Architectural Record announces winners of inaugural traveling fellowship

Lea Oxenhandler and Benjamin Halpern were announced today as the winners of the very first Architectural Record Traveling Fellowship, which the magazine established in celebration of their 125th anniversary. The fellowship will fund the travel expenses of Oxenhandler and Halpern as they each journey overseas to conduct research for their projects, which address architecture's interdisciplinary applications.

Thirty-year-old Lea Oxenhandler will travel to Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto to study the relationship between Japanese Metabolism and the housing market. After noticing Tokyo's lower homelessness rates compared to New York's, she believes the abundant temporary housing produced by the Metabolists is a contributing factor, and she would like to further investigate how similar concepts can potentially be applied in the U.S.  Oxenhandler is currently an architectural fellow at the community development non-profit People’s Emergency Center in West Philadelphia.

Twenty-nine-year-old Benjamin Halpern will travel to nine cities in Western Europe to develop an “alternative tourist literature”, in response to the typical tourist itinerary, which are only limited representations of a city. Halpern first explored the idea while working on his master's thesis at Harvard GSD.  As he travels through each city, he will interact with local people and research specific structures to create his own travel brochures. Halpern is a designer at New York-based Para-Project.

The recipients will complete their travels before September 2018.