Share this on

Student Fights Sprawl, Wins Fellowship

$25K awarded for proposal of alternate land use in suburbs.

Staff -- Interior Design, 6/30/2004 12:00:00 AM

University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student Grant Gibson has won the Art Institute of Chicago's annual Schiff Foundation Fellowship, which is given by the institute's architecture department. This year's prize amounted to a $25,000 award.

Gibson’s entry, "Remediation of the American Dream", proposed a visionary alternative to fight suburban sprawl by using “energy farms” on open land that would promote alternatives to traditional housing patterns and population densities generally found in suburbs throughout the country.

Under Schiff Fellowship guidelines, students from three Chicago-area departments of architecture are eligible to participate, including those from the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Faculty from each of the three schools nominate their best advanced undergraduate or graduate students, and the jury—selected by the staff of the Art Institutes’ Architecture Department and appointed by the museum’s Board of Trustees—then reviews architectural projects developed by each of the entrants, represented by a maximum of 10 drawings and supporting texts.

In addition to the monetary award, the winning portfolio becomes part of the permanent collection of architectural drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago.