Water-informed initiatives define SOM Foundation 2024 Research Prize and European Research Prize winners

The SOM Foundation has announced its 2024 Research Prize and European Research Prize winners as part of a competition that yearly honors the most groundbreaking initiatives on the built environment from both the United States and Europe.

Two teams from Auburn University and the University of Minnesota, respectively, were awarded the $30,000 Research Prize. The first—led by Aurélie Frolet, Emily McGlohn, and Jillian Maxcy-Brown—expands on past work through the university’s influential Rural Studio to deliver better wastewater infrastructure resources to communities in the Black Belt of Alabama that had previously been forced to adapt substandard treatment options which, in turn, induced major health and environmental crises.

In partnering with the Consortium for Alabama Rural Water and Wastewater (CARWW), the Auburn team was able to pioneer a new idea for a new decentralized clustered management system that reduces both operational and maintenance costs. Funding from the Research Prize will thus be put toward the production and dissemination of a new Wastewater Design Manual that is aimed at educating residents on implementation and mitigation techniques. 

Carson Chan, one of the 2024 Research Prize jurors, said: "What impressed me the most about ‘Imaging Underground’ was the proposal’s ability to address a wide range of issues, including infrastructure design, racial justice, and sustainability. The idea of producing a Wastewater Design Manual for stakeholders and municipalities seems to be an incredibly generous, useful, and proportionate way for students to contribute to Black Belt communities."

Joining their highly commendable project was the University of Minnesota’s six-person ‘Soft-Urban Riverfront: A New Paradigm for Headwater Metropolises’ cross-disciplinary/scalar effort, which focused on enhancing biodiversity, public health, and cultural awareness of Pig’s Eye Lake at the Mississippi River in St. Paul.

As an important heritage site to the area’s Indigenous community, as well as an ecological refuge, the lake will become a catalyst for a new studio aimed at producing new design strategies. Research will be carried out primarily through a new “vertical urban” offering at the university in the Fall 2025 semester. It is said to be inspired by the Eames’ ‘Powers of Ten’ approach and will emphasize urban design as a discipline that requires “interdisciplinary expertise and creative, multi-scale thinking.”

Chan elaborates: “‘Soft-Urban Riverfront’ stood out amongst other proposals in its multi-scalar approach to architecture and landscape design. Working on a particular site near the Mississippi River’s headwaters, students are also asked to analyze the larger watershed and metropolitan context of the site. That the proposal also acknowledged the Dakota Nation’s primacy in this area made clear that the project leads understand that any ecological design research is a continuation of the environmental knowledge gained by those who have lived on this land for far longer than settler colonists and immigrants.”

Finally, the €20,000 ($20,800 USD) European Research Prize was given to Steve Larkin and Helen McFadden of the Technological University Dublin for their project ‘Coastal Register: Research and Design of Nature-based Solutions for Wetland Water Security’, which looks to establish a framework for restoring wetlands in County Mayo, Ireland.

Henk Ovink, another 2024 European Research Prize juror, said: "This year’s awardee rightly focuses its innovative and inspiring design approach on wetlands: the pumps of our biodiversity and water systems, nature’s own carbon sinks, transpiration sources, and our vital resilience buffers. Our economies and actions put these global common goods on the brink of collapse. Coupling research, activism, and design-action for wetlands, this project provides a pathway for their restoration and valuation as a true global common good."

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Margarita Jover, Jane Withers, and Iker Gil (Chair) joined Ovink on the jury for the 2024 European Research Prize competition.