Van Alen Institute's Resident Fellowships support advanced research and practices that focus on the public realm and the multiple public spaces, operations, and relations that define it. All prospective candidates for the Institute's Resident Fellowships must apply to one of five Project Areas - Land Use and Development, Forms and Materials, Information and Communication, Systems and Ecology, or Culture and Politics. Candidates are encouraged to use the Institute's project areas as platforms for challenging and expanding the very definition of public space. The Institute seeks projects that provoke new ways of thinking about and making public architecture, that critically interrogate how and for whom spaces operate as public, and that imaginatively engage public audiences. Projects can range across media, temporalities, dimensions, geographies and scales in the form of demonstrations, installations, performances, symposia, workshops, or other experimental formats.

Resident Fellowships are awarded for periods of three months each in the fall, spring or summer. Residencies provide fellows the opportunity to pursue their work in a multidisciplinary workshop environment, to fully immerse themselves in New York City as both a resource and a research laboratory, and to actively participate in the Institute's programs and workshops. Fellowships include project support in the range of $2,500 to $10,000, stipend ($1500 to New York City residents; $6500 to non-residents), work and gallery space at the Institute, publication in Projects in Public Architecture, and a range of project production, research and programming resources. The Institute also contributes toward non-residents' travel costs at the beginning and end of the fellowship term, and offers international fellows the opportunity for J-1 visa sponsorship for the duration of their fellowship residency in the United States.

Van Alen Institute annually partners with nonprofit and community groups, public agencies, professional and academic organizations, and other institutions to award residential fellowships with a specific topical focus within one of the five project areas. Partnered fellows receive the same award as the Institute's resident fellows (project support, stipend, workspace, publication, resources, travel allowance, J-1 visa sponsorship), and they benefit from the additional guidance and resources of the partner organization in the development and production of their work. These fellowships may have additional eligibility and application requirements, and candidates are advised to read the application guidelines carefully.

For 2009-2010, the Institute has partnered with the Social Science Research Council to support a fellowship in Information & Communication. Please review these project areas for more information.

This project area refers broadly to the ways public space is created and sustained in the planning and development of built landscapes and in the ordering and regulation of their use. The Institute seeks a range of investigations that engage the following questions:

What are the conditions, limits, and possibilities of public space within existing models of land use and development? How do such models support the physical and social networks and relationships that make up public life? How might such models be challenged and transformed to enable new forms of public life?

Topics within this project area may include sprawl, mega-cities, rapid urbanization, decentralization, smart growth, community planning, resource management, municipal infrastructure, post-industrialism, adaptive reuse, new urbanism, uneven development, zoning, gentrification and exurbanization.

This project area refers broadly to the physical form, composition, structure and materials of architecture and landscape in the public realm. The Institute seeks a range of investigations that engage the following questions:

What are the effects of forms and materials on the way that people behave, assemble and participate in and as publics? What material conditions, processes and forces shape the design of public space? How are forms and materials used as instruments of power, persuasion, innovation and change in public culture?

Topics within this project area may include tectonics, ornament, typology, signification, morphology, techné, sensory perception, aesthetics, phenomenology, fabrication technologies, construction methods, smart materials, parametric modeling, massing and earthworks.

This project area refers broadly to the production and circulation of information in the public realm. For the 2009-2010 fellowship in Information & Communications, Van Alen Institute has partnered with the Social Science Research Council to solicit proposals for projects that focus on the spatial conditions and implications of contemporary intellectual property (IP) regimes, in recognition of their role in reorganizing basic social understandings of public and private, licit and illicit, freedom and constraint.

Although by definition, IP refers to intangible objects, ideas, expressive forms, marks of identity, governance of the tangible and intangible are increasingly intertwined. The Institute and the SSRC invite proposals to generate new knowledge about those boundaries and interconnections, especially as they affect the organization of public space and public life. The solicitation covers a wide range of possible inquiries, from the saturation of public space by copyrighted images; to the spatial and social organization of counterfeiting and piracy; to the function of libraries, newsstands and older models of circulation of knowledge and information goods; to the redesign of public spaces, institutions, and services in function of privatized information flows.

VAI-SSRC Fellows will pursue projects in a multidisciplinary workshop environment amidst architects and other spatial practitioners, and actively participate in the Institute's activities and programs. They will also be part of the SSRC community and Public Sphere program, and will be encouraged to draw on and contribute to that collective project.

This project area refers broadly to physical landscapes as dynamic systems of interrelating organisms. The Institute seeks a range of investigations that engage the following questions:

How are built landscapes conceived and created to adapt to open-ended, indeterminate and changing environmental conditions over time? How do the forms and meanings of places emerge from the interactions these places sustain? How are public life and public space important to healthy ecosystems? In what ways can publics themselves be understood as eco-systems that are more than the sum of their individual parts? How do we responsibly and intelligently construct public spaces that maintain ecological health while enhancing the needs of present and future forms of public life?

Topics in this project area may include energy efficiency, land conversion, landscape restoration, brownfield reclamation, watershed management, green roof technologies, whole building design, biodiversity, environmental justice, population dynamics, systems theory, self-organization, responsive environments, feedback and open systems.

Work Space
Fellows are provided dedicated work space at Van Alen Institute, located in Manhattan's Flatiron District on West 22nd Street between 5th & 6th Avenues. The Institute's sixth floor was redesigned in 1999 by award-winning architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis to include an innovative open program of offices and galleries. Fellows occupy a flexible work area of roughly 600 square feet that is adjacent to the Institute's main gallery and staff offices. They receive individual desks with storage, media station, and access to the Institute's other facilities and resources during their stay at the Institute.

Gallery Space
Van Alen Institute's public gallery is primarily dedicated to fellowship projects. Fellows have continuous access to the 2000+ square foot gallery for the public presentation of their projects, and during the fellowship term, they may choose to hold meetings, roundtables, or other activities that benefit their work.

Project Planning and Management
From the receipt of the fellowship award and throughout the duration of the fellowship term, the Institute's staff assists fellows with all facets of project planning and management, including concept development, budgeting and scheduling. Fellows share the Institute's facilities and resources with Institute staff, and staff provide assistance to fellows for basic administrative and technical needs.

Marketing and Publicity
Van Alen Institute publicizes fellows' work and projects through its highly trafficked website, extensive network of press contacts and relationships with other organizations and institutions in New York City and beyond, and widely disseminated digital and printed announcements.

Fabrication
Fellows whose projects are judged to significantly benefit from the use of digital fabrication facilities may have the opportunity to use the Avery Digital Fabrication Lab at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. The lab's facilities include a range of machines: CNC routers for woods and plastics, foams, and sheet metals; abrasive waterjet; casting material (including vacuum chamber, hot-pot, scales); linear thermoplastic bender; sheet metal former; and spot-welder. Once chosen for a resident fellowship, Van Alen Institute in collaboration with Columbia University will review and select projects for access to the lab based on space and availability.

Fiscal Sponsorship
During their fellowship term, fellows have the ability to solicit and receive grants and other tax-deductible contributions that are available only to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. The institutional affiliation and organizational sponsorship provided by Van Alen Institute substantially strengthens fellows' efforts to secure support for their work from a broader spectrum of funders.

Libraries, Museums and Other Institutions
The Institute maintains relationships with libraries, museums and other organizations in New York City and surrounding regions, and can arrange for fellows' access to special collections and archives for their research and projects.

VAI Design Archive
Van Alen Institute retains an extensive archive of materials documenting over a century of fellowships, public design competitions, and related programs and events. The Institute is currently in the process of developing an online platform which will provide free public access to these materials, and will eventually serve as an infrastructure for indexing and documenting the future work of the Institute, including fellows' research and projects.

Kadambari Baxi is an architect and a media designer, a partner with Martin/Baxi Architects and a principal of the multimedia design firm imageMachine. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at Disonancias 07 in Spain, and at Artists Space and Henry Urbach Architecture in New York. She is a co-author with Reinhold Martin of Entropia (Black Dog Publishing, 2001) and Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries (Actar, 2007). Baxi is also an associate professor of professional practice at Barnard and Columbia Undergraduate Department of Architecture. She serves on the boards of Van Alen Institute and the Architectural League of New York.

Ann Hamilton was born in Lima, Ohio. She earned a B.F.A. in textile design at the University of Kansas, and an M.F.A. in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. Since 1981, Hamilton has participated in over 60 solo and group exhibitions, and she has created installations and commissioned public projects across North America and Europe. Among her many honors, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1993, and she served as the American representative at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Her work is published widely and is represented in numerous public collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Carnegie Museum and the National Gallery of Australia. After teaching at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1985 to 1991, she returned to Ohio where she lives and works.

Thomas Keenan teaches human rights, media, and literature at Bard College. He has written Fables of Responsibility (Stanford University Press, 1997), edited New Media, Old Media (with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Routledge, 2005), and should be finishing a book on war, crisis, and media.

Enrique Norten is the founder and principal of TEN Arquitectos [Taller de Enrique Norten Arquitectos]. Born and raised in Mexico City, he earned his first professional degree of architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and his Masters of Architecture from Cornell University. He has lectured all over the world and has participated in several international juries and award committees including the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition in New York City and the Holcim Foundation Awards for Sustainable Construction. Norten was the first Mies van der Rohe Award recipient for Latin American Architecture in 1998. He received the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts in 2005 and the 2007 Legacy Award by the Smithsonian Institution. He was recently appointed a member of Deutsche Bank's Board of Trustees. Norten currently holds the Miller Chair at the University of Pennsylvania and has positions at numerous other institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, Harvard School of Design, Universidad Iberoamericana, Sci-Arc, and Yale School of Architecture.

Joan Ockman is the Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she has taught history, theory, and design of architecture since 1985. This year she also held guest teaching appointments at the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, where she taught a master class as part of the Rotterdam Biennale; and the State University of New York, Buffalo, where she was Clarkson Visiting Chair. Among the many publications she has edited, her award-winning book Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology, originally published in 1993, is in its fourth edition. Her most recent publication is Architourism: Authentic, Exotic, Escapist, Spectacular, which appeared in 2005. In 2003 she was honored by the American Institute of Architects for distinguished achievement. She holds a professional degree in architecture from the Cooper Union School of Architecture and formerly worked in the architectural offices of Richard Meier and Peter Eisenman.

Chris Reed is principal of StossLU, a Boston-based firm specializing in strategic design and planning projects on public waterfronts, brownfields, contaminated properties, and large-scale open spaces. The firm's work has been published widely, and has won national and international recognition for landscape and urbanism projects rooted in infrastructure, functionality and ecology. Reed's writings have appeared in 306090 09: Regarding Public Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), LandForum 12 (2002), and The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and has held numerous teaching positions elsewhere, including the Harvard Design School, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Toronto. He holds a BA in Urban Studies from Harvard College and an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Deyan Sudjic is the Director of the Design Museum of London. Born in London in 1952 of Yugoslavian parents, he originally trained as an architect at Edinburgh University. Most recently the architecture critic of the Observer, Sudjic also founded Blueprint in 1983, and served as editor of Domus between 2000 and 2004. He is the author of several books, including Architecture and Democracy (2001), The 100 Mile City (1993), The Architecture Pack (1996), and Cult Objects: The Complete Guide to Having It All (1985). As Director of the Glasgow 1999 UK City of Architecture and Design programme, he established the Lighthouse, Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City, and in 2002, he served as the Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Sudjic is Co-Chair of the Urban Age Advisory Board, an initiative jointly run by the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics and the Alfred Herrhausen Foundation for International Dialogue that aims to establish an ongoing dialogue between academics and urban practitioners.