The Graham Foundation, the venerable architecture non-profit celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, just announced its annual list of grant winners. While the Chicago based organization has a headquarters that screams upper crust—a historic mansion in the city’s ritzy Gold Coast neighborhood—the projects and programs it will support this year cover numerous intersections between design and society.
The organization will award $419,000 to a total of 31 different applicants, all planning to pursue research, art, or public programs focused on the impact of architecture and the built environment. Drawn from a pool of over 230 submissions from 24 countries, the list of grantees offers a fascinating look at some of the more esoteric corners of the built environment, as well as a peek at some of the more exciting exhibits and publications to look for in the coming year.
Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive
Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York)
The Museum of Modern Art’s major exhibition, which openss next June, critically engages the recently acquired Wright archive, offering new interpretations of this rich trove to the public, 150 years after the birth of the seminal modern American architect.
Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design
The Jewish Museum ( New York, New York)
Opening November 4th, the first US retrospective of French modernist Pierre Chareau—known for ingeniously integrating traditional craftsmanship with Machine Age–advances—showcases his creative contributions as an architect, artist, and furniture designer, within the context of his extraordinary life and Jewish cultural background.
Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect
The Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, New York)
This project examines the artist’s groundbreaking impact on rethinking architecture after the fall of modernism’s urban utopia and demonstrates, through a distinctive exhibition and accompanying publication, the unique role of the Bronx in both his artistic development and sociopolitical engagement
Secret Cities: The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project
National Building Museum (Washington, D.C.)
This exhibition examines the innovative architecture, construction, and planning of three cities built from scratch by the US government during World War II—Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford/Richland, Washington—in order to produce the first atomic bomb.
Rifat Chadirji: Architecture Photo Index
(Arab Image Foundation: Beirut, Lebanon)
A comprehensive publication of Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji’s photographic folio that records and analyzes the development of his building practice in and around Baghdad from 1952 through the early 1980s.