The Architectural League of New York invites you to an information session on the Deborah J. Norden Fund, an annual program of the League that supports independent travel and research for students and recent graduates in architecture, architectural history, and urban studies. Past grantee Priyanka Shah will discuss her project, followed by a Q&A about the grant process with League staff.

Priyanka Shah graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a dual master’s degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. She is a designer at Grimshaw Architects.

Shah’s project “Deep Skins: Roger Anger’s Facade Operations” aims to deconstruct the rich facades of residential buildings designed in the 1960s by Paris-based architect Roger Anger. According to Shah, the geometrical intricacy of these facades is a direct antecedent to contemporary computational design.

Anger sought to produce spatial depth in his facades as a reaction to what he considered the loss of human scale brought by the emergence of the curtain wall system. Through a macroscopic baroque technique, Anger created three-dimensional motifs at the scale of balconies, rooms, or apartments, animating the facade of his high-rise buildings.

After visiting over 15 buildings designed by Anger and his practice in Paris and Grenoble, Shah visited the architect’s private archives in Nice. She is currently working on digitizing Anger’s architectural projects to parametrically test the operations driving his facade designs. Shah envisions the project culminating in an interactive digital monograph.

The Deborah J. Norden Fund was established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden. The prize awards up to $5,000 annually in travel and study grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies.

The application deadline is Sunday, April 22, 2018, 11:59 P.M. EDT.