All the winners of the Graham Foundation’s annual grants

By Editorial Staff - 22 September 2022

The 36 organizations awarded by the Graham Foundation in 2022 include exhibition organizers, podcasts intended to give a voice to underrepresented professionals, publications that showcase the importance of architecture and design in everyday life and in the growth of new generations, and many more. The foundation, which works to promote dialogue between people in all these sectors, including organizations, teachers, and researchers, recently announced the winners of its organizational grants. This year’s total budget of 338,000 dollars was shared among organizations operating in their own cities, which this year included Accra, Buenos Aires, Colombo, London, New York, St. Louis, Toronto, and Chicago, among others. While the activities of these 36 organizations are even radically different from one other, all of them share the same mission to assist architects, artists, designers, critics, curators, students, and educators to share their vision and expertise with people in every corner of the world.

The award winning projects

Graham Foundation, 2022 Grants to Organizaions Floating Museum, Concept sketch for "Floating Monuments: Mecca Flats," 2022. Courtesy Floating Museum. From the 2022 Graham Foundation grant to Floating Museum for the exhibition Floating Monuments: Mecca Flats

The category with the lion’s share of winning projects was Exhibitions, with 15 winners. They include Counterpublic 2022, presented by the organization of the same name, a civic exhibition that investigates the stories and lives of St. Louis through the work of over 30 artists. Floating Monuments: Mecca Flats, the work of the Floating Museum group, is an inflatable architectural monument that conjures up themes of erasure and disinvestment in areas of Chicago (Floating Museum was recently appointed artistic director of the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennale).

Among the three winners in the Film, Video, and New Media Projects category was the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation with New Angle: Voice, a podcast launched in 2021 to highlight the stories of American women who’ve broken down barriers of gender and education to make careers as architects and engineers, and, in so doing, making a decisive contribution to the creation of American cities and landscapes. The podcast is another way to focus attention on how women have played an important role in the creation, development, and popularization of 20th-century American architecture.

Finally, among the eleven awards in the Publications category is the journal of the African Futures Institute, founded by Lesley Lokko (Lokko was recently appointed curator of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale). This year has seen the release of the third volume of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture, which investigates the impact of the imagery of African youth on architecture and, in particular, how the high presence of young people can impact and dictate the characteristics of a sector. What new tools, structures, and performance criteria are being developed by, and for, young Africans to drive change in the built environment? What geographical alliances and networks are driving young people? What role has social media had in the construction and circulation of African architectural aspirations, and how effective has it been in translation into completed projects? What is the relationship between old and new, between history and tradition? Do innovation and young people go hand in hand? What is the relationship between young people and urbanization? These are some of the questions that FOLIO sets out to answer.

All the winners

Graham Foundation, 2022 Grants to Organizaions Geoffrey Bawa, Yala Sand Dune Scheme, Elevation, 1968. Ink on paper. Drawing by Nihal Amarasinghe (attributed). Courtesy Geoffrey Bawa Trust. From the 2022 Graham Foundation grant to Geoffrey Bawa Trust for the publication Drawing from the Geoffrey Bawa Archives

EXHIBITIONS (15)

a83, Anyone Corporation Art Institute of Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Counterpublic, Disponible, Floating Museum, LIGA-Space for Architecture, MAK Center for Art and Architecture (Los Angeles) at the Schindler House, Museum of Design Atlanta, Queens Museum, Ragdale Foundation, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Wexner Center for the Arts

FILM, VIDEO, AND NEW MEDIA (3)

The Architectural League of New York, Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, Society of Architectural Historians-Race and Architectural History Affiliate Group

PUBLIC PROGRAMS (2)

Association of Architecture Organizations, Mobile Makers Chicago

PUBLICATIONS (11)

African Futures Institute, Bracket California College of the Arts-Architecture Division, Concordia University Press, The Experiment, Faktur, Geoffrey Bawa Trust, Goldsmiths College, London University-Centre for Research Architecture, Manifest Institute of the Americas, MAS Context, New York Review of Architecture

STUDENT-LED PUBLICATIONS (5)

Paprika!, Rice University-School of Architecture, Texas Tech University-College of Architecture, University of California (Los Angeles)-Department of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Illinois at Chicago-College of Architecture Design and the Arts

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