Announcing the Re:Paris Prize

August 19, 2026 — Brooklyn and Nairobi — Van Alen Institute is pleased to announce the relaunch of its long-running Paris Prize as the Re:Paris Prize, with a new focus on reparative and regenerative urbanism across the global post-colonial landscape. For the inaugural Re:Paris Prize in 2026, Van Alen is partnering with the Pan-African Biennale, the first continental biennale dedicated to architecture and the built environment.

From 1904 to 1997, Van Alen Institute (formerly called the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects and the National Institute for Architectural Education) organized the Paris Prize, an annual design competition. Participants responded to specific prompts covering urban planning, entertainment, schools, and civic spaces. During the competition’s early years, winners were awarded a year of study in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. Many Paris Prize winners went on to create architectural icons of the U.S. — including Max Abramovitz, architect of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center; Richard H. Granelli, part of the Smithsonian Institution design team; and Van Alen Institute’s namesake, William Van Alen, the Brooklyn-born architect of the Chrysler Building.

Inverting the “Grand Tour” tradition, the Re:Paris Prize shifts focus away from Paris in favor of cities and communities across the globe once held to the periphery of architectural and urbanist discourse. The inaugural prize focuses on the African continent, with Van Alen partnering with the Pan African Biennale to navigate this vast geography. The Biennale’s founding curator, architect Omar Degan, will be instrumental in shaping the Re:Paris Prize, helping articulate its themes, supporting the selection and mentoring of awardees, and amplifying the Prize’s potential impact on the future of designing cities.

The award will go to three designers, who will each receive a $35,000 travel fellowship to research transformative design proposals. Two Africa-based winners will be selected from exhibiting designers at the 2026 Pan-African Biennale, and a third U.S.-based winner will be chosen through an open call, to be announced in Fall 2026.

Winners will be selected by jury. Jury members are: Nora Akawi, Assistant Professor, The Cooper Union; Ifeoma Ebo, Founding Principal, Creative Urban Alchemy; Mark Gardner, Principal, Jaklitch / Gardner Architects; Kabage Karanja, Co-Founder, Cave_bureau; and Mphethi Morojele, Managing Director, MMA Design Studio.

As part of the fellowship, winners will conduct impactful field research, evolve their work to the next phase of development, and meaningfully engage communities navigating histories of displacement and exclusion in a spirit of cross-cultural collaboration and exchange. Following their field research, they will collaborate to present their learnings at Van Alen Institute in Fall 2027 and the second Pan-African Biennale in 2028.

“As Van Alen reflects on its 132-year legacy, we must hold our own archival history accountable. For over a century, the original Paris Prize defined architectural merit from a singularly Western perspective. With the Re:Paris Prize, we are flipping that narrative on its head by celebrating design research and innovation created in regions long relegated to the margins, amplifying reparative approaches that redefine how we shape our built environment,” said Hayley Eber, Executive Director, Van Alen Institute.

“The Pan-African Biennale does not seek to correct exclusion from within existing frameworks. It establishes a new one — one in which Africa is the author of its own spatial knowledge, its own architectural discourse, its own futures. The Re:Paris Prize belongs to that project. For a century, recognition required a journey to Paris. This one funds the opposite journey — into African cities, to research what is already being built there,” said Omar Degan, Founder and Director, Pan-African Biennale.

September 10, 2026 | Two Africa-based winners announced at the Pan-African Biennale

December 2026 | United States-based winner announced

Fall 2027 | Public presentation of field research at Van Alen Institute

Visit vanalen.org for more information.

Van Alen Institute is a driving force behind community-led urban design, which believes that local knowledge and care enrich the design process. Since 1894, Van Alen has invested in people with a passion for improving cities through the power of architecture and design. Our public space projects build unconventional coalitions of designers, local stakeholders, and city leaders, and we support their visions through project scoping, hands-on guidance, and seed funding. From our home in New York City, our work confronts longstanding power imbalances in citymaking, showcases the vanguard of community-led design, and supports the next generation of designers in creating more just cities.

See all work at vanalen.org.

The Pan-African Biennale (September 7–11, 2026, Nairobi) is the first continental institution dedicated to architecture, urbanism, and spatial practice on the African continent. Conceived, built, and led from within Africa, it marks a decisive moment in the history of global architectural discourse, the moment Africa asserts its own institutional voice, on its own terms, from its own ground. The Biennale convenes practitioners, thinkers, researchers, and communities from all 54 African nations under a single curatorial framework, renewed with each edition. Each edition is hosted in a different African city, ensuring that the institutional center of this discourse moves continuously across the continent.

Learn more at panafricanbiennale.org.