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2022 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize Winners

Architectural Design Excellence Award, USA: Winners News

April 30, 2022 ;

Annual Internatioanl 2022 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence information from Berkeley Prize

BERKELEY PRIZE 2022 Winners

Berkeley Prize 2022

Twenty-fourth Year

WINNERS ANNOUNCED FOR THE ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL 2022 BERKELEY UNDERGRADUATE PRIZE FOR ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN EXCELLENCE

Annual Internatioanl 2022 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence

Winners of the twenty-fourth annual Berkeley Prize Essay Competition and Community Service Fellowship Competition are announced by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Architecture and City & Regional Planning Raymond Lifchez, Chair of the international Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence (www.berkeleyprize.org).

Through distinct competitions – the perennial Essay Competition and various Fellowship Competitions – the international Berkeley Prize competition encourages undergraduate architecture students worldwide to go into their communities for the purpose of thinking and writing about issues central to the understanding of the social art of architecture.

The 2022 Berkeley Prize focuses on the topic: DESIGN GUIDED BY CLIENTS’ NEEDS: Applying Social Factors Research to Architecture. This year’s Question recommends, but does not require that the undergraduate architecture students team with a full-time undergraduate social sciences student at their college or university or equally-accredited college or university in their local community in which they reside.

BERKELEY PRIZE 2022 QUESTION

You have been asked to design a housing project for the disadvantaged in your local community. What do you need to know to insure that your design will both reflect the lives and aspirations of those for whom you design and for the project to be a proud, long-term addition to the fabric of your community?

Overview

Your task is to start the process for the design of housing for 100 low-income families and individuals that in all probability will include children, the elderly, and the disabled. Develop a strategy that will guide you and your selected professional associates in helping make this project succeed and be a model for the social art of architecture. Your Proposal and Essay should:

As a starting point, tell us something about the specific group of people you hope to serve: its needs and settings and the actual conditions it faces.
Describe the members of the project team that you would assemble.
Select a site (or sites) in your local community that you think is appropriate for this project. Describe the site (or sites) and tell us why you chose it.
Tell us who you think is most appropriate in your community to finance the project – local/regional/national government; NGO’s; private individuals, etc. – and what role would they play as a result.
List the steps you would you take to involve the users of the housing in the design process. As a starting point, what 10 questions would you ask them?
Describe how you propose to insure that the users play an active part in the entire design and construction process?
Briefly summarize why you think all of this is important.

118 Essay Competition proposals of 500 words each, written by 142 undergraduate students collaborating in one and two-person teams from 22 countries were received in response to this year’s Question.

The Essay competition timeline started on 15 September 2021 with proposals due 1 November 2021. From the proposals, 25 selected semifinalists submitted a 2500-word essay by 1 February 2022. Of these, eight were advanced to the Jury as finalists in mid-March. This year, all of the eight were recognized for their efforts as follows:

A First Prize (shared by a two-person team); a Second Prize; two Third Prizes (each shared by a two-person team); a Fourth Prize (shared by a two-person team), and three Honorable Mentions (two of which are shared by a two-person team). These 14 students split a purse totaling 35,000USD.

In addition, four students receive three different Community Service Fellowships totaling 10,000USD.

ESSAY COMPETITION RESULTS

First Place Prize (Two-person team)
Ayesha de Sousa studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program at the Goa College of Architecture, Goa, India; and Andrew de Sousa studying in the Bachelor of Arts program in Economics at St. Xavier’s College, Goa, India for: “Backwater Rising.” (10,000USD for the team)

(Introduction)

The water is rising.

Set along the backwaters of the river Mandovi, a tangle of homes awaits the tide. Be it through tropical storms or the course of global warming, the settlement is ill-prepared to endure nature’s wrath. This is Ribandar.

To the outside world, Ribandar is a picturesque town, six kilometers from Goa’s capital city of Panaji. The name of the town is derived from ‘Rai Bandar’, or ‘Dock of the Royalties’. This dock served as a hub of mercantile trade during the Portuguese occupation, which enticed colonial aristocrats, viceroys and archbishops to make their abode along its lush slopes. Not long after, the impressive development of Ribandar was capped by the laying of the magnificent Ponte de Linhares, the longest bridge in the world at the time of its completion. This, however, is not the Ribandar with which we concern ourselves.

Today, the portion of the town flanked by the river is exalted by the masses and thronged by tourists. In sharp contrast, the backwater settlement of Ribandar tends to be excluded from the popular narrative – perhaps, for its mundanity. The backwater has developed organically, subject to neither the scrutiny of authority nor the wonder of visitors. (…See the full essay here)

(Author’s illustrations for the essay)

The locals have a multifaceted connection with the backwater.
With slapdash infrastructure and poor waste management, garbage chokes the landscape.

Design must be capable of adapting to the dynamic needs of growing families.
Capitalizing on local ingenuity as a human resource is key to redevelopment.

Second Place Prize
Beatriz de Costa Gotado studying in the Bachelor of Architecture and Urban Planning program in the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of São Paulo, Brazil for: “From occupation to community: a participatory project at the edge of the metropolis.” (6500USD)

Third Place Prize #1 (Two-person team)
Mahmoud El Kady studying in the Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering program in the School of Sciences and Engineering; and Tia Ashraf Aziz, studying anthropology, both at the American University in Cairo, Egypt for: “Economic Architectonics: Local Initiatives for Live/Work Housing.” (5500USD for the team)

Third Place Prize #2 (Two-person team)
The team of Victoria Masagbor studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program in the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at the University of Benin, Lagos, Nigeria; and Elizabeth Masagbor studying Classics in the Bachelor of Arts program in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria for: “Meeting the People’s Needs Through Research.” (5500USD for the team)

Fourth Place Prize (Two-person team)
Samriddhi Khare studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program in the School of Architecture and Planning at Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India; and Jiya Anand a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology Honors student at Kamala Nehru College, New Delhi, India for: “New Delhi and the Planning of Carcerality.” (4000USD for the team)

Honorable Mention
Oprah Omeka studying in the Bachelor of Architectural Technology program at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya for: “Communal Harmony in Architectural Design.” (1500USD)

Honorable Mention (Two-person team)
Dhruv Bhatia studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program in the Department of Architecture and Planning at the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal, India; and Srishti Grover, a Bachelor of Arts in Economics Honors student at the Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India for “Quilting The Crevices: Restructuring Lives Through Architecture.” (1500USD for the team)

Honorable Mention (Two-person team)
Yugi Shao studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, U.S.A.; and Rongzhi Hu, studying for an AB degree in History at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.A. for: “Small, High-Quality, and Church-Centered Housing Development in Chicago.” (1500USD for the team)

All of the winning essays, plus more top-scoring essays are now available
to be read on the website on the Berkeley Prize “Reserve” page,
see: http://berkeleyprize.org/endowment/the-reserve/

The Essay Prize Jury

Each year, the Prize Committee and the Jurors look to identify the most outstanding work among the many excellent essays and the research that those essays describe.

Utilizing the extensive review work of 65 Committee Members from around the world (see “Background” below), this year’s four Essay Jurors are:

Aleksis Bertoni, U.S.A. is an architect, builder, and the co-founder of Type Five, an architecture and technology company that aims to increase access to housing and improve the long-term environmental and economic outcomes of American home ownership. Type Five builds low-cost, environmentally efficient homes which are designed to be customized and adapted over time. He has worked at award-winning architecture firms in Boston and San Francisco, as well as with the World Heritage Cities Program at UNESCO in Paris. Aleksis Bertoni is a Berkeley Prize Committee member.

Dorit Fromm, U.S.A., is a design researcher and writer, an architect, and has worked in communications for the design industry. She has researched a variety of community and housing designs, conducted post-occupancy evaluations of multi-unit housing and presented on new forms of housing internationally. Her recent co-authored book, Cluster Cohousing Revisited, is a deep look into the first Dutch cohousing project, from the perspective of design and social relationships. Dorit Fromm is a Berkeley Prize Committee member.

Elli Mosayebi, Switzerland, has led the Zurich-based architecture office Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin together with Ron Edelaar and Christian Inderbitzin since 2004. The close connection between practice, research and teaching characterizes her career. Since 2018 she has held the position of Professor for Architecture and Design at ETH Zurich. Housing and the change it is currently undergoing are integral aspects of her fields of both practice and research. She is also a permanent member of the Academic Committee of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction..

Augustine Owusu-Ansah, Ghana, is a partner with Accra-based architecture firm S. Tetteh + Associates (STA) whom he joined in 2012, working primarily on design and construction supervision of STAs projects. He is coordinator for STA’s social housing projects and has a keen interest in the study and design of public space and exploring Ghanaian architectural identity. He was heavily involved in the competition-winning entries for the Shelter Afrique’s 5000 for 5000 Affordable Housing Competition.

For full profiles of the Jurors, see:
https://www.berkeleyprize.org/competition/essay/2022/jury

For a list and biographies of all of the Berkeley Prize Committee Members, see:
http://berkeleyprize.org/endowment/berkeley-prize-committee/

Community Service Fellowship Competition
(All Essay Competition semifinalists are eligible to submit proposals for the
Community Service Fellowship.)

Semifinalists who select to compete for a Community Service Fellowship are invited to submit proposals to join an on-going program or project that reflects this year’s topic, Design Guided by Clients’ Needs, and the specific content of their Essays. This is an exciting hands-on opportunity to further explore the application of the precepts of the social art of architecture.

The BP2022 Community Service Fellowships are awarded to:

Hadiya Javed, studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program in the Architecture and Planning Department at NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan; and Swaleha Javed, studying for a Bachelor of Science in Psychology in the Institute of Professional Psychology at Bahria University, Karachi, Pakistan to volunteer with ModulusTech, the first team in Pakistan to devize a sustainable yet affordabely flat-packed housing solution designed to provide adequate living conditions for potential users – the bottom 40% of the population in urban cities like Karachi. (5000USD for the team)

(For more information on this program, see modulus-tech.com)

Nowshin Matin, studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Military Institute of Science and Technology in Dhaka, Bangladesh to join the CODEC – Community Development Center in Khulshi, Chattogram, Bangladesh as a volunteer member of the Knowledge, Management, Program Development and Technical Team, specifically involved in helping to facilitate the implementation of the CODEC Affordable Resilient Housing Piloting initiative.(2500USD)

(For more information on this program, see codec.org.bd)

Ipsita Choudhury, studying in the Bachelor of Architecture program in the Department of Architecture and Planning at the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal, India for “Making Home a Liveable Place” as a volunteer with Better Bhalswa, Delhi, India to help co-create a program, Worth in Waste (WoW), whose purpose it is to create visible change for the heavily impacted community of over 200,000 marginalized people living at the Bhalswa dump site through place-making and light infrastructure interventions. (2500USD)

(For more information on this program, see betterbhalswa.com)

The Community Service Fellowship requires a written and illustrated report at the conclusion of the volunteer service. These appear on the BP website in the Fall, 2022.

Watch for the announcement of the 25th Anniversary
2023 BERKELEY PRIZE
15 September 2022

BACKGROUND

The BERKELEY PRIZE – How it Works

Each year, the Berkeley Prize Committee poses a Question on the competition website. Students enrolled in any undergraduate architecture program throughout the world or those in collateral disciplines teamed with such students are invited to submit a 500-word essay proposal in English responding to the Question.

From this pool of essays, approximately 25-30 semifinalists are selected as particularly promising by the Prize Committee, a group of 65 international architects, architectural educators, social scientists, writers, and general thinkers. The semifinalists are then asked to submit a 2,500-word Essay expanding on their proposals.

The Committee then selects 8-9 of the best Essays and sends these finalists on to a jury of international architects and academics to select the winners. The Berkeley Prize Essay Competition is announced, papers submitted, and reader- and jury-reviewed all online.

The Essay semifinalists are also offered the opportunity to participate in various Fellowship Competitions. These have included the Travel Fellowship, the Community Service Fellowship and the Architectural Design Fellowship. In addition, the Prize sponsored an experimental Teaching Fellowship for academicians in the field.

During the past twenty-four years, the Prize has received 2971 Essay, Travel, and other Fellowship proposals from 3599 individual students representing dozens of schools of architecture in 85 countries. In recognition of these efforts, the Berkeley Prize is the recipient of the 2008 American Institute of Architects Collaborative Achievement Honor Award; and the 2002 American Institute of Architects’ Education Honor Award.

The Berkeley Prize has also garnered international acclaim, not the least reason for which is its complete embracing of digital technology. In partial recognition of this outreach, the 2003 Berkeley Prize competition was named a special event of “World Heritage in the Digital Age,” a virtual congress helping to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.

Winners’ biographies, photographs, and their full submittals; archives
of past competitions; information on Committee Members; and links to other articles on the social art of architecture are all posted at:
www.berkeleyprize.org

The BERKELEY PRIZE is endorsed by the Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley.

Annual Internatioanl 2022 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence information from Berkeley Prize

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Location: Berkeley, California, USA