The winning student dissertations of the 2018 Carter Manny Awards

Two Ph.D. students from the University of Pittsburgh and University of Michigan were revealed as this year's Carter Manny Award winners. Established by the Graham Foundation in honor of the late Carter H. Manny, the awards are given to doctoral students whose dissertations exhibit original, advanced architectural scholarship that has potential to push the field in new directions.

The Graham Foundation awarded one Dissertation Research Award and one Dissertation Writing Award. In addition, three students received Citations of Special Recognition. Get a glimpse of the top-winning projects below.

WRITING AWARD: Kylie R.J. Seltzer | University of Pittsburgh, Department of History of Art and Architecture
Dissertation: “Housing Identities: Displaying Race and Environment in Paris, 1870–1892”

Summary: “This dissertation examines how full-size reproductions of human housing were used as a tool to visualize the racial identity of the Other in late nineteenth-century Paris. Displayed at the Jardin d’Acclimatation and the Exposition universelle of 1889, these populated housing exhibits purported to be scientifically accurate representations of non-Europeans, French colonial subjects, and historic ethnic groups. By situating these housing specimens within the urban fabric of Paris, this research demonstrates that Parisian viewers were uniquely poised to understand the scientific ideas that these structures embodied and argues that the subject of housing was a powerful vehicle through which to teach the public visually. Analyzing the intersection of architecture, scientific race thinking, and the urban environment of Paris reveals how the French used the subject of housing to express notions of the Other’s identity.”

RESEARCH AWARD: Emine Seda Kayim | University of Michigan, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Dissertation: “Stasi as Architectural Producer: Surveillance and Scientific Management in the East German Built Environment, 1961–1989”

Summary: “This dissertation examines the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry of State Security—known as the Stasi—as an architectural producer to chart its largely unexplored involvement in the East German built environment. The project focuses on three facets of the Stasi’s architectural activities: its role as a building agent participating in the centrally planned scientific management of architectural production, as a building contractor commissioning top-secret governmental structures, and as a building user occupying architectural spaces to conduct domestic surveillance. Looking at architectural institutions, objects and practices within which the East German surveillance apparatus’ manifold functions diverged and intersected, the dissertation interrogates the coconstitutive operations of state surveillance and building industries. In doing so, it includes surveillance agents among the constellation of building experts and policy-makers to explore how methods and conditions of surveillance influenced the production and use of East German architecture, and how—in turn—architecture affected the techniques of surveillance.”

WRITING CITATION OF SPECIAL RECOGNITION 

Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió | Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Dissertation: “Designing “Post-Industrial Society”: Settler Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Palm Springs, California, 1876–1973”

RESEARCH CITATIONS OF SPECIAL RECOGNITION 

Nicholas Caverly | University of Michigan, Department of Anthropology
Dissertation: “Restructured City: Demolition and Toxic Accumulations in Detroit”

Rixt Woudstra | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture
Dissertation: “Minimal Needs, Minimum Standards: Housing, Welfare and Building Research in British Sub-Saharan Africa, 1945–1968”