Seth Denizen, an assistant professor of architecture, and Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, a visiting assistant professor of architecture, both at the WashU Sam Fox School, have won the 2026 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize for “Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley.”
Coordinated by the University of Virginia (UVA), the juried prize recognizes outstanding scholarship that breaks new ground on a subject in landscape studies. “Thinking Through Soil,” published last year by Harvard Design Press, explores the largest wastewater agricultural system in the world, centering soil as a way to examine complex environmental challenges.
Jury chair Elizabeth K. Meyer, a landscape architect and professor at UVA, said she appreciated the book’s ability to reveal “the agency of landscape, and particularly soil, through a powerful synthesis of words, images and diagrams.” The work also was praised for bringing clarity to complex urban and rural entanglements that underpin the wastewater agricultural system.
Read more on the Sam Fox School website.
