and Revista ARQ, among other publications. Thiermann received his professional degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile and a masters degree from Princeton University. He received his doctoral degree from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich. He is the author of Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin (MIT Press, 2024).
