The Harvard Graduate School of Design has revealed the shortlist for its 2023 Wheelwright Prize, an annual competition aimed at fostering “intensive, innovative architectural research that is informed by cross-cultural engagement and can make a significant impact on architectural discourse,” according to a GSD press release. Now in its 11th cycle, the honor comes with a $100,000 grant that supports the recipient through two years of study—in years past, lines of study have included Anatomical Transformations in Classical Architecture from 2021 winner Germane Barnes.
For this cycle, a panel of seven jurors evaluated a pool of international submissions, ultimately naming Isabel Abascal, Maya Bird-Murphy, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, and DK Osseo-Asare as this year’s finalists. Your can read more about the 2023 shortlisters below.
- Isabel Abascal, a Mexico City–based architect and writer, co-founded LANZA Atelier in 2015. Abascal’s research proposal, titled Mother Architecture: Shaping Birth, explores “how rethinking architecture and spatial design can impact maternal mortality through case studies of matriarchal societies, home water-births, Pritzker-Prize maternity centers, and floating hospitals,” according to the same release.
- Maya Bird-Murphy, is a Chicago-based designer and founder of Chicago Mobile Makers, a nonprofit design and skill-building workshop. Through Examining Architectural Practice Through Alternative Methodology and Pedagogy, Bird-Murphy hopes to examine “the friction that exists between the traditional and alternative design practices, to document the nuances of individual practices, and ultimately, to gather and share knowledge through architectural storytelling,” states the GSD release.
- Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, a London-based educator, researcher, and filmmaker focused on the interplay of design and movement, and has been recognized with the 2018 and 2020 Royal Institute of British Architects President’s Awards for Research. Cheng’s Wheelwright proposal—Tracing Sand: Phantom Territories, Bodies Adrift—will “dissect iconic sand sites that give form to spatio-cultural territories that have been fueled bycolonial globalization and high consumption,” reads the GSD release.
- DK Osseo-Asare is the co-founder and principal of Low Design Office in Austin, Texas, and Tema, Ghana, and director of the Humanitarian Materials Lab at Pennsylvania State University in Centre County. With Bucky in Africa: Remembering the Chemistry of Architecture, Osseo-Asare “seeks to decolonize the practice of architecture using a mixed methods approach of action research to investigate the African roots of ‘design science’ from an architectural perspective,” according to the GSD release.