The Graham Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2021 grants to organizations. $471,500 was awarded to organizations around the world that are “producing projects that encourage new conversations and explorations across architecture and design,” as stated by the foundation.

45 projects, including exhibitions, publications, digital initiatives, and public presentations led by organizations based in cities such as Atlanta, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Chicago were recognized. The diverse array of projects includes exhibitions by the likes of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), along with public programming from Harvard GSD’s African American Student Union. Editorial projects and student-led publications like one’s from the Urban Design Forum and the Architectural League of New York and Rice University’s student-led publication, PLAT, were also included.  

“Together, these organizations support the work of eminent and emerging architects, artists, designers, critics, curators, scholars, and others, to explore new possibilities for the field and engage practitioners and publics worldwide,” says the Graham Foundation.

Below are the 2021 Grant Organization Recipients:

EXHIBITIONS

• Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, AZ) - A Country is not a House | Ronald Rael + Virginia San Fratello
• Center for Architecture (New York, NY) - Reset: Towards a New Commons
• The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art––Irwin S. Chanin School or Architecture (New York, NY) - Vkhutemas: Laboratory of the Avant-Garde, 1920–1930
• The Drawing Center (New York, NY) - A New Grammar of Ornament
• Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, IL) - Houses of Tomorrow
• High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA) - Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place
• Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, United Kingdom) - Christopher Kulendran Thomas: Another World
• Landmark Columbus Foundation (Columbus, IN) - New Middles: From Main Street To Megalopolis, What Is The Future Of The Middle City?: 2021 Exhibition, Exhibit Columbus
• LAXART (Los Angeles, CA) - Nikita Gale
• The Mosaic Rooms (London, United Kingdom) - Stateless Heritage
• The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY) - Modern Architecture in South Asia: The Project of Decolonization (1947–1985)
• National Organization of Minority Architects (Washington, DC) - SAY IT LOUD ––The National Organization of Minority Architecture (NOMA) 50th Anniversary Exhibition
• Proyector (Mexico City, Mexico) - Casa Manifiesto
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA) - Nature X Humanity: Oxman Architects
• The University at Buffalo Art Galleries (Buffalo, NY) - Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection
• University of Illinois at Chicago –– College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (Chicago, IL) - American Framing: US Pavilion, 17th International Architecture Exhibition

FILM, VIDEO, AND NEW MEDIA PROJECTS

• Design Trust Chicago (Chicago, IL) - Chicago Design Database Network
• LIGA–Space for Architecture (Mexico City, Mexico) - LIGA–Archivos

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

• Arizona State University—Indigenous Design Collaborative (Phoenix, AZ) - Indigenous ways of being, knowing, doing and connecting in architecture, 2021–22 Lecture Series
• Association of Architecture Organizations (Chicago, IL) - 2021 Design Matters Conference
• Harvard University—Graduate School of Design—African American Student Union (Cambridge, MA) - Black Matter: Celebrating Black Spatial Practices from the Magical to the Mundane, Black in Design Conference 2021
• MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House (Los Angeles, CA) - Schindler House 1922–2022: an anthology of existences
• Materials & Applications (Los Angeles, CA) - A Program of Complete Disordering

PUBLICATIONS

• Anyone Corporation (New York, NY) - Log 50, 53, 54, 55
• Architectural League of New York (New York, NY) - Cleaning Up?
• Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (Washington, DC) - JAE Fellows
• The Black School (New Orleans, LA) - The Black Schoolhouse Manual
• e-flux Architecture (New York, NY) - Accumulation: The Art, Architecture, and the Media of Climate Change
• Goldsmiths, University of London—Centre for Research Architecture (London, United Kingdom) - Research Architecture: Provocations, Practices, and Propositions
• Lampo (Chicago, IL) - Lampo Folio
• MAS Context (Chicago, IL) - Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology—School of Architecture and Planning (Cambridge, MA) - Thresholds 50: Before After
• New York Review of Architecture (New York, NY) - The New York Review of Architecture, 2021
• Northwest Architectural League (Seattle, WA) - ARCADE, Issue 39.1: Refraction
• Places Journal (San Francisco, CA) - Repair Manual
• Primary Information (New York, NY) - Dara Birnbaum’s Note(s): Work(ing) Process(es) Re: Concerns (That Take On / Deal With)
• Terreform (New York, NY) - South Side Stories
• Urban Design Forum and the Architectural League of New York (New York, NY) - New City Critics
• Yale University Press (New Haven, CT) - Gego: Weaving the Space In-Between. Art, Architecture, Design, and Craft at the Edge of Modernity

STUDENT-LED PUBLICATIONS

• Rice University—School of Architecture (Houston, TX) - PLAT 11.0
• The School of Architecture (Scottsdale, AZ) - WASH Magazine
• Texas Tech University—College of Architecture (Lubbock, TX) - CROP 09: Shed
• University of California, Los Angeles—Department of Architecture and Urban Design (Los Angeles, CA) - POOL, Issue No. 07
• University of Illinois at Chicago—College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (Chicago, IL) - Fresh Meat 13: Isolated / Collective
• University of Oklahoma—Gibbs College of Architecture (Norman, OK) - Telesis, Volume IV: Habitation and Volume V: Adaptive Practice

The full collection of winners can also be seen on the Graham Foundation website.