Timothy Carey MArch ‘15 and Laura Greenberg MAUD ’20 have been named as one of the five winners of the 2021 Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant. Administered by the Center for Architecture, AIA New York, this grant is a national award intended to further the personal and professional development of an architect in early or mid-career through travel.

For Carey, his proposal entitled “Some Assembly Required: Performing Arts Architecture and the Idea of Audience” focuses on the shifting relationships between the performing arts building, the concentrated “audience” of previous eras, and the dispersed “public” of the present-day – brought about over the past century by the technological means to consume culture outside of the auditorium. While the discourse on the performing arts building often details attempts to “crack open” the typology, during the COVID-19 shutdowns these institutions were suddenly only able to address their dispersed public. Carey’s research will investigate how those aspirations might be reframed and reevaluated following a time of crisis for the building type. This research extends the work that he originally developed in his thesis (with advisor GSD Professor Grace La) and for which he has gained further significant professional expertise in practice.

For Greenberg, her proposal studies public school closings that have become common in certain US cities as populations decline and disinvestment compounds. Closings tend to disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities, eliminating associated educational and community benefits. Her proposal, “School’s Out” explores equitable re-use strategies that prioritize community input and retain public benefits from former public school sites. The project will focus on district-scale processes (how re-use decisions are made, who is involved, how information is communicated transparently, etc.) and building-scale outcomes. Laura Greenberg will travel across the American Midwest and Northeast to examine the transformation of former public schools.