by Center for Architecture
The Center for Architecture, in partnership with AIA New York, is proud to announce the 2021 recipients of the Arnold W. Brunner Grant for Architectural Research.
The Arnold W. Brunner Grant is awarded to mid-career architects for advanced study in any area of architectural investigation that will contribute to the knowledge, teaching, or practice of the art and science of architecture. Our joint Scholarship Committee assesses projects based on their engagement with contemporary local and global architectural issues and the usefulness of the research’s end product. Congratulations to our 2021 recipients!
2021 Recipients
Rachel Dickey, Architectural Acoustic Solutions for the Everyday, $15,000
Gypsum is one of the most commonly used architectural materials and prevalent in architectural acoustics. However, the reliance on added layers of gypsum wallboard for noise control has generally been viewed solely as a material solution to an acoustical problem instead of as a design opportunity to enhance the visual and auditory qualities of a space. Rachel Dickey’s project proposes to address this issue by developing a catalogue of acoustical designs and fabrication strategies for unique wallboard surface finishes that can be incorporated into typical methods of construction.
Dickey is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte and founder of Studio Dickey, a public art and design practice.
Ivi Diamantopoulou, Jaffer Kolb, and Samuel Stewart-Halevy, Testbeds: Mockups for Public Space, $15,000
Testbeds: Mockups for Public Space aims to reuse architectural mockups as public works in community gardens throughout New York City, beginning with a pilot program developed with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Mockups are full scale, fragmentary models constructed to test performance and visual qualities before building projects officially break ground. Used mockups are typically discarded or left to deteriorate in “mockup graveyards” at architectural testing sites and façade manufacturers. This project proposes that mockups be repurposed as greenhouses, casitas, toolsheds, cold frames, and shade canopies in order to mitigate their carbon footprint. The Edgemere Coalition Garden in Queens will serve as the site of the Testbeds pilot project.
The Testbeds team is made up of Ivi Diamantopolou, co-founder of New Affiliates and Visiting Assistant Professor at Syracuse University; Jaffer Kolb, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP and co-founder of New Affiliates; and Samuel Stewart-Halevy, designer and doctoral candidate in architectural history at Columbia University.
Rosalyne Shieh, AIA, NCARB, Listening So We Might See: Architecture and Oral History in Taiwan, $15,000
The architectural traditions of places and people oft-excluded from the architectural canon taught in American and European architecture programs offer a variety of innovative design solutions and lessons. Rosalyne Shieh’s Listening So We Might See addresses this urgent need for architects to decolonize their practices by proposing an oral history of Taiwan—a state in East Asia with a layered colonial history, observable in its architecture and urbanism. Taiwan’s elderly population, who lived through an agrarian past and bore witness to the rise of urbanization and democracy, are an invaluable intellectual resource. Shieh will collect conversational oral histories, alongside mapping, filming, and photographing the built environment to investigate place through memory, migration, and class and revise notions of site and context.
Shieh is an architect and educator. She is the Marion Mahony Emerging Practice Fellow at MIT and is part of a collaborative architecture practice SCHAUM/SHIEH, with offices in Houston and New York City.
Peter Zuspan, AIA, Performance of Shame: The Desegregation Renovations of Downtown Atlanta, $5,000
Performance of Shame investigates the desegregation renovations of public and commercial architecture in downtown Atlanta in the 1960s, leading up to and after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The primary objective of the project will be to understand how architecture intersects with the history of American racism at the scale of the individual building. The project will result in a digital archive of historical documents and a long-form essay, documenting insights from these renovations—their successes and their failures—to understand architecture’s role in contributing to and attempting to overcome our racist past.
Peter Zuspan, AIA, is founding principal of Bureau V Architecture, a design and architecture studio based in Brooklyn. Zuspan is a licensed architect in the states of New York and Georgia. He is also the Secretary of the Board of Directors of National Sawdust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to new music.