Winners of Inaugural OBEL Award Teaching Fellowships Announced

Founded four years ago to “to honor recent and outstanding architectural contributions to human development all over the world,” the OBEL Award quickly established itself as a major international architecture prize. But with the winners before 2023 found in Japan, Germany, France, and the UK, the global reach of the award was not yet evident, something reinforced by this year's winner being located in the US. 

The OBEL Award Teaching Fellowship, launched earlier this year, is one means of extending the reach of the OBEL Award to other regions. The first iteration specifically targets Latin America, Africa, and South and South East Asia, while the 2024 program, to be launched next spring, will look at Australia and South Asia. Martha Thorne, senior advisor to the Henrik F. Obel Foundation, told us back in June how the foundation believes “countries undergoing development could benefit from the funding opportunity for new educational proposals” and that they “hope to form collaborative relationships with institutions and professionals and strengthen our understanding of these regions and their architecture.”

The inaugural fellowship asked entrants to develop courses that address themes from previous OBEL Award cycles: well-being and architecture (2019) and seminal ideas on cities (2021). The intent was to award one fellowship per region, but “the proposals from the African continent were especially strong,” per a statement from the Obel Foundation, so two fellows from Africa were selected. The grants for the courses that are set to start in 2024 total 233,000 euros. Here are the four fellows for the 2023 OBEL Award Teaching Fellowship (in order of the numbered map at top):

• Laia Celma – Universidad Pontificia, Chile
• Adeyemo Shobunbi – Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Nigeria
• Priscilla Namwanje – International University of East Africa, Kampala, Uganda
• Nooshin Esmaeili – College of Science and Technology, Bhutan

What are their courses and how do they follow the themes?

Spanish architect Laia Celma will lead a research studio that addresses the past, present, and future of Mina Invierno, a coal mine in Riesco Island, Chile, that closed in 2020, to gain an understanding of its regional impact.

Adeyemo Shokunbi's two-semester course, “New Alternative Nigerian Architecture: Responsive and appropriate contemporary design for the Tropics,” will address well-being “through architecture that is centered on critical design thinking for climate and culturally responsive building.”

The course by Priscilla Namwanje at the International University of East Africa “will contribute to a new language and approach to understanding African cities.”

Finally, Nooshin Esmaelli will teach an undergraduate studio “reflecting the idea that Bhutanese rural settlements play a crucial role in shaping well-being in architecture by intertwining the built environment with natural surroundings, fostering a sense of community, and promoting sustainable living.”