Deborah J. Norden Fund
Travel/Study Grants
Call for Applications

Application Deadline
April 16, 2012

About the Norden Fund
The Deborah J. Norden Fund, established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden, awards a total of up to $5,000 annually in travel/study grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies. For a list of past winners, click here.

The Deborah J. Norden Fund is administered by the Architectural League of New York.

How to Apply
Applicants must submit a proposal (maximum three pages), which succinctly describes the objectives of the grant request and how it will contribute to the applicant’s intellectual and creative development. The grant amount requested (up to $5,000) must be specified. The submission should also include a résumé of not more than two pages and a projected project schedule and budget for travel and other costs. An addendum of not more than four pages may include images, maps, or other supporting material.  Two letters of recommendation must be requested from individuals who are knowledgeable about the applicant’s ability and project.

Eligibility
The fund may award one or more grants. Applicants must reside in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. The application process is extremely competitive. The intention of the fund is to support genuinely independent projects that require travel. Grant funds cannot be used for tuition, and grants will not be awarded to support an individual’s participation in an organized program, such as a university’s summer abroad program. While requests for support of dissertation research will be considered, they are not a priority of the fund. Preference will be given to strong proposals from applicants who have not had this sort of opportunity before.

Submission Requirements
Applicants must submit their proposal, résumé, schedule and budget, and optional addendum, digitally as letter-size PDFs. The applicant’s name and project title must appear on the first page of the proposal. PDFs should be emailed to Gabriel Silberblatt, at silberblatt@archleague.org by midnight April 16, 2012. Faxed or mailed applications will not be accepted. Late applications will not be accepted. The two letters of recommendation should be sent by the recommenders directly to the Architectural League by mail or email PDF; letters of recommendation must be received or postmarked by April 16, 2012.

Letters of recommendation should be sent to:

Deborah J. Norden Fund
The Architectural League
of New York
594 Broadway, Suite 607
New York, NY 10012.

PDF recommendations should be emailed to: silberblatt@archleague.org.

Announcement
Awards will be announced in early June 2012.

Publication
Travel Reports from the Deborah J. Norden Fund, a publication documenting the first ten years of Norden Fund grants, was published in January 2007. For more information, click here.

For more information
Email silberblatt@archleague.org or call 212.753.1722 x10.

Image courtesy of Remy Bertin

Jeff Geisinger, a graduate of Rice University and currently a designer at Ennead Architects in New York, will travel to Medellin, Colombia, to research his project, “Connective Spaces and Social Capital in Medellin.” The project, examining the well-publicized design transformation of the once troubled city of Medellin and Mayor Sergio Fajardo’s “social urbanism” of investment in poor neighborhoods and public works, will look specifically at the ways in which impoverished, informal settlements were empowered and reconnected to the city’s urban fabric and public spaces. “The study explores those spaces that, through physical connectivity and careful adjacencies, foster social contact and interaction, in turn promoting socially cohesive communities.”

Shima Baradaran Mohajeri received her MArch and MPhil of Architecture from Islamic Azad University, Tehran and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University in College Station. Her project “Alternative Modernity: Spatial Discourse in Architectural Paper Projects in Iran, 1960-1978″ will allow her to travel to archives in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Her research will focus on the two decades leading up to the Revolution of 1979, when, commissioned by the Shah of Iran, foreign modernist architects, such as Louis Kahn, Alvar Aalto, Josep Lluis Sert, Moshe Safdie, James Stirling, and Alison and Peter Smithson, came into close contact with traditional Persian culture, designing a number of architectural and urban paper projects. These architectural drawings along with competitions and conferences during the period reveal a “modernizing event that initiated, but remained incomplete and partially dismissed, due to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.” Her work will examine these paper projects and consider them through the development of the theory of “a-place,” drawing upon Persian and Western philosophical and artistic concepts, and the design methodologies resultant from such theoretical explorations.

Recipients of grants from the Deborah J. Norden Fund

2011
Melanie Kaba
Anticipating, Negotiating, Conditioning: Tidal [Infra]Structures of Patagonia

2010
Jeff Geisinger
Connective Spaces and Social Capital in Medellin

Shima Baradaran Mohajeri
Alternative Modernity: Spatial Discourse in Architectural Paper Projects in Iran, 1960-1978

2009
Hubert Pelletier
The Stereotomy of Complex Surfaces in French Baroque Architecture

2008
Remy Bertin
Contextual Modernism for the New Khmer

Angela Starita
Lina Bo Bardi’s Restoration Plans for Salvador, Brazil

2007
Yutaka Sho
Tillers of the Horizon: Projecting Public Spaces by Women in Post-conflict Rwanda

Fiyel Levent
Re Reading Ornament: Textures in Islamic Spain

2006
Thomas Ryan
Horizontal Light: Lewerentz, Aalto and the Nordic Landscape

Tao Zhu
The Suburbanization and Land-Settlement Crisis in China, 1995-2005

2005
Joseph Dahmen
Rammed Earth: Contemporary and Traditional in Austria, Germany and France

Elijah Huge
Stationed Overseas: Global Systems, Local Lands

2004
Ruth Gyuse
The Kainji Dam Resettlement Project: The Politics of Vernacularization in Nigeria

Jennifer Magee
Interfacing Architecture in the Fragile Ecosystems of Australia

2003
Sadia Shirazi
Veiled Spaces: A Study of How Bedouin Women Use Public and Private Spaces in Cairo

2002
Ameet Hiremath
Information Technology Campuses:
Examining Neighborhood and Regional City Form in South India

Naoki Seshimo
Light and Proportion of Cistercian Monasteries

2001
Abigail Ransmeier
Rethinking Dharavi: An Analysis of Redevelopment Programs for Slums in Mumbai, India

2000
Ronald Rael
Wadi Hadramut: cities of earth

1999
Felecia Davis
Manhattan to Cidade Velha

Michael Sheridan
Constructed Landscapes

1998
Josef Asteinza
The National Center for the Arts and the Architecture of the Cuban Revolution

Diana Nicklaus
Learning in Stages: The Theaters of Berlin, Amsterdam, and London

1997
Philip J. Ryan
Contemporary Minimalist Architecture in Europe

1996
Karim Hammad
Forms for Permanent Housing for Palestinian Refugees

Medina-Diana Lasansky
The Partita a Scacchi festival in Marostica, Italy

1995
Timothy Kohut
Relationship of Architecture and Community-Building in Tegulcigalpa, Honduras

Amar Sen and Ehrmei Yuan
The Path to the Center in Tibetan Architecture