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Winning Proposals

(May 7, 2008) The University of California, Berkeley - The winners of the Fifth Annual BERKELEY PRIZE Travel Fellowship Competition are announced today by Professor Raymond Lifchez, Chair of the Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence.  This is a special opportunity for the students to explore a part of the world and/or participate in an organized project that will assist them in gaining a deeper understanding of the social art of architecture.  In celebration of the BERKELEY PRIZE's tenth anniversary, the BERKELEY PRIZE Committee is this year awarding two Travel Fellowships.    

The first 2008 BERKELEY PRIZE Travel Fellowship is awarded to: 

Ian Duncan Mactavish, Columbia University, USA; Open Public Urban Spaces 2008 Annual Conference, Stavanger, Norway

Read Travel Fellowship Proposal »

"I was born and raised in Philadelphia city proper, living first in Roxborough and then Germantown.  I attended Germantown Friends School, and the city was very much part of my education and daily life.  From a young age, I enjoyed exploring new sections of the city with my crew of friends, as adventures and interesting characters are not hard to come by in the City of Brotherly Love.  With Philadelphia’s wealth of architectural gems, long history of city-building, and very visible urban conditions (both good and bad), these explorations continued and my friends and I began to think more critically about how the built environment had a very real impact on the lives of very real people.

Moving to New York after High School to attend Columbia University has allowed me to explore a more global city that although similar to Philadelphia in many ways, has a much more intensified set of urban systems and conditions.  During the summer months however, I always returned to Philadelphia to manage my company Philly Boat Services, to go to the beach on weekends, and to attend Phillies Games.  I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the second semester of my Junior year, and was thrilled to be able to travel South America, hone my Spanish skills, and indulge my love of red meat and fútbol.

After graduation and my trip to Norway and the Netherlands, I will move to Philadelphia to begin work with an architecture firm, and to try and become part of the major redevelopment that is currently being planned for the Delaware River waterfront– the topic of my recently completed Senior Thesis."

The second 2008 BERKELEY PRIZE Travel Fellowship is awarded to:

Nicole Graycar, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; Habitat for Humanity Global Village Program, Lesotho

Read Travel Fellowship Proposal »

"I have one more semester at Carnegie Mellon University, but my interest in architecture hardly started here.  I completed the International Baccalaureate at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales.  That was the first time I began to truly understand the disparities in living conditions across the globe, as I learned from my classmates that came from over eighty different nations.   I began architecture school at Tulane University in New Orleans and fell in love with a city like no other.  Unfortunately, I never got to start my second year there because of Hurricane Katrina.  After both of these experiences, I feel deeply that architecture can be so much more than glossy pictures in periodicals.  We are sometimes taught to believe that architecture should only garner praise when it is monumental and innovative.  However for me, I have never seen so beautiful a building as the one that allows a displaced family to return home."