Widening the Wheelwright
Every year since 1935, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has awarded one of its graduates the Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, praised by generations of recipients for enriching careers in most cases already under way. “Architecture frequently must be practiced before there is time for it to be properly considered,” Ker-Shing Ong, M.Arch./A.L.M. ’02, wrote in a book on the legacy of the Wheelwright. Ong, the award’s 2003-04 recipient, used it to study what she called “the awkward (and spectacular) metamorphosis” of fast-growing Shanghai. Starting this year, the GSD has expanded the notion of the traditional award, opening the application process to early-career architects practicing anywhere in the world. Applicants are no longer required to have an affiliation with the GSD. In its new iteration, wrote GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi on the application page, “the Wheelwright Fellowship will be able to have a significant impact on the intellectual projects of young...