Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship

Van Alen Institute's Resident Fellowships support the production of projects in public architecture. Projects can range across media, temporalities, dimensions, geographies and scales. Projects must be publicly accessible, and they can take the form of demonstrations, installations, performances, symposia, workshops, or other experimental formats.

Fellowships specifically 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.

Up to five resident fellowships for periods of three months each in the fall, spring or summer will be awarded in 2008-2009. 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, work and gallery space at the Institute, publication in Public Practice and a range of project production, research and programming resources. The Institute also awards a stipend to fellows ($1500 to New York City residents; $6500 to non-residents) and may at its discretion contribute toward non-residents’ travel costs at the beginning and end of the fellowship term.

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. These fellowships have additional eligibility and application requirements, and candidates are advised to read the application guidelines carefully. For 2008-2009, the Institute offers the following opportunity:

The New York Prize Fellowship in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences is organized by Van Alen Institute as part of the Sustainable Cities Initiative in partnership with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization devoted to improving the quality of social science research and bringing necessary knowledge to public issues.

Social scientists have for some time been drawn to discussions of urban space. From the disciplines of geography and urban planning, but also anthropology, sociology, history and political science, the work of social scientists is increasingly attuned to the strong interconnections between the social and physical landscapes that make up cities. Yet with few exceptions, social scientists have not been systematically brought into dialogue with architects about the design and development of the built environment and its relations to social, political, economic, and cultural institutions and processes.

The Sustainable Cities Initiative is an effort to enable exchange and collaboration between the social sciences and architecture around critical issues of sustainability that are facing contemporary cities – issues which are at once social and spatial and require a new level of cross-disciplinary investment. The VAI-SSRC partnership specifically focuses on the public realm and the multiple public spaces, operations, and relations that define it. A viable public realm is central to the sustainability of any city, and the partnership aims to bring the theories and methodologies of social sciences and architecture to bear on one another in this context -- so that social science research may inform contemporary approaches to the design of environmentally-responsive urban infrastructure for example, or so that new work and ideas in adaptive design may expand social science discourses on urban development.

The New York Prize Fellowship in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences broadens the scope of traditional academic research, publishing, and conferences to innovative public programming that actively engages contemporary urban public life and the built environment. For the 2008-2009 fellowship, the Institute and the SSRC solicit proposals for New York-based public projects on the topic of sustainable cities. Projects may be defined by any number of formats - such as workshops, roundtables, installations, and symposia - and the Institute and the SSRC seek proposals with a strong curatorial impulse that function to convene social scientists and spatial practitioners in architecture, design, and related disciplines for debate and dialogue. The proposed project must at least in part involve a general public, and it must inhabit some aspect of the public realm of New York City as site and subject of inquiry. Project thematics may be framed generally to bridge social science discourses on environmental sustainability with those of architecture, or focused on specific topics or issues, such as urban infrastructure, governance, greenwashing, cultural identity, or environmental justice. Candidates are encouraged to interpret the fellowship topic broadly and imaginatively, and to think beyond the terms of contemporary discourses of sustainability toward those of regeneration.

The VAI-SSRC fellowship tenure spans the length of the 2008-2009 academic year, during which time fellows pursue advanced independent research and work with the Institute and the SSRC in the planning and production of their proposed project. At some time during the year, in the fall, spring or summer term, fellows take a three-month residency at Van Alen Institute. The residency period provides fellows the opportunity to pursue their work in a multidisciplinary workshop environment amidst architects and other spatial practitioners, to fully immerse themselves in New York City as both a resource and a research laboratory, and to actively participate in the Institute’s activities and programs.

The New York Prize Fellowship in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences is not intended to function as an academic sabbatical or a retreat, but rather a platform for public engagement. The fellowship award includes project support up to $10,000, work and gallery space at the Institute, publication in Public Practic, and a range of project production, research and programming resources. The Institute also provides a stipend to fellows for the residency period ($1500 to New York City residents; $6500 to non-residents) and may at its discretion contribute toward non-residents travel costs to and from New York City at the beginning and end of this term.