Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation Announces 2022 John Belle Travel Fellowship Recipient

June 14, 2022
The Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation is pleased to announce Clare Fentress as the recipient of the 2022 John Belle Travel Fellowship. 

The John Belle Travel Fellowship is a $10,000 annual award by the Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation in honor of John Belle, FAIA, RIBA, Hon. PhD, a founding partner of Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners. John devoted his career to the public realm—the planning, design, restoration, and adaptive reuse of public buildings and urban centers.

The purpose of the Fellowship is to expand students’ understanding of the public realm in existing cities, through travel and research, and to inspire application of that knowledge toward contemporary urban needs and design challenges. Each year, application is open to students of any nationality in their penultimate year of a Master's degree program in Architecture, Historic Preservation, and/or Urban Design at 35 schools in the US, UK, and Canada.

This year's Fellowship will support Clare Fentress, a graduate student at the Yale School of Architecture, in her investigation of experimental urban paradigms for death and remembrance. Clare's project will include an exploration of the impact of these spaces on mourners, the community, the public realm, and the climate. The project’s comprehensive focus on structures in Tokyo, Taipei, and Manila—specifically as architectural precedents that offer intimacy, engage the public, and enrich both their built and natural contexts—impressed this year’s jury. 

Last year’s Fellowship supported William Hansen, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, and his project More Than Music, an investigation of the role of modernist social housing in the genesis of hip hop music..

About the Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation

The Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation's mission is inspired by the core values of Beyer Blinder Belle, which from its founding defined an approach to design focused on architecture empowering people—through their interaction on streets and in neighborhoods, and through their connections to the surrounding built environment. 

Through fellowships, grants, and other initiatives, the Foundation engages the full cycle of design, from inspiring young people to enter the profession, to supporting graduate research, to enabling thoughtful, socially-conscious design and planning that directly benefits communities. 

In 2021, the Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation’s Youth Education Grant was extended for the fifth consecutive year to the ACE Mentor Program of Greater New York. The Grant allows ACE to provide scholarships for two high school students pursuing higher education in architecture, urban design, or historic preservation. 

In addition, the Department of Architecture at Howard University’s College of Engineering and Architecture and the Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation established a new annual scholarship program in 2020. A separate annual scholarship began in 2021 with The University of District of Columbia. This year the Foundation is adding a new annual scholarship at The City College of New York Spitzer School of Architecture. The Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation is committed to expanding diversity within the architectural profession, and is pleased to offer this support to students in their continuing education.

CONTACT

Beyer Blinder Belle Foundation 
(212) 353-6798
info@beyerblinderbellefoundation.org