Alumna Jennifer Siegal Wins 4th Annual arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture

On April 7, arcVision announced that alumna Jennifer Siegal (M.Arch '94) is the winner of the 4th annual arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture, an international award for women in architecture organized by Italcementi. According to the release, the jury voted unanimously to award Siegal the prize. She is described as “a fearless pioneer in the research and development of prefabricated construction systems, at low prices for disadvantaged users and areas, who has been able to invent and build practical solutions and a new language for mobile and low-cost housing.”

The acrVision Prize was established to bring global attention to female designers. The annual award is given to a “female architect whose work includes technological innovation, sustainability and design culture in a harmonious combination of function and style." The Prize will allow Siegal to conduct a research project and workshop at i.lab, Italcementi Group Research and Innovation Center in Bergamo. A cash prize is also awarded.

The jury was comprised of top professionals from a range of disciplines including Shaikha Al Maskari (member of the board of the Arab International Women's Forum-AIWF), Vera Baboun (Mayor of Bethlehem), Odile Decq (owner of the Odile Decq architecture firm), Yvonne Farrell (co-founder of Grafton Architects), Daniela Hamaui (journalist), Louisa Hutton (co-founder of the Sauerbruch Hutton architectural practice), Suhasini Mani Ratnam (an Indian actress, producer and writer), Samia Nkrumah (President of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Center), Benedetta Tagliabue (owner of the Miralles Tagliabue EMBT architectural firm), Martha Thorne (Director of the Pritzker Prize).

Jennifer Siegal is known for her work in creating the mobile home of the twentieth century. She is founder and principal of the Los Angeles-based firm Office of Mobile Design (OMD), which is dedicated to the design and construction of ecologically sound, dynamic structures, utilizing portable and prefabricated architecture. She earned a master’s degree from SCI-Arc in 1994 and was a 2003 Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she explored the use of intelligent, kinetic, and lightweight materials. In 1997 she was in-residence at the Chinati Foundation and in 2004 a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony in her hometown, Peterborough, New Hampshire. She was the inaugural Julius Shulman Institute Fellow at Woodbury University, and is presently an Adjunct Associate Professor at USC. She is the editor of both Mobile: the Art of Portable Architecture (2002), More Mobile: Portable Architecture for Today (2008), and was the founder and series editor of Materials Monthly (2005-6), published by Princeton Architectural Press. A monograph on Jennifer Siegal was published in 2005.