On The Brinck
Call for Nominations: 2024 On the Brinck Book Awards
The UNM School of Architecture + Planning is currently accepting nominations for the 2024 On the Brinck Book Awards. This annual competition honors contemporary and emerging values in design by celebrating books that offer new perspectives and resonate with the formative writings of J.B. Jackson. The selection criteria for this competition come directly from Jackson’s enlightened approach to scholarship: emphasizing new and overlooked areas of study, challenging existing scholarship, integrating allied disciplines, and appealing to a broad readership.This award recognizes books that meet these criteria:
- Books that emphasize new and overlooked areas of study
- Books that challenge existing scholarship
- Books that integrate allied disciplines of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and design
- Books that appeal to a broad readership
- Books published in the last four years (2021-2024)
- Books may be co-authored or edited collections.
- Art or design monographs will not be considered
Previously nominated books may be re-considered if they fall within the three-year frame.
- The date the book was published, title, author(s), and publisher contact information
- A brief description of how the book meets the criteria listed above.
- Any evidence of the book’s reach and impact (book reviews, supportive documentation) may also be submitted.
All nominations will be evaluated by a jury of scholars and practitioners, coordinated by a representative of the University of New Mexico School of Architecture & Planning (UNM SA+P). Eight (8) copies of the book will be requested from the publisher to be sent to members of the jury.
Jury Deliberations – Round Two
A short-list of entries will be identified during Round One and further evaluated until finalists and winners are selected for the award.
Award Recognition
A minimum of three winning books will be recognized each year. The awards will be announced in Fall of 2024. For each award, author(s) will be invited to lecture at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture & Planning in late 2024 or early 2025.
Please e-mail us at onthebrinckbookaward@gmail.com with any questions regarding the application.
2023 On the Brinck Book Award + Lecture Winners
The University of New Mexico School of Architecture + Planning (UNM SA+P) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 On the Brinck Book Award and Lecture series, created in honor of John Brinckerhoff Jackson. The jury, comprised of Sunil Bald, Felipe Correa, Margaret Crawford, Charles L. Davis, Catherine Page Harris, Cathy Lang Ho, Thaïsa Way, and Sibel Zandi-Sayek, honors the following publications:
Elkin, Rosetta S. Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation. University of Minnesota Press, 2022.
Gissen, David. The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access. University of Minnesota Press, 2022.
Martinko, Whitney. Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.
West, E. James. A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago. University of Illinois Press, 2022.
UNM SA+P Dean Robert Alexander González founded the program as a Dean’s Initiative in 2020. He notes, “This award is supported by a generous endowment established by J.B. Jackson toward the end of his life. In his spirit, it affirms our commitment to promoting enlightened approaches to scholarship that emphasize new and overlooked areas of study, accessibility to the reader, and the integration of the allied disciplines we study at the School of Architecture + Planning.”
The awarded volumes embody the legacy of J.B. Jackson, a prolific writer and influential figure in the development of the field of cultural landscape studies, merging analysis of natural, built, and human landscapes. The selected works contribute new knowledge and perspectives spanning the design disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and urban design. Together they serve as a collection that can help students, faculty, and practitioners expand design discourse and open new discussions on ways of viewing and knowing.
Coordinating juror and UNM SA+P Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Catherine Page Harris: “These new works enhance conversations around capital, identity, Black presence, and climate change in design. This award honors deft and timely scholarship.”
The School of Architecture + Planning will host the authors for a symposium later this spring to present their work and discuss the awarded volumes in the context of J.B. Jackson’s legacy and contemporary issues within architecture and design. We will update our website soon with dates of the event at saap.unm.edu/news-events/events.html
The following jury comments encapsulate the award program’s thematic connection to J.B. Jackson’s historic contributions:
Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation by Rosetta S. Elkin, “Elkin defies the current moment’s obsession with tree planting to challenge what we know about what we are planting. As a landscape architect, Elkin argues that we need to carefully consider how we steward trees and the places where they thrive and in turn, better understand the places where they don’t. Elkin’s critique of tree planting as a cause célèbre to assuage climate change impacts is based in historical and geographically diverse examples. The work reads with a specialist’s eye for horticulture and a storyteller’s narrative arc.”
The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access by David Gissen, “In a multi-referential deconstruction of ableist architectural norms, Gissen’s readings of landscapes, buildings, and histories bring non-linear conceptions of ability into focus. Investigations of ancient historic ramps, landscape spaces of multiple abilities, and conceptualizations of built form challenge contemporary practice and theory to shift away from accommodation to resisting definitions of lack. The book references a rich, complex set of texts and theories in an approachable, readable prose.”
Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States by Whitney Martinko, “Martinko’s evocative study drafts a new origin story for the discipline of historic preservation. Instead of casting ‘preservation’ and ‘new construction’ as polarities of urban development, Historic Real Estate reveals their concomitant function in investing the capitalist market with the perceived morality to preserve the patrimony of the state even as it endorses crude patterns of economic development. This book opens the field of historic preservation to future studies in economics, American studies and architectural history that will be productive for decades.”
A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago by E. James West, “A House for the Struggle documents the spatial geographies that were established by the reportage of Chicago’s Black newspaper row. Insisting upon the primacy of space as a concrete medium of change, West’s critique of the Johnson Publishing Building - a beautiful Miesian block that ultimately came to represent the conservatism and decadence of Black capitalism - reveals the relative impotence of formalist approaches to design that are too distanced from the practical realities of Black social uplift. This book provides a useful model for documenting and analyzing the overlooked contributions of Black actors on the built environment.”
2022 On The Brinck Winners
2021 On The Brinck Winners
Public Programs
2022 On the Brinck Book Symposium featuring Tara A. Dudley, Burak Erdim, and Stephen H. Whiteman
2021 On the Brinck Book Conversation featuring Arturo Escobar and Laura Harjo
2021 On the Brinck Book Conversation featuring Charles Davis II and Catherine Seavitt-Nordenson
The Jury
Coordinating Juror
Catherine Page Harris, Interdisciplinary Assistant Professor, teaches Art and Ecology and Landscape Architecture at the University of New Mexico in a split position with the College of Fine Arts and the School of Architecture and Planning. She received her BA from Harvard University, 1988, MLA from UC Berkeley, 1997, and MFA from Stanford University, 2005. Harris works in art/design, and digital/analog expressions. Her built work resides at Marble House Project, Dorset, VT, Deep Springs College, White Mountains, CA, McCovey Field, SF, CA and The Violin Shop in Albuquerque, NM, among other sites.
Sunil Bald is associate dean and professor adjunct at the Yale School of Architecture. He is a founding partner in the New York-based firm, Studio SUMO, which among many national awards, received the Annual Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Studio SUMO’s work, which ranges from installations to institutional buildings, has been exhibited in the National Building Museum, MoMA, the Venice Biennale, the Field Museum, the GA Gallery, and the Urban Center. Bald has research interests in modernism, popular culture, and nation-making in Brazil.
Felipe Correa is a professor and the chair of UVA School of Architecture. He is an internationally renowned architect, urbanist, and founder of his design practice Somatic Collaborative. He has served as director of the Master of Architecture in Urban Design program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He is the author of São Paulo: A Graphic Biography (2018), Beyond the City: Resource Extraction in South America (2016), and Mexico City: Between Geometry and Geography (2015). He is the co-editor of Lateral Exchanges: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Practices, a publication that explores the role of architecture and urbanism in the context of international development.
Margaret Crawford is the Director of Master of Urban Design and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley and holds degrees in architectural history, housing, and urban planning. Prior to Berkeley, Crawford chaired the History, Theory, and Humanities Program at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles and, from 2000–2009, was professor of urban design and planning theory at the Harvard GSD, teaching history and design workshops and studios. Her scholarly work includes Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The History of American Company Towns, The Car and the City: The Automobile, the Built Environment and Daily Urban Life, and two editions of Everyday Urbanism, along with numerous articles and book chapters on immigrant spatial practices, shopping malls, public space, and other issues in the American built environment.
Charles L. Davis II is an associate professor of architectural history and criticism at UT Austin’s School of Architecture. He received his PhD in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Arch and B.P.S. from the University at Buffalo. His academic research excavates the role of racial identity and race thinking in architectural history and contemporary design culture. He has published articles and essays in Architectural Research Quarterly, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Harvard Design Magazine, Log, Aggregate, Append-x and VIA.
Cathy Lang Ho is an independent architecture writer, editor, and curator based in New York. She consults on diverse projects dealing with architecture, design, landscape, and urbanism. Recent projects include launching and organizing Harvard University GSD’s Wheelwright Prize and Richard Rogers Fellowship, and creating public programs on New York’s Governors Island. She is a contributing editor to Architect magazine and founder and former editor-in-chief of The Architect’s Newspaper (2003–07). She was previously an editor at Architecture magazine (1999-2001, editor-at-large 2001–05) and Design Book Review (1992–99), an award-winning literary journal. Her writing has appeared in publications worldwide, including Domus, Blueprint, and the New York Times. She was the recipient of the Rome Prize (2008–09, Design) and is currently a member of the AAR Society of Fellows Council. In 2012, she was the commissioner and lead curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She is a former board member of the Institute for Urban Design and has served on numerous awards juries and nominating committees.
Thaïsa Way is the program director in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. She holds a professorship of landscape architecture at the University of Washington. An urban landscape historian teaching and researching history, theory, and design, she has published and lectured on feminist histories of landscape architecture and public space in cities. She is the author of Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (2009), which won the 2012 J. B. Jackson Book Award, and From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag (2015). She has co-edited two volumes, Now Urbanism (2013) and River Cities, City Rivers (2018).
Sibel Zandi-Sayek is an associate professor and past chair of Art and Art History at the College of William & Mary. She holds professional degrees in architecture and city and regional planning, and a Ph.D. in architectural history. She served as founding co-director of the Asian and Middle East Studies (AMES) Program at the College of William & Mary. She is the author of Ottoman Izmir: The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Port, 1840-1880 (2012), which won the 2013 M. Fuat Köprülü Prize in Ottoman and Turkish Studies. She recently served as the book review editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (2017-2020).
