Ifeoma Ebo, DK Osseo-Asare, AD-WO, Selina Martinez, and Maya Bird-Murphy are the Architecture & Design USA Fellows for 2024

A group of six architects and designers was announced today for inclusion in the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship cohort for 2024. 

Each will receive a $50,000 cash grant to be used at their discretion in recognition of their socially engaged and community-driven pursuits. This year's program was noted for its interdisciplinary approach, with many artists reaching outside their field to affect change in other areas, such as law, policy, and healthcare, that are equally vital to building a just and prosperous society.

The five Architecture and Design Fellows are: Ifeoma Ebo, Selina Martinez, Maya Bird-Murphy, DK Osseo-Asare, and AD-WO (Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood). 

Recipients in the other nine creative categories this year hailed from 22 different states and Puerto Rico and ranged in age from their early 20s to late 80s. The USA Fellows program says all are “united in their understanding of space and design as an integral foundation for social justice and community building.” The program has now awarded more than $38 million nationwide since 2006.

This year’s Architecture and Design Fellows join a list of previous recipients that includes Theaster Gates, Germane Barnes, Nina Cooke John, Mabel O. Wilson, and Deanna Van Buren. Subjects covered in their work include bioclimatic design, placemaking, and the role of craft traditions in architecture. 

More information about the 2024 Fellows:

Ifeoma Ebo

Bio from United States Artists: "Ifeoma Ebo is a Nigerian American, Brooklyn-based designer, architect, artist, urbanist, and planner with a proven track record in transforming urban spaces into platforms for equity and design excellence. In Ebo’s twenty-year career, she has led projects in architecture, community placemaking, community and large-scale masterplanning, urban policy, and neighborhood development. Through leadership roles in urban design and development initiatives funded by the United Nations, FIFA, and the NYC Mayor’s Office, Ebo has excelled in leading multidisciplinary teams towards the planning and implementation of projects supporting racial, social, and cultural equity. As the founding Principal of Creative Urban Alchemy, LLC, she is a highly sought-after consultant on equitable design and regenerative placemaking strategy for city governments and civic institutions internationally. As a creative, Ebo explores her passion for visual storytelling to craft engaging design workshops and to capture her global explorations of cultural urbanism — the intersection of space, place, people, and culture. As an award-winning artist she is a recipient of grant awards from the MIT and Cornell University Council for the Arts and has exhibited her work at the Cornell University Willard Straight Gallery, the MIT Rotch Library Gallery, and the Oakland Museum exhibition on Afro-futurism. Ebo has also exhibited her work as a part of the Architectural League Shifting Ground visual archive capturing the relationship between society and the built environment during the pandemic."

Selina Martinez

Bio from United States Artists: "Selina Martinez is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Xicana born and raised in Phoenix. Martinez is currently an architect in training pursuing her architectural license. In 2022, she led architecture studios at the Arizona State University Design School, integrating the use of 3D laser scanning and indigenous/bioclimatic desert design responses. In 2020, Martinez was a recipient of the Radical Imagination Grant from the NDN Collective, establishing the seed funding to create Juebenaria, a project focused on providing an evolving collection of a plurality of Yaqui lived experiences through digital media. Martinez is also the co-founder and lead instructor for Design Empowerment Phoenix, a program of the Sagrado Galleria in South Phoenix in South Phoenix that creates opportunities for the community to engage in design tools and processes."

Maya Bird-Murphy

Bio from United States Artists: "Maya Bird-Murphy is an architectural designer, educator, and the founder and Executive Director of Mobile Makers, an award-winning nonprofit organization bringing design and skill-building workshops to underrepresented communities. Bird-Murphy is also a faculty member at Boston Architectural College. She believes the design field must expand to include more people and perspectives through teaching and community engagement and hopes to leave her mark on Chicago by making it a more equitable place to live. Bird-Murphy was recently selected by the Harvard Graduate School of Design as a Wheelwright Prize Finalist, awarded the Pierre Keller Prize by Hublot, and chosen by Theaster Gates and Prada to join the Experimental Design Lab Cohort, and was recently profiled in Dwell."

DK Osseo-Asare 

Bio from United States Artists: "DK Osseo-Asare is a Ghanaian-American polymath who collaborates with communities to craft material assemblies tuned for ecosocial resilience. Osseo-Asare is co-founding Principal of Low Design Office (LowDO) based in Austin and Tema, Ghana. He is a registered civil engineer with the Ghanaian Institution of Engineering. LowDO have been profiled as emerging architects in The Architectural Review (2018), were featured in ARCHITECT’s Next Progressives, were MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program finalists (2019), were named one of Domus’ 50 Best Architecture Firms (2020), and received and Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York (2021). Osseo-Asare has led participatory architecture, landscape, and urban design–build projects along the Guinea Coast from the Anam City eco-town in Anambra State, Nigeria to Berekuso Hill Station and Koumbi City in Ghana. He was architect of Ghana’s second pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, which was redeployed as the installation Enviromolecular at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale: The Laboratory of the Future. Osseo-Asare co-initiated the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) project, which won the Rockefeller Foundation’s Centennial Innovation Challenge (2013), the Design Corps’ SEED Award for Public Interest Design (2017), and Le Monde Cities Urban Innovation Award – Citizen Engagement Prize (2020). AMP spacecraft is an open design and manufacturing framework that utilizes quantum design for reassembly and modular prefabricated components to reformat autochthonous kiosk culture as synergetic matrix for material coordination across space-time. Osseo-Asare is Associate Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design at Penn State University, where he directs the Humanitarian Materials Lab. He received MArch and AB in Engineering Design degrees from Harvard University."

AD-WO

Bio from United States Artists: "AD—WO is an art and architecture practice based in New York City, and by extension, between Naarm/Melbourne and Addis Ababa. The practice examines how space is imaged and valued through art, design, and curatorial interventions. Founded in 2015 by Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO has exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023), La Biennale di Venezia (2023), Art Omi (2023), Harvard GSD (2023), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2021), the Architekturmuseum der TU München (2018), and the Studio Museum in Harlem (2017). They are the exhibition designers for Dear Mazie at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (2024); the exhibition designers and curatorial consultants of SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa (2023) at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York; and design architects of Bole Rwanda (2024), a multifamily housing project that is currently under construction in Addis Ababa. AD—WO’s work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta)."