The Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to announce the Division of Architecture student winners of the 2025 Shaw Prize, TAP Prize, and MA+ scholarship.
The Shaw Prize: Emma Bock, 2nd year in Architecture
The TAP Prize: Elisa C. Wilson, 2nd year in Architecture
MA+ Scholarship: Ty Brown-Field, 3rd year in Architecture
Selection from the portfolio of Emma Bock, the 2025 Shaw Prize recipient.
The Shaw Prize and the TAP Prize are awarded as part of a 2nd-year architecture design studio portfolio competition. The 2nd year architecture design studio was tasked with designing their portfolios to highlight their undergraduate studio work, thereby enhancing their portfolio presentation skills. The final recommendations from each teaching team section were reviewed and put to a vote by the architecture division faculty.
The finalist portfolio winners successfully demonstrated their drawing and technical skills, creativity, and design thinking. Showcasing strong storytelling designs with concise narratives that successfully described the varied studio design challenges, their process, and their design proposals. Both students did a fantastic job of documenting their design process through sketches, diagrams, models, and iterations, which effectively illustrated how their ideas evolved over time, going beyond simply presenting finalized designs. In their unique style, each recipient authentically expresses their brand and design identity through their portfolio designs.
Selection from the portfolio of Elisa Wilson, the 2025 TAP Prize recipient.
The MA+ scholarship rotates annually between the Interior Design and Architecture programs. This year, it was available to architecture students. Of their student submissions for the project 772 Avenida San Patricio: A Dwelling for Contemporary Living, Professors Paolo Sanza and Amber Brown selected six. The project challenged students to design a concrete-made mixed-use infill project in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The submissions were anonymously forwarded to MA+ Architecture, who selected three finalists. From these three finalists, the Division of Architecture Scholarship Committee selected the awardee.
Axonometric drawing by Ty Brown-Field, the 2025 MA+ scholarship recipient.
The 772 Avenida San Patricio program comprised four commercial suites, one 1,800-square-foot apartment, one 350-square-foot minimal dwelling, and parking for six cars. The project also required students to respond sensitively to Puerto Rico’s rich culture, climate, and contemporary aesthetics. The project portfolio consisted of a design narrative, preliminary sketches, various orthographic drawings, multiple exploded axonometric drawings, and renderings.
Congratulations Emma, Elisa, and Ty!
Associate Professors Lee Fithian, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Pober have published a chapter in the recently released New Perspectives in Indoor Air Quality, published by Elsevier. Their contribution, titled “Chapter 16 – Architecture and the Challenges of Indoor Air Quality,” examines the relationship between architecture and indoor air quality.
Dr. Ladan Mozaffarian, Assistant Professor of Regional and City Planning, has been selected to serve as Co-Chair of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Planners of Color Interest Group (POCIG) for the 2025–2027 term.
The Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to recognize Tahsin Tabassum, a recent graduate of the college’s Master of Regional and City Planning program and current doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, for receiving the prestigious 2024–2025 American Planning Association (APA) Outstanding Student Award.
