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A prize for accomplished, emerging architects

The Wheelwright Prize is an open international competition that awards $100,000 to a talented early-career architect to support an expansive, intensive design research project.

The Wheelwright Prize is dedicated to advancing original architectural research that shows potential to make a significant impact on architectural discourse. We seek individual applicants who are accomplished but emerging, who are resourceful and risk-taking, and who can make the most of this extraordinary opportunity to advance a research project that will have a significant impact on his or her own professional development, and on the discipline of architecture as a whole.

The winner of the Wheelwright Prize will receive:

  • $100,000 prize to support the proposed research project
  • Invitation to lecture at Harvard GSD
  • Possibility to publish research in a Harvard GSD publication
Bar Nou (Barcelona), as renovated by Anna Puigjaner and her practice MAIO. Puigjaner won the 2016 Wheelwright Prize with her proposal Kitchenless City: Architectural Systems for Social Welfare. Photo: José Hevia


Designing their MAIO studio in Barcelona, 2016 Wheelwright Prize winner Anna Puigjaner, alongside MAIO partner Guillermo López, opened the space and created an expansive studio with a single, 12.5-meter-long worktable. “We like to explain our office as our table,” writes Puigjaner, “a cocreative continuum, where everything is shared.” Photo: José Hevia

Ani Nii Shöbo in Ucayali, Perú, is a collaboration between 2017 Wheelwright Prize winner Samuel Bravo, architect Sandra Iturriaga, and local Shipibo families who participated in the construction. The architects resided for a period with the community in order to gain insight into traditional construction approaches and skills. The structures were designed to be buildable by local craftsmen. Photo: Juan Balazs

A Brief History of the Wheelwright Prize

Established in 1935 in memory of Arthur W. Wheelwright, Class of 1887, the Wheelwright Prize was originally entitled the Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship. Over the following decades, the fellowship afforded extraordinary experiences for generations of Harvard GSD alumni. The fellowship was conceived at a time when foreign travel was out of reach for many. The prize enabled several early Wheelwright fellows—including Paul Rudolph (1937–38), Eliot Noyes (1939–40), William Wurster (1942–43), and I. M. Pei (1950–51)—to embark on expeditions that largely followed the tradition of the Grand European Tour.