Professor Bradford Grant Receives ACSA 2020 Course Development Prize

Architecture Professor Bradford Grant is one of five recipients of the 2020 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change and Society for his course proposal titled Public Issues, Climate Justice, and Architecture. The Association for the Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture (Buell Center) invited course proposals from universities around the globe to compete for the prize. As outlined in the prize overview, a successful course proposal would include “methods and themes that innovate within their institutional setting—asking hard questions of students that are equal in weight to the hard questions being asked of society as it grapples with the intertwined causes and effects of climate change”.

According to the ACSA press release, the prize is responding to “the urgency of climate change [that] seems to demand a singular focus that is antithetical to a humanities-based critical inquiry or longer-term creative and technical endeavors”. Winners were selected by a jury comprised of members of the Buell Center’s Advisory Board. All five winners will receive a monetary prize, as well as support to lead their course at their host institution within the next two years.

“Science, empirical evidence, and some technical solutions about global climate change are well documented and generally known to our upper division architecture students who have taken the required Sustainability course. While our students may understand that the world’s climate is warming as an existential and profound threat for the future of our environment, we see that our thinking and action on climate change are influenced not only by science, but by an array of social and political dynamics,” comments Professor Grant.

Professor Grant’s winning course proposal is designed to help students develop an understanding of the role of the architect, the public and the government in ensuring that climate change and climate justice become essential factors in the planning and design of our environment. The course will also assist students in developing an understanding of their capacity to become agents for climate change in their future roles as professionals.

The course will be offered in Spring 2021.