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Arcus Program/Recipients: 2007-08 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002

The 2002 Awards Program distributed a total of $12,000 among five award winners for projects that addressed one of the following themes:

• Transforming design education and professional practice: Awards will be made to support critical initiatives that recognize, enable or support the activities of the LGBTQ community in design education and professional practice. Funding is available for awareness seminars, teach-ins, educational pamphlets and posters that combat homophobia and foster role models for emerging practitioners and educators. Requests will also be considered to fund research into innovative forms of practice and pedagogy.
   
• Supporting critical initiatives in design: Awards will be made to support design research by students or practicing professionals that addresses the relationship between LGBTQ issues and the built environment. Submissions may take the form of critical writing, speculative design inquiry or actual commissions, and range in scale from furniture design to landscape architecture and urban planning proposals. Requests for funds to support creative initiatives in public policy and planning guidelines will also be considered.
   
• Mapping histories of queer space: Awards will be made to support research into the histories of queer communities and related urban/architectural spaces, including (but not limited to) urban and/or architectural histories of the emergence and transformation of LGBTQ neighborhoods, community centers, sites of protest and memory; histories of queers in education and/or professional practice; changing conceptions of queer public and private spaces and their relationship to queer identities.
   

2002 Arcus Endowment Award Winners

Renia Ehrenfeucht
A doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at UCLA, Renia Ehrenfeucht explored the promotional campaign for West Hollywood, Los Angeles, as a “gay city.” Her study traced the history of the campaign, examined its impact on subsequent development plans, and considered its effect on the city’s reputation and local residents. Soon after its incorporation in 1984, West Hollywood, arguably the first gay city in the United States, began a promotional campaign intended, in part, to recast the city's gay image into the more marketable "creative and diverse." In addition to promoting the new image in print media, the city redesigned its main street, Santa Monica Boulevard. This research examined the redesign in light of the image-creation campaign. How does design, and specific elements such as seating, work to change a city's image? What is the redesign's significance if the new image is intentionally controlling the way in which the "gay city" is perceived and experienced?

QED (Queers in Environmental Design)
QED, the queer student organization in the CED, coordinated design workshops and seminars about the relationship between identity, community, queer sexuality and the design process. These culminated in the design and construction of an installation by QED for the 2003 Pride celebrations in San Francisco.

Joel Sanders
Joel Sanders, an architect with a practice in New York City and an Associate Professor of Architecture at Yale University, received the 2002 Arcus Endowment Award of Excellence for his outstanding contribution to the field of queer design theory, practice and criticism. The award supported the publication of his book, Bachelors of Architecture. He also gave the first annual Arcus Endowment Lecture at UC Berkeley in the Spring term of 2003. What role does architecture — broadly defined as the sum total of elements from walls to wall-coverings — play in the fabrication of gender and in particular, queer identities? Much of Sanders' work has been devoted to investigating this complex question. The 2002 Arcus Award allowed him to compile this body of work in one volume published by Monacelli Press in the spring of 2003. Looking at the built environment through a queer lens, the monograph weaves together writings and projects (both speculative and built) that advocate the creation of polymorphous environments responsive to our increasingly fluid personal and professional identities.

Sonny Ward
Sonny Ward, a designer at the Russell Group in West Hollywood, California, designed and built a low-cost shelter from recycled materials for Camp Sister Spirit (CSS), a lesbian and feminist safe living and education center in rural Mississippi. CSS is a non-profit organization serving a politically disconnected, economically weak, and socially ostracized community in rural Mississippi. The growth of this lesbian and feminist educational center resulted in an increased need for facilities. Cardboard, a byproduct of the very economy and culture that shuts CSS out, allowed them to meet many of their construction needs while also allowing them to promote a more respectful relationship with the environment. The project detailed a design and building technique for the construction of compressed cardboard cabins for Camp Sister Spirit. The first cabin was scheduled for completion in April 2003.

Susan P. Wyche
Susan Wyche, a graduate student in the Department of Human-Environment Relations at Cornell University, examined how long-term care environments can better accommodate the needs of LGBT seniors. Her findings were distributed to relevant health care professionals and community groups. Approximately one to three million Americans over 65 years of age are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT). Previous research indicates more than half of New York's nursing home workers are intolerant or condemning of same-sex relationships among residents. Susan Wyche's research used survey and interview techniques to further understand nursing homes' attitudes towards the LGBT community. Interviews were also conducted with members from the aging LGBT community to better understand their needs. The end product was an informational program to educate New York State's nursing homes about LGBT elder's unique needs. Wyche believes that proactive steps need to be taken now to ensure nursing homes are safe for our LGBT elders.

2002 Awards Jury

Roddy Creedon
Adjunct Professor of Architecture, UC Berkeley

Greig Crysler
Assistant Professor of Architecture and Program Director, Arcus Endowment, UC Berkeley

Matt Donham
M.L.Arch. Student, UC Berkeley

Harrison Fraker
Dean of the College of Environmental Design and William Wurster Professor of Architecture, UC Berkeley

Caren Kaplan
Associate Professor of Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley

Moira Kenney
Author and Planner, Berkeley

Jon Stryker
President, Arcus Foundation, Kalamazoo, Michigan