UNM SA+P announces new award and lectureship series

The dean of the UNM School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P), Robert Alexander González, has announced a new awards program called the On the Brinck Book Award + Lecture.

The awards program is sponsored by the School’s $2.5 million John Brinckerhoff Jackson Endowment and seeks to recognize books that break new ground, expand a discipline with new research or carve out new areas of study.

“Our students deserve the opportunity to broaden their perspective beyond their own discipline and pursue meaningful dialogue,” said González. “The social, political, and environmental climate we now face suggests we should increasingly be reading across disciplinary boundaries.”

SA+P Assistant Professor Kathleen Kambic will oversee the nomination process, which is now open and runs through November.

Three winning books, one representing each category of the three disciplines represented in the School: Architecture, Community and Regional Planning (inclusive of environmental design and urban design) and Landscape Architecture, will be announced in March 2021. The winning authors will be invited to lecture at UNM SA+P in the Fall 2021 semester.

Book submissions don’t have to be inter-disciplinary in nature, just “vital enough to be read across the three disciplines giving student a common platform with which to engage in dialogue.” For more information, visit: https://saap.unm.edu/programs-of-note/on-the-brinck.html.

A jury of 12 will represent each of the three disciplines and include professionals, scholars and academic administrators and leaders who understand the environment in which SA+P students study. The jury’s choice will start to answer the question: what should our students be reading today?

The inaugural jury includes Sunil Bald (Yale University), Craig Barton (Brown University), Greg Castillo (UC Berkeley), Felipe Correa (UVA), Cathy Lang Ho (Writer & Editor), Dorothée Imbert (The Ohio State University), Nina-Marie Lister (Ryerson University), Victor Rubin (Policy Link), Lawrence Sass (MIT), Thaisa Way (Dumbarton Oaks) and Sibel Zandi-Sayek (College of William & Mary).

"This group of people represents a broad cross section of our disciplines who are excellent scholars and practitioners,” Kambic said. “I deeply appreciate of their willingness to work on this jury and their commitment to interdisciplinary research and discourse. I look forward to having many critical discussions in the months ahead.”

John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the writer and educator for whom the award is named, founded Landscape journal in 1951. However, his writings appealed to a multi-disciplinary audience including architects, geographers, historians, landscape architects and sociologists.

“In a School like ours, which focuses on the environmental design and planning disciplines, we sometimes see students work in their departments without engaging what other departments are doing,” González said. “We will be helping our students to identify those books that will be good introductions to those other fields on the other side of the wall. We hope we’ll also see more cross-departmental faculty collaborations.”