Two emerging architects awarded AIANY's 2022 Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant

Two emerging architects were recently named as winners of the 2022 Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant by the Center for Architecture at the AIA New York (AIANY).

The grants are given out to emerging or mid-career architects in support of their personal and professional development through travel abroad that likewise will supplement their research and practice.

Tadd Heidgerken and Zui Lig Ng were awarded a combined total of $25,000 for projects that look into the built environment in five different countries as possible guides for solutions to various ascendant challenges in the industry. 

Heidgerken’s investigation into inclusive employment models, titled “Social Practices: Collectivist Architecture in North America,” will examine organizational strategies that operate outside of traditional stasis dictated by market economies in order to produce a guide to alternative practice. 

His travels will take the Et al. Collaborative Principal and current University of Detroit Mercy Associate Professor to Puerto Rico and Mexico as part of the study, where the AIANY said he will “conduct an ethnographic investigation of how recent unionization drives, decolonization efforts, and community-centered design methods challenge the structure of traditional architectural work.”

His co-recipient Zui Lig Ng will take a look at vernacular shophouse structures in Southeast Asia in terms of how their design strategies can be extracted in other forms in tropical areas (including his own work around Houston) to help those communities adapt to climate-related needs. 

The ZDES Design Build Principal and Professor of Graduate Architecture at Northwest Houston Prairie View A&M University will travel to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand for the project. “Shophouses – Sustainable Vessels that Adapt to Environment, Economy, and Culture” was given $7,500, while the remaining $17,500 grant went to Heidgerken.

Studio Cooke John founder Nina Cooke John and past term AIANY President Ken Lewis of SOM served on the jury along with five others. 

More information about scholarship programs at the Center for Architecture can be found here.