Thinking Through Soil Wins 2026 JB Jackson Book Prize

The 2026 John Brinckerhoff (JB) Jackson Book Prize has been awarded to Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley (2025), by Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich and Seth Denizen and published by Harvard Design Press, an imprint of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). Awarded annually since 2011 by the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, the prize recognizes outstanding original scholarship in landscape studies that breaks new ground in method or interpretation. This year’s jury considered more than 60 submissions.

Book cover, black images with white and gray text.

Thinking Through Soil examines the world’s largest wastewater agricultural system, in the Mexico City–Mezquital hydrological region, to argue for soil as a critical framework for understanding environmental change. Rather than treating soil as a passive substrate or a problem to be managed, Bonvehi Rosich and Denizen show how it registers the intertwined effects of water, agriculture, urbanization, infrastructure, and human activity. The book offers soil as a way to understand systems often studied and managed separately—and to approach complex environmental challenges that resist purely technical solutions.

Bonvehi Rosich is a licensed architect and urban designer and a visiting assistant professor at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis; she was the 2017–2018 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow in landscape architecture at the GSD. Denizen, an assistant professor at the Sam Fox School, is a researcher and design practitioner trained in landscape architecture, evolutionary biology, and human geography. He was the 2019–2020 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow at the GSD. Bonhevi Rosich, Denizen, and David Moreno Mateos received the 2019 SOM Foundation Research Prize for the investigation that led to Thinking Through Soil.

Harvard Design Press publishes original work across architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design, advancing new ideas and critical inquiry within and beyond the design disciplines. Its books address pressing contemporary issues—including climate change, housing, social equity, and urban ecology—while expanding the possibilities of design research and practice.

Harvard Design Press is organized and edited by Ken Stewart and Marielle Suba. Thinking Through Soil was designed by Chad Kloepfer and Willis Kingery.