Rafael Viñoly Architects 2009 Research Grants Awarded
Four teams from five continents to explore the needs of communities under stress
Rafael Viñoly Architects (RVA) are delighted to announce the award of four independent Research Fellowships for 2009.
The global call for entries saw over 180 proposals from 39 countries with a wide approach to the suggested general theme: how architecture can better meet the needs of communities undergoing social and environmental stress. The successful teams include researchers from Mexico, Australia, Colombia, France, China and the USA. They explore architecture from both standpoints of designer and user, in locations as diverse as Bogotá and Shanghai, the slums of Mexico City and the tsunami-torn villages of Aceh, Indonesia.
Two previous rounds of research grants focused on environmental and scientific themes, including green roofs and the performance of carbon-fiber composites. This year’s grants represent a shift towards themes of architecture in society, as well as a significant expansion of the program.
Teams for 2009 are made up of both academics and practitioners and will harness research techniques drawn from environmental psychology, anthropology and documentary photography, in addition to architecture and urban planning, in order to analyze the performance of buildings and urban projects under real-world conditions and propose plausible, improved, real-world solutions.
RVA will provide over $160,000 in cash stipends plus in-kind support including design, engineering, graphic, and modelling services. Research Fellows will make regular visits to the New York office to share ideas. In 2010, RVA will publish their work as a book and will sponsor a New York conference highlighting the results.
Rafael Viñoly says of the grants, “Research is the lifeblood of the profession. And in these difficult times it is especially important to reaffirm our commitment to architectural investigation that goes not only to design and technique but also to basic questions of human welfare.“
Ned Kaufman, program director, adds that “These four projects get at the essence of the question behind this year’s grant round: how can architecture promote livable settlements in the face of environmental stress, global poverty, and social turbulence? By supporting and disseminating research from all four hemispheres, we look forward to promoting global dialogue on these themes.”
Projects previously supported by the research program include investigations by Joe Hagerman into the relationship between green roof design and building envelope performance, and by Michael Silver into the technology transfer of composite fiber structures into architecture.
