Carnegie Mellon Architecture Awards $100,000 to 2024 PJ Dick Innovation Fund Faculty Grants Program Recipients
Regenerative Structures Laboratory. Credit: Juney Lee.
Carnegie Mellon Architecture is proud to announce the 2024 awardees for the PJ Dick Innovation Fund Faculty Grants Program. A total of $100,000 has been awarded to 16 project and teaching grant proposals. The Faculty Grants Program will award a total of $400,000 over four years and is open to all full time faculty at the school. The proposals were evaluated by a committee comprised of school head Omar Khan; associate heads Joshua Bard, Mary-Lou Arscott and Kai Gutschow; Erica Cochran Hameen, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Theodossis Issaias, Special Faculty; Jenn Joy Wilson, Assistant Dean for Research Development and Sponsored Projects; and Aaron Martin, Associate Director, Institutional Partnerships, College of Fine Arts.
The Faculty Grants Program, established in 2023 by PJ Dick Trumbull Lindy Group, supports faculty research and teaching innovations that address the school’s three pedagogical challenges: climate change, social justice and artificial intelligence. The proposals were assessed on their impact in furthering a faculty member’s research and teaching, their contribution to interrogating the school’s challenges, and their viability to garner further research support, make an impact on the discipline and expand the pedagogy of the school.
Learn more about the awardees’ project and teaching proposals below.
Project grants support projects that address the school’s three pedagogical challenges: climate change, social justice and artificial intelligence. The grants support the diverse work of Carnegie Mellon Architecture’s faculty in creative practice, professional practice, artistic practice, funded research, participatory design, design build, curation, scholarship, critical and digital humanities, and more. The intention of the PJ Dick Project Grants Program is to provide support for a variety of projects including faculty seed funds to start a project with the aim of getting external support, to continue work on a project that may not have the option for sponsored research, and to support organizing symposia and conferences at the school.
Project Grants
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Regenerative Structures Laboratory
This proposal seeks to establish the “Regenerative Structures Laboratory” at Carnegie Mellon Architecture.
This proposal seeks to establish the “Regenerative Structures Laboratory” at Carnegie Mellon Architecture.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Contestations of Modernity
This proposal is for a book that offers readings in Design Ethics on questions of broad contemporary import: that of participatory publics in an era of neoliberal development and hardline politics, of design and its spatial agency, of the legacies and futures of modernism in the global south, and of the care and repair of buildings and cities in an age of climate crises.
This proposal is for a book that offers readings in Design Ethics on questions of broad contemporary import: that of participatory publics in an era of neoliberal development and hardline politics, of design and its spatial agency, of the legacies and futures of modernism in the global south, and of the care and repair of buildings and cities in an age of climate crises.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Sharing the Entangled Stories of the Anthropocene
This project emerges from the teaching and research work of the project lead over the last two years. This application is for the dissemination/sharing of stories globally as a storybook of methodologies, and locally as a series of stories shared as an exhibit.
This project emerges from the teaching and research work of the project lead over the last two years. This application is for the dissemination/sharing of stories globally as a storybook of methodologies, and locally as a series of stories shared as an exhibit.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Farm to Prototype
This proposal seeks support for the construction and testing of a series of full-scale hempcrete architectural assemblies.
This proposal seeks support for the construction and testing of a series of full-scale hempcrete architectural assemblies.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Craft Practices and Computation in Three Cultures
This project is an ethnographic study, computational investigation and design exploration of craft practices in three different locations: willow, wire and textile weaving in Pittsburgh; the Gullah tradition of sweetgrass basket weaving in South Carolina; and joinery, umbrella-making and weaving in Thailand.
This project is an ethnographic study, computational investigation and design exploration of craft practices in three different locations: willow, wire and textile weaving in Pittsburgh; the Gullah tradition of sweetgrass basket weaving in South Carolina; and joinery, umbrella-making and weaving in Thailand.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Village in the City, City in the Village
In collaboration with Chiang Mai University, the proposal expands a relationship between designers, students and local villagers to focus on the current urbanization of a municipality of agricultural villages in San Pu Loei.
In collaboration with Chiang Mai University, the proposal expands a relationship between designers, students and local villagers to focus on the current urbanization of a municipality of agricultural villages in San Pu Loei.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Greenhouse Design-Build Project
This year-long studio project utilizes bamboo that has been repurposed from the previous NOMAS Spring Carnival Pavilion installed on campus. The project aims to set a cogent case of low-carbon practices through a full-scale intervention in the neighborhood, thereby supporting an underserved community.
This year-long studio project utilizes bamboo that has been repurposed from the previous NOMAS Spring Carnival Pavilion installed on campus. The project aims to set a cogent case of low-carbon practices through a full-scale intervention in the neighborhood, thereby supporting an underserved community.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Sustainable Design for Uncertain Futures Book and Website
The aim of this book and website is to provide academics and practitioners with strategies that can be used in combination throughout the building project lifecycle to help designers align their work with the appropriate forces of change.
The aim of this book and website is to provide academics and practitioners with strategies that can be used in combination throughout the building project lifecycle to help designers align their work with the appropriate forces of change.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Leveraging AI for Equitable Lighting
This project aims to address these disparities by developing a user-centric smart lighting system that collaborates with the architectural façade to enhance mood and perception while ensuring equitable access to quality lighting in everyday spaces.
This project aims to address these disparities by developing a user-centric smart lighting system that collaborates with the architectural façade to enhance mood and perception while ensuring equitable access to quality lighting in everyday spaces.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: (de)Mass(ing) Timber
We see this proposal as a seed grant to identify three pathways of tectonic/geometric strategies that can be further elaborated at full scale with future funding and industry partnerships. Emerging technologies, such as AI-driven generative design and optimization, AR enhanced construction, and other computational processes will be essential to developing the work.
We see this proposal as a seed grant to identify three pathways of tectonic/geometric strategies that can be further elaborated at full scale with future funding and industry partnerships. Emerging technologies, such as AI-driven generative design and optimization, AR enhanced construction, and other computational processes will be essential to developing the work.
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: Urbanism and Social Production of Space
Jongwan Kwon, Assistant Teaching Professor
Jongwan Kwon, Assistant Teaching Professor
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: Image Deep: /Contested Matter
Dana Cupkova, Associate Professor
Dana Cupkova, Associate Professor
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: The Pittsburgh Sequence
Francesca Torello, Special Faculty
Francesca Torello, Special Faculty
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: Mixed Use in Pittsburgh's “Climate Haven”
Jared Abraham, Associate Studio Professor
Jared Abraham, Associate Studio Professor
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: Data Dump
Daragh Byrne, Associate Teaching Professor
Daragh Byrne, Associate Teaching Professor
PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: Unreasonable Architecture
Tuliza Sindi, Ann Kalla Visiting Professor in Architecture
Tuliza Sindi, Ann Kalla Visiting Professor in Architecture
