Internationally acclaimed architect Craig Dykers will chair the jury for Washington University in St. Louis’ 2012 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition.
Dykers is co-founder of Snøhetta, an architecture, landscape architecture and interior design firm with offices in Oslo, Norway, and New York City. Major projects include design of Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo and the recently opened National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the former World Trade Center site in New York.
The Steedman Competition, sponsored biennially by the College of Architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is open to young architects from around the world. Winners receive a cash prize to support study and research abroad.
For 2012, the first place award will be $50,000 — up from $30,000 in 2010 — making it one of the largest competition prizes in the United States.
Dykers, who will serve as the Sam Fox School’s Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor of Architecture this spring, will be joined on the Steedman jury by Brad Cloepfil, principal of Allied Works Architecture in Portland and New York; and by Sarah Dunn and Martin Felsen, principals of UrbanLab of Chicago.
In addition, Dykers will speak about his work at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, for the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series. The talk is free and open to the public and takes place in Steinberg Auditorium.
Registration for the Steedman Competition is currently under way. The program will be announced Feb. 17, with competition entries due April 2.
Applicants must be graduates of an accredited school of architecture, and must currently be employed in — or have completed at least one year of practical experience in — the office of a practicing architect. Applicants are eligible to compete for up to eight years after receipt of their professional degrees, regardless of age.
For more information or for registration materials, visit steedmancompetition.com.
Craig Dykers
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1961, Dykers has lived extensively in both Europe and North America. He earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, following initial studies in medicine and art.
After working in Texas and California, Dykers co-founded Snøhetta with Kjetil Thorsen in Oslo, Norway, in 1989 — the same year the firm won the international competition to design the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Snøhetta established its New York office in 2004, the year it was awarded the commission for the September 11 Museum.
Other major projects include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expansion, the redesign of Times Square and the newly completed Wolfe Center for the Arts at Bowling Green State University.
Dykers’ work has received numerous awards, including the Mies van der Rohe Prize (2009) and two World Architecture Awards for best cultural building, for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (2002) and for the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet (2008).
A member of the Norwegian Architecture Association and the American Institute of Architects, Dykers is a fellow in the Royal Society of Arts in England and vice president of the Norwegian American Chamber of Commerce. In addition, Dykers has been the diploma adjudicator at the Architectural College in Oslo and a distinguished professor at City College of New York.
Steedman Fellowship
Granted since 1925, the Steedman Fellowship is awarded biennially on the basis of an international design competition. The fellowship enables graduates of accredited professional programs in architecture around the world to travel for architectural research and study in countries for a period of nine months.
The award is based on the quality of the selected winner’s competition design entry, as well as the merits of the research and travel proposal.
The Steedman Fellowship is supported by an endowment — given to the Sam Fox School’s College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design — in honor of James Harrison Steedman, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Washington University in 1889.
The memorial was established by Steedman’s widow, Mrs. Alexander Weddel, and by Steedman’s brother, George.