Organizers of the Berkeley Prize, an undergraduate essay competition established at the Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, announced the six winners of cash prizes and one recipient of the first annual Berkeley Prize Travel Fellowship.

The essay contest, which promotes architecture as a social art through writing and criticism, probed students’ views on shelter, homelessness, and social services: “Go about your city and investigate for yourself the situation of the displaced and those who assist them. Based on what you find, what are your recommendations for bettering the situations of those displaced persons who you believe could be helped? Write about your discoveries in the form of a persuasive article for an influential community newspaper.”

Prizes for outstanding essays submitted to the 2004 Essay Competition are awarded to:

• The Berkeley-Barcelona Travel Fellowship: Adriano Pupilli, University of Sydney, Australia. The new Berkeley Prize Travel Fellowship recognizes the vital role that exposure to other cultures and environments plays in helping to demonstrate importance of the social art of architecture. Finalists in the essay competition were asked for open-ended proposals that would demonstrate how the opportunity to visit Barcelona would help them expand their research and understanding of the issues they explored in their essays.
• First prize: Angela Nyka, Iowa State University ($3,000)
• Second prize: Barak Levy, The Technion, Israel ($1,250)
• Third prize: John Rea, Virginia Polytechnic Institute ($750)
• Honorable mentions: Dylan Sauer, University of Cincinnati and Sandra Thomson, Dalhousie University, Canada

Read the winning essays.

This year’s Berkeley Prize Jury included Marco Casagrande, architect and environmental artist, Finland; Beth Gali, urban planner and landscape architect, Spain; Peter Prangnell, architect, author, and critic, Canada; and Minja Yang, officer, Culture Sector, UNESCO, France. The jury chose the winning essays from a group of finalists selected earlier by the prize committee.

The 2004 Prize Competition attracted 97 entries from students representing 28 countries and 43 undergraduate architecture programs on six continents. There were 12 team entries, representing further the importance of collaborative effort in addressing a serious, difficult question about the role of the architect in society.

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