Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has just announced Thandi Loewenson as the winner of the 2024 Wheelwright Prize. The prestigious $100,000 grant is dedicated to supporting innovative research in contemporary architecture with a global perspective. Loewenson’s project, “Black Papers: Beyond the Politics of Land, Towards African Policies of Earth & Air,” explores the social and spatial dynamics in modern Africa.
Unlike traditional analyses of land in African liberation movements and postcolonial governance, Loewenson introduces a framework titled “The Entanglement of Earth and Air.” Expanding the concept of land to include overlapping terrains, from rare metals within Earth to the digital cloud in Earth’s ionosphere. The project also investigates how colonial capitalist systems of radicalization, dispossession, and exploitation persist across these intertwined realms. The Wheelwright Prize will fund her study to utilize aerial surveying techniques and “mine technology metals” to create a comprehensive network that underpins a global system of digital dispossession.
Presented in the form of “Black Papers,” the study aims to influence policy discourse and public perception through drawings, films, performances, and critical creative writing. “Redefining architectural research,” Thandi’s project will focus on seven African nations: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Moreover, her work “connects scholarly research with material practice, extending its impact through creative policy proposals.”
Born in Harare, the Wheelwright Prize laureate is an architectural designer and researcher who utilizes design, fiction, and performance to encourage emancipatory political thought and collective action. She holds a PhD in Architectural Design from The Bartlett, UCL, and was selected from a competitive pool of international applicants, with the jury also commending finalists Meriem Chabani, Nathan Friedman, and Ryan Roark for their research proposals. Additionally, her installation, “The Uhuru Catalogues,” was featured in the 2023 Venice Biennale, which was focused on Africa as a Laboratory, also reflecting this innovative approach.
Architectural awards and prizes recognize and celebrate design excellence, fostering innovation across the discipline. In other similar news, the Tokyo International Forum, designed by Rafael Vińoly Architects, has just been honored with the prestigious AIA Twenty-five Year Award. Additionally, the European Collective Housing Award has recently selected the winners for the 2024 cycle. Similarly, New York-based architecture office WEISS/MANFREDI has recently named the 37th recipient of the Louis. l. Khan Award.
