Awards & Honors

Spitzer School of Architecture earns four Independent Projects grants

12. 17. 2025
  • An illustration of a diverse group of young people engaged in design and construction activities around a mobile workshop trailer. The setting is an outdoor park in Queens, New York, with the iconic Unisphere and Citi Field visible in the background. Under a solar-powered trailer, youth are seated at wooden tables sketching and working with tools. The trailer is organized with a pegboard of tools and built-in storage. The overall style is a warm, soft-toned digital illustration with a communal, educational atmosphere. In the bottom right corner, the text reads:

    Image credit: Hung Fai Tang, assisted by AI

Two faculty members and one graduate student of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York have received 2025 Independent Projects grants from the New York State Council on the Arts in conjunction with the Architectural League of New York.

Each $10,000 award was granted for a self-generated year-long project in design practice and research that sought to answer the question of where design can go next. In the 2025 cycle, 25 proposals were selected out of 176 applications by a panel of 12 designers and educators.

The CCNY grant recipients are:

Assistant Prof. Laura Sara Wainer for “The Design Turn: Unpacking Incentives, Values, and Impacts in New York City’s Affordable Housing Architecture” in both Westchester and New York City. The project investigates the “design turn” in New York City’s affordable housing, where rising design ambitions meet deepening scarcity. It examines how architects, policymakers, developers, and residents define and negotiate “good” design, and whether these aspirations expand access to quality housing or reproduce new forms of exclusion. The project aims to identify design strategies that align aesthetic ambitions with housing justice;

Adjunct Lecturer Anoushae Eirabie with Zach Blaue for “Newburgh Tools: Forage & Fabrication Lab.” It identifies and activates high-impact, low-cost sustainable material strategies in the context of urban placemaking through the design and construction of a community tool library. The lab aims to remediate soil, sow and harvest materials on the neglected site, forage waste and surplus substances from the surrounding environment, and implement community workshops to prototype these resources for use in the walls of the building and beyond; and

Graduate student Jian Hao (Vincent) Wu M Arch. ’26 with architect Hung Fai Tang for “You(th) Fab: A Mobile Community Design & Fabrication Lab for Youth in Flushing, Queens,” a mobile design lab for underserved youth aged 12 through 18 to bring hands-on workshops and mentorship into public spaces, including building urban benches, neighborhood kiosks, community displays, and cultural signage, to gain skills and cultivate ownership of their neighborhood. Wu connected with Tang through the Spitzer School of Architecture’s participation in the Architectural League’s Mentorship program. Wu is also an alumni.

“It is a tremendous honor to see the Spitzer School recognized once again by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Architectural League of New York,” said Dean Marta Gutman. “Our awardees represent the very best of our community’s innovative spirit and dedication to expanding the boundaries of design for social impact.”

In 2024, four Spitzer School of Architecture faculty and one alumna were awarded grants.

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Thea Klapwald
e:  tklapwald@ccny.cuny.edu

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