by: Morgan Watson
The Center for Architecture and AIANY are pleased to announce the winner of the 2015 Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant. The Scholarship Committee selected Jiuen Yang, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, and her research project “Unknown Territories: Imagining Post-Ruin Siberia and Rust Belt.” The purpose of the LeBrun Grant is to further the personal and professional development of an early- or mid-career architect through travel.
Yang’s research will observe, document, and address the aftermath of the rise and fall of the global economy, while considering the urban life, infrastructure, and revitalization of post-industrial cities in Siberia and in the Rust Belt of the United States.
For four to six weeks, Yang will travel along the longest railroad in the world for a trans-Siberian journey of almost 6,000 miles, stopping at key post-industrial and rapidly developing cities along the way. Her intention is to document post-industrial, post-Soviet socialist cities and new developments in the creative economy and energy industry. Yang will also spend three to four weeks developing a parallel study in the Rust Belt cities of Detroit, Pittsburg, Youngstown, OH, and Buffalo, NY. The project will draw similarities between Detroit’s prosperous past to that of the Siberian cities, noting efforts for revival through “creative economy, community participation, and planning for revitalization and smart shrinkage.”
Yang holds a B.A. in Architecture from Yale University and an M. Arch from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2008, she won Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill’s SOM Prize in Architecture, Design, and Urban Design. Her research and travel documented various forms of suburbia and their intrinsic relationship to larger urban and global networks under the title of Ghost Town, the next slum. Previously, she was a senior architect and transportation planner at SOM, where she worked on the design for the Amtrak train hall for the proposed Moynihan Station in New York, and the construction administration of the Chaptrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, India. More recently, Yang was a senior project architect at 1100 Architect. She is currently a principal of NYC-based Habitat Workshop.
In partnership with AIANY, the Center for Architecture administers three scholarships and three grant awards to provide opportunities for incoming and current architecture students, and mid-career architecture and design professionals. We are currently accepting applications for the Arnold W. Brunner Grant – deadline Monday, 02.01.16. For further information, click here.