2027 IAWA Kristine Fallon Prize:
"Practicing Otherwise: Women and Alternative Modes of Architecture"

The International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) Center is pleased to announce a call for proposals for the 2028 Kristine Fallon Prize of $5,000. The prize supports historical research on the contributions of women architects, with particular attention this cycle to those individuals or groups who have challenged established conventions of architectural design and practice.

Throughout history, architects have worked within established structures of professional organization, design production, and architectural authorship. These conventions, however, have also been questioned, circumvented, and reimagined. Women architects, whether working individually or collectively, have developed alternative approaches to the practice of architecture, challenging prevailing assumptions about how architecture is produced, whom it serves, and what it can accomplish.

These alternatives have taken many forms. Some women have experimented with collaborative, collective, or nonhierarchical models of practice, challenging established professional hierarchies and divisions of labor. Others have developed unconventional design processes, reimagined familiar building types, or advanced new relationships between architects and the communities they serve. Still others have used architecture as an instrument of protest and resistance, contesting dominant ideas about gender, race, class, labor, and the organization of the built environment.

Alternative modes of architectural practice can themselves constitute acts of resistance, whether directed against the conventions of the architectural profession or the broader social and political structures within which architecture operates. Such approaches may emerge from explicit commitments to social change, from the practical necessity of negotiating exclusionary professional structures, or from the pursuit of new architectural possibilities. They may be consciously oppositional or only retrospectively understood as subversive.

The 2028 Kristine Fallon Prize invites scholarship that explores how women architects have historically questioned, resisted, or transformed the conventions of architectural practice and production. We welcome research on individual practitioners as well as groups, collectives, and professional networks, across geographic contexts and historical periods. Proposals need not demonstrate that their subjects explicitly identified as feminist or politically radical, nor must gender be their primary category of analysis.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

+Alternative models of professional practice, including women-led firms, feminist collectives, cooperatives, and other experiments in the organization of architectural labor and professional authority.

+Architecture as social or political intervention, including practices engaging with civil rights, labor movements, feminist activism, environmental justice, community organizing, or other efforts toward social change.

+Experimental processes of design and production, including collaborative, participatory, interdisciplinary, or community-based approaches that challenge conventional relationships between architects, clients, and users.

+Challenges to architectural conventions, including innovative approaches to building types, spatial organization, domesticity, public space, or the relationship between architecture and everyday life.

+Negotiating and transforming the architectural profession, including efforts to challenge professional exclusion, discrimination, established hierarchies, or conventional understandings of authorship and expertise.

+Unconventional professional trajectories, including women who developed alternative avenues for architectural practice within or outside established firms and professional institutions.

+Architectural experimentation, including formal, material, and technological innovations that opened new possibilities for design and practice.

The prize particularly encourages original biographical and archival research that brings greater recognition to women architects whose contributions remain underdocumented or overlooked. Proposals may examine the possibilities, limitations, and contradictions of alternative practices, rather than presuming their radical or transformative character.

Prize and Submission Process

The IAWA invites proposals from scholars and professionals for research projects that will result in a publication-ready article, chapter, book manuscript, dissertation, or exhibition catalog.

The prize is awarded through a two-stage process.

Stage 1: Applicants submit a 500-word proposal providing an overview of the selected topic, its historical context and significance, and the research to be undertaken during the second stage. Proposals will be reviewed by an invited jury, which will select up to five finalists. Each finalist will receive $500 to support the development of their project.

Stage 2: Finalists will develop their proposals into completed manuscripts for review by the same invited jury. The recipient of the $5,000 Kristine Fallon Prize will be invited to present their research at the 2028 IAWA Center Symposium at Virginia Tech.

A copy of the final published work must be donated to the IAWA. All submitted entries will be retained and preserved in the IAWA Collections as part of the IAWA Kristine Fallon Prize collection.

Schedule

Call for proposals issued: November 15, 2026

Stage 1 proposals due: January 15, 2027

Stage 1 finalists announced: February 15, 2027

Stage 2 manuscripts due: December 1, 2027

Prize recipient announced: January 15, 2028

Award presentation at the 2028 IAWA Center Symposium: March 2028

Submission Instructions

Proposals should be submitted in English as PDF files by email to iawacentervt.edu.

Email subject: 2028 IAWA Kristine Fallon Prize – Stage 1

Questions may be directed to Professor Elizabeth Keslacy, Director of Awards, International Archive of Women in Architecture, at iawacentervt.edu.