These four finalists will compete for the coveted Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize for 2024

Today, the Harvard GSD announced its list of four candidates who will compete for this year’s Wheelwright Prize honoring emerging architects and their ambition to make the world better through research into design. The prestigious $100,000 award is given annually to early-career practitioners, along with the chance to deliver a special lecture at the GSD and have their research published in Harvard Design Magazine or any of the school's other leading publications.

The GSD shares: “The proposals from this year’s four finalists apply architectural and design thinking and research to  address a range of complex global issues — the ways in which practices of design for sacred spaces can inspire more sustainable architecture; the emergence of increased sovereignty and self-determined design taking place in postcolonial countries in Latin America; how design, fiction, and performance can be combined to explore strategies and methods for radical reimagination of forms of spatial and political liberation across seven African countries; and the fabrication of biologically-based building materials as tools for retrofitting existing buildings.”

Last year’s winner was the London-based academic Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, whose project ‘Tracing Sand’ led her to places as far afield as Singapore, coastal Florida, Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta, and rural China in order to produce an open access archive about sand and its use as a material building block for sustainable change. 

Whoever is selected will follow Cheng, the 2022 winner Marina Otero, Germane Barnes, and Daniel Fernández Pascual as the past recipients of the Wheelwright Prize, which was first established in 1935. A winner will be announced later this month. The four finalist proposals for 2024 are: 

Meriem Chabani: “On Sacred Grounds: Sanctuaries in the Secularocene”

Meriem Chabani is the Algeria-born, Paris-based founder and principal of NEW SOUTH, an award-winning architecture, urban planning, and anthropology practice prioritizing spaces for vulnerable bodies in contested territories. For this year’s Wheelwright Prize, Chabani has proposed to investigate the ways in which sacred practices of the built environment may provide a new sustainable approach to architecture and city making. Metrics such as material cultures and carbon footprint are essential, yet Chabani’s proposal contends that architectural discourse should expand to encompass the emotional and spiritual dimensions that drive humans to care for their physical environment.

Chabani’s proposal is titled “On Sacred Grounds: Sanctuaries in the Secularocene." I wish to investigate ways in which sacred practices of the built environment may provide a new sustainable approach to architecture and city making. Metrics such as material cultures and carbon footprint are essential, yet architectural discourse should expand to encompass the emotional and spiritual dimensions that drive humans to care for their physical environment. In times of deep climate crisis, there is a pressing need to foster a renewed vision of an aspirational modernity. In a sense, we need a “Sacred” Green New Deal. By examining sacred spatial practices and rituals, my research will bring architecture to reckon with the “Secularocene,” and question what may lie beyond.

Nathan Friedman: “Sovereign Systems: Resource Management in Latin America”

Nathan Friedman is co-founder of the Mexico City–based design office Departamento del Distrito and a Professor in Practice at the Rice University School of Architecture. A new discourse on sovereignty has emerged since the 1990s that is actively reshaping the world—from the productive rooftops and backyards of individuals to the pipelines, energy fields, and futuristic city projects of nation-states. Postcolonial countries and their populations in Latin America are experiencing an intense moment of political action and construction in this regard, exploring novel ways to manage resources, gain financial independence, and achieve self-determination. Friedman’s proposal, “Sovereign Systems”, would aim to document and test the limits of these emerging approaches to sovereignty, seeking new models for architecture and territory that look beyond traditional notions of the nation-state.

Friedman’s project is titled “Sovereign Systems: Resource Management in Latin America”: A new discourse on sovereignty has emerged since the 1990s that is actively reshaping the world—from the productive rooftops and backyards of individuals to the pipelines, energy fields, and futuristic city projects of nation-states. Postcolonial countries and their populations in Latin America are experiencing an intense moment of political action and construction in this regard, exploring novel ways to manage resources, gain financial independence, and achieve selfdetermination. Sovereign Systems documents and tests the limits of these emerging approaches to sovereignty, seeking new models for architecture and territory that look beyond traditional notions of the nation-state.

Thandi Loewenson: “Black Papers: Beyond the Politics of Land, Towards African Policies of Earth & Air”

Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Thandi Loewenson is an architectural designer and researcher who mobilizes design, fiction, and performance to foster emancipatory political thought and collective action. Using fiction as a design tool and tactic, Loewenson engages in projects that provoke questioning of the status-quo, while working with communities, policy makers, unions, artists and architects to act on those provocations. Loewenson’s research establishes a new field in architectural research and practice which contends with the entanglement of earth and air in the construction of social and spatial relations, with a focus on seven African countries. Through analyses of Outer Space infrastructures, technology, metals and digital dispossession, she will examine how systems of racialization, dispossession, and exploitation established by colonialism and racial capitalism are co-constituted across multiple, entangled earthly and airborne terrains. In doing so, through a series of “Black Papers”, this work will explore strategies and methods for the radical reimagination of forms of spatial and political liberation.

Loewenson’s proposal is titled “Black Papers: Beyond the Politics of Land, Towards African Policies of Earth & Air”: The research establishes a new field in architectural research and practice which contends with the entanglement of earth and air in the construction of social and spatial relations, with a focus on seven African countries. Through analyses of Outer Space infrastructures, technology, metals and digital dispossession, I examine how systems of racialization, dispossession, and exploitation established by colonialism and racial capitalism are co-constituted across multiple, entangled earthly and airborne terrains. In doing so, through a series of “Black Papers” this work explores strategies and methods for the radical reimagination of forms of spatial and political liberation: how we get free.

Ryan Roark: “Biomaterial Protocols: From Waste to Walls”

Ryan Roark is an architect, writer, biochemist, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, where her research focuses on radical adaptive reuse and its role in urban development. As architects search for ways to mitigate their role in the climate crisis, fabrication with biologically based materials has become increasingly attractive. However, interest often wanes when it becomes apparent that these materials will not replace structure or cladding as we currently think of them. Through her proposal “Biomaterial Protocols”, she will develop a range of materials from seafood waste and biochar for retrofitting existing buildings. As the development of biological materials for architectural purposes is still in its infancy, Roark seeks to connect with an international network of makers to catalog a range of techniques, currently poorly documented, and the associated material flows.

Roark’s proposed project is titled “Biomaterial Protocols: From Waste to Walls”: As architects search for ways to mitigate their role in the climate crisis, fabrication with biologically based materials has become increasingly attractive. However, interest often wanes when it becomes apparent that these materials will not replace structure or cladding as we currently think of them. I am developing a range of materials from seafood waste and biochar for retrofitting existing buildings. As the development of biological materials for architectural purposes is still in its infancy, she seeks to connect with an international network of makers to catalog a range of techniques, currently poorly documented, and the associated material flows.