by: Martta Sareva
The Center for Architecture and AIANY are pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant. The purpose of the grant is to further the personal and professional development of an early or mid-career architect through travel.
The Scholarship Committee selected three winners for 2014: Jan Greben, William Smith, and the team of Lauren Connell and Baris Yüksel. Greben will travel to France, England, and Ireland for her research on “Collaboration to Independence in the Work of Eileen Gray.” The intention of her travel is to visit houses designed by Gray and to access the designer’s archives. Smith’s project, “Architecture and Radical Hydrology: Adaptation to Climate Change in the Indian Subcontinent,” will explore architecture and climate change, focusing on “low-capital, small-scale interventions.” Connell and Yüksel plan to document patterns in Central Asian architecture and tile work in their project “De-Coding the Roads: Computational Tessellation of Central Asian Architecture.”
Greben, in addition to practicing as an architect, has a background in research. In May 2014, she received a grant from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) to continue her study comparing two houses designed by Gray, E.1027 and Tempe a Pailla. Greben has also developed and taught seminars on Gray’s work at NYIT.
Smith recently graduated from the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Since then, he has worked at Allied Works Architecture in Portland, OR, and at Architecture Research Office in New York City. The project he will undertake with the LeBrun fits with his longstanding interest in sustainability and the environment.
Connell previously worked in Doha, Qatar, for Mayan Design, a Mexican architecture firm, as well as in New York for Nelson and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, where she worked on 7 Bryant Park and a new ambulatory care center for New York Presbyterian Hospital. Yüksel, a senior software engineer at Google, has a strong interest in architecture, and has collaborated with architects on various projects and installations. Yüksel and Connell previously worked as a team on a Grasshopper module which generates algorithmic tiling from Latvian sun symbols.
In partnership with the AIANY, the Center for Architecture administers three scholarships and three grant awards for incoming college students, current architecture students, and mid-career architecture and design professionals. We are currently accepting applications for the Arnold W. Brunner Grant – deadline Monday, 02.02.15. For further information please visit: http://cfafoundation.org/scholarships.