2011 Berkeley Prize Winners Announced

Winners of the Thirteenth Annual Berkeley Prize Competition were announced yesterday by Professor Raymond Lifchez, Chair of the Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence.

Since its founding, the international Berkeley Prize competition has encouraged undergraduate architecture students to write about issues central to the understanding of the social art of architecture and the social role of the architect in today's world. The Prize now comprises three separate and distinct competitions: the Essay Competition; the Travel Fellowship Competition; and the Architectural Design Fellowship Competition.

The 2011 Berkeley Prize Competition attracted 137 architecture students from 23 countries.  The winners reflect the diversity of the authors and illustrate the worldwide interest in exploring the ideals of a socially-grounded architecture.

This year's Berkeley Prize is focused on the topic, Valuing the Sacred. Students were asked to respond to the Question: "What is a sacred space? Historically, certain buildings have served as sacred places for meditation, to celebrate a religious ritual, or simply to take refuge from the pressures of every day life. Select a place, location, or setting in your community or your local environment that you personally believe to be sacred, but that has as of yet not been widely accepted as important in this way. Tell us: Why it is sacred, what community resources are needed to insure its preservation. What, if any, architectural intervention you believe is appropriate to memorialize its special nature."

The 2011 Berkeley Prize recipients are:

Essay Competition

First Place prize:
"Sauna: Temple of the Five Senses" by Iina Valkeisenmäki (read essay),
Aalto University Department of Architecture, Espoo, Finland. (4,500USD prize)

 

First Place prize:
"Museum of Music Moves a City" by Holly Simon (read essay),
Dalhousie University School of Architecture, Halifax, Canada. (4,500USD prize)

 

Second Place prize:
"A Separate Place" by Rebecca David (read essay),
Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel. (2,000USD prize)

 

Second Place prize:
"A Walk Along the River: Fringe Graffiti in St. Louis" by Davis Owen (read essay),
Washington University College of Architecture, St. Louis, U.S.A. (2,000USD prize)

This year's Essay Jury includes:

• Andrew Amara, Architect, Dimensions, Kampala, Uganda. 2006 Berkeley Prize Travel Fellow and 3rd place Essay Competition winner.
• Paul Broches, FAIA, LEED AP, Principal, Mitchell/Giurgola Architects, New York
• Clare Cooper Marcus, Professor Emerita in the departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley
• Nalini Thakur, Professor of Architectural Conservation, School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi, India.

Travel Fellowship Competition

Hriday Gami, CEPT University Faculty of Architecture, Ahmedabad, India, will travel to Finland to attend the 'Wood in Construction and Architecture Program" at Aalto University. (2,100USD Stipend + Airfare)

Milenka Jirasko, Montana State University School of Art and Architecture, Bozeman, Montana, will travel to Germany and Poland for the "Witness to History: From the Holocaust to the Revival of Jewish Life in Poland" service program sponsored  by AMIZADE Global Service Learning. (2,100USD Stipend + Airfare)

Diana Alexandra Mihai, from Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, Romania will travel to the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, India where she will join an Architects Sans Frontières-UK international workshop studying flood-related reconstruction in the Old Town of Leh. (2,100USD Stipend + Airfare)

In addition, the Prize wishes to acknowledge two other students - Acellam Benard Makerere University, Faculty of Technology, Kampala, Uganda; and Christina Monzer, University of California, Berkeley, for their excellent proposals to join this year's Global Studio Bhopal, which subsequently was postponed beyond this year's Berkeley Prize cycle.

Berkeley Prize Committee members Roddy Creedon, Principal, Allied Architecture+Design San Francisco and Lecturer in Architecture, U.C. Berkeley; and David Salazar, Principal, DTSalazar, Inc. New York, San Francisco and Director of Development, CAMS Global/Eastern Africa gave special assistance in selecting the Travel Fellows


Architectural Design Fellowship Competition

Joseph Audeh, from New York University in New York City will stage a student design competition centered on resurrecting community interest in a famous and socially-significant 19th century-early 20th century public drinking fountain - currently dry - on a street corner in Greenwich Village, New York.  (2,500USD Honorarium, 2,500USD Student prize money)

Preeti Talwai, University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design, Berkeley, will use her Berkeley Prize study of People's Park in Berkeley, California as a starting point to stage a student design competition focused on documenting and exploring the informal use of public space by socially disenfranchised groups. (2,500USD Honorarium, 2,500USD Student prize money)

Jurors for the Architectural Design Fellowship are members of the Berkeley Prize Committee.