The SOM Foundation supports individuals with the highest aspirations to enhance the design of the built environment.
2025 China Fellowship
Rising Tides, Resilient Lives: Reimagining Vulnerable Communities in the River Deltas of Kampung Melayu, Jakarta
Hao Chang
Reclaiming the Negative Space. © Hao Chang.
Call for Applications
Research Prize Applications Open in September 2025
European Research Prize Applications Open in September 2025
Robert L. Wesley Award Applications Open in September 2025
Featured Fellow
Constructive Land
2021 European Research Prize
Paloma Gormley
Summer Islam
University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins
Spatial Practices Program
Clearfell House. © Material Cultures.
1:1 Sycamore fragment, 2022. © Emily Llumigusin and Michael Parish, MArch Unit 3, UAL x Material Cultures.
1:1 Eucalyptus fragment, 2022. © Sabina Shaybazyan and Adam Stanford, MArch Unit 3, UAL x Material Cultures.
Past
Creating New Architecture Through Research: On Materiality
The second International Research and Design Forum took place on Friday, October 14 and Saturday, October 15, 2022, and was organized by the SOM Foundation in partnership with the Cluster of Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC) at the University of Stuttgart. The two-day event included presentations by academics and industry leaders whose body of work, creativity, and expertise inspire the future of materiality in the built world. Read
Recent News
SOM Foundation Announces Winners of the 2025 China Fellowship
The SOM Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 SOM Foundation China Fellowship. Hao Chang, Lu Ming, and Zhang Nan will each receive $5,000 to conduct independent travel and research that contributes to this year’s topic, “Advancing Toward a Water-Secure Future.”
Miro’s Chicago: The Iconic Public Sculpture That Almost Wasn’t
Spanish artist Joan Miró’s first large-scale public sculpture was commissioned in the early 1960s by Bruce Graham as part of his design for the Brunswick Building in Chicago. While the building was completed in 1965, Miró’s work remained unrealized, and its future seemed more than uncertain. Fifteen years later, plans for Miro’s Chicago were revived and, in 1981, the now-beloved abstract sculpture finally found her rightful place in Chicago, supported in part by a donation from the SOM Foundation.
SOM Foundation and MAK Center for Art and Architecture Announce Winner of the 2025 Researcher-in-Residence
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture and the SOM Foundation are pleased to announce that Pablo Castillo Luna has been awarded the 2025 Researcher-in-Residence. Pablo Castillo Luna is a Canary Islands-born architect and educator who teaches at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Castillo Luna will receive a $5,000 stipend and a six-week summer residency in Los Angeles in the live/work space at the MAK Center’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House designed by R.M. Schindler (1936) for work related to his research proposal, “A Permeable Atlas.”