The Harvard Graduate School of Design just announced this year's winning proposal for the coveted Wheelwright Prize, featuring an examination of colonial systems and racial capitalism from the UK-based Zimbabwe-born researcher Thandi Loewenson.
The $100,000 award is provided annually with the chance to give a lecture at the GSD and be published in one of five different school publications. Loewenson will have the chance to uncover "how we get free" through a series of what she calls "Black Papers," breaking down the "entanglement of Earth and Air" in the endemic landscape of seven different countries. The prize money supports her study of "Outer Space," which includes examining aerial land surveying techniques as well as the mining of precious metals used in smartphone devices and unwittingly underwriting a system of "digital dispossession" worldwide.
Loewenson, currently a senior tutor at the Royal College of Art, also holds a PhD from the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture.
"This research presents a radical shift: Developing a new epistemic framework and a series of open access, creatively reimagined policy proposals — the Black Papers — in which earth and air are not distinct but rather concomitant terrains through which racialization and exploitation are forged on the continent, and through which they will be fought," Lowenson said. "The Wheelwright Prize is uniquely placed to support such ambitious inquiry, enabling me to bring together seemingly disparate yet closely bound parts of our planet, and agitate for a more just and flourishing world."
Loewenson follows 2023 winner Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and was selected over shortlist finalists Meriem Chabani, Nathan Friedman, and Ryan Roark by a jury that included K. Michael Hays, Noura Al-Sayeh, Jennifer Newsom, Dean Sarah M. Whiting, John Peterson, and Chris Cornelius.
8 Comments
Thandi has proposed a colossal project here ! All Ivy League graduate architecture programs as well as those at Oxford, Cambridge and the AA ought to combine in a two-year effort to support Thandi's stated mission here, working with her to reify her vision for a more equitable Africa that once and for all throws off the shackles of all manner of post-colonial exploitation. Academia engages imaginative interrogations. This broad academic collaboration would signal a granular dive into the international search for sustainable terrain among Africa for all Africans. Let's face it - 54 African nations are more colonized by the West in 2024 than in 1934 or 1894. Black leaders and their black elites have sold their populations down the river to Western mining corporations, Western Oil companies, Western Cocoa and Coffee conglomerates and now even Walmart !!!. Step ONE: Waste treatment ( waste treatment will stem disease far better that Bill Gates and his BigPharma vaccinations. Until Africans have proper waste treatment and fresh, clean water - all else is WOKE pie in the sky. Thandi is the Greta Thunberg for a new Africa.
What exactly has Thandi proposed that can be turned into a 'colossal project'?
and if selling one's people down river for profit is a form of colonization, isn't everyone a colonizer? Sounds more like an economic problem than an architectural one.
I was with jimblake until he showed he's an antivaxer.
I'm not sure about Gates Foundation specifically but there have definitely been Western-led vaccine shenanigans in Africa in the past. i'm too lazy to look them up, though.
I have not been able to read the papers but I trust as Thandi heralds from Zimbabwe she has included China's current involvement in the mining industry as well as other sectors of Zimbabwe's economy that some refer to as the new, slow but steady colonialism from the east.
I've read them. I'm still wondering what architectural project Thandi has proposed with this data.
I am not an anti-vaxxer. It makes no sense to spend billions vaccinating a population with deadly sanitation conditions. First things first. Get the sewage out of open trenches running along residential streets - then vaccinate. Big Pharma wants African vaccination profits NOW - Global Big Pharma (Bill Gates and company) is not in the business of sewage treatment or fresh water infrastructure.
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