Two WashU Architecture Students Awarded Summer Research Grants
2023-04-28 • Sam Fox School
Architecture students Carlos Cepeda, BS ’24, and Nour Ziada, MArch ’24, have each been awarded a Steedman Student Summer Research Grant. They will spend this summer traveling and researching architectural issues, culminating in a report or presentation given during the fall semester.
Carlos Cepeda
Cepeda is a junior in architecture and works at the Sam Fox School’s Office for Socially Engaged Practice. His proposal, “Mapping the Diaspora,” investigates the Venezuelan exodus in the last decade — approximately one-quarter of the population has emigrated — through interaction with bordering communities in Colombia. His two months of travel will take him to Bogota, Medellin, and Cúcuta, and include visits to Colombia’s national archive as well as meeting with nonprofits, churches, and city planning departments to learn about the Venezuelan diaspora firsthand.
“This research could help in proposing quick, well-developed proposals to treat, ameliorate, or aid the situations,” said Cepeda. Such proposals would address the rapidly changing urban fabric through section drawings, mapping pre- and post- Venezuelan migration of barrios [neighborhoods], and comparing and contrasting the current state of the urban fabric with historical archives to understand the effects of the Venezuelan mass migration movement.
Nour Ziada
Ziada, a graduate student in architecture, will study the Jalazone camp on the West Bank for her project, “Liminal Spaces in Refugee Camps.” The camp is near the Palestinian city of Ramallah and has been there for 70 years — and Ziada used to walk by it daily. Her project involves researching liminal space, interviewing “expert citizens,” looking at the connection between urban settings and the spatial strategies refugees employ to build their shelters, and exploring the notion of individual resilience towards the building process.
“I’ll make use of my objective knowledge to support my thesis, which is to design for the invisible,” said Ziada. By designing with natural resources and the surrounding environments in mind, Ziada hopes to “help inhabitants claim their own environment.”
About the James Harrison Steedman Summer Research Grants
The Steedman Student Summer Research Grants offer architecture students in WashU’s Sam Fox School the opportunity to pursue travel-based research on a topic pertaining to the built environment. Students may choose to pursue a personal inquiry in architecture or investigate into an architectural area of interest that may have emerged from prior work in studios or courses.
This grant program has been developed as part of the international Steedman Fellowship in Architecture, in partnership with the Sam Fox School and AIA St. Louis, to extend travel-based research support to students. Grants are awarded annually.