Rotch Travelling Scholarship
The Rotch Travelling Scholarship provides one emerging professional with $40,000 to travel the world for a minimum of six months to study architecture.
Founded in 1883, the Rotch Travelling Scholarship—the oldest of its kind in the United States—has been awarded to many of the country’s most distinguished architects: Henry Bacon, Ralph Walker, Wallace Harrison, Louis Skidmore, Edward D. Stone, Gordon Bunshaft, Victor Lundy and many others.
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About the 2024 Rotch Travelling Scholarship
The application deadline for the 2024 Rotch Travelling Scholarship has passed.
2024 Theme: "Pardon Our Appearance"
Maintenance work is all around us, yet almost always hidden from public view. It takes place during the peripheral hours of the day and at the margins of our spatial imaginaries, in stark contrast to established narratives of progress and innovation that lie at the very core of the architectural profession. This year’s Rotch Travelling Scholarship invites participants to explore the underlying regimes of maintenance and care that shape the built environment: from domestic rituals of cleaning and repair, to the stewardship of existing building stock and material resources, to the collective upkeep of our public spaces and infrastructural systems. By re-positioning the architect as a caretaker of the people, places, and resources around them, the competition invites proposals that shift our understanding of maintenance from a remedial act to a critical framework for exploring alternative value systems, spatial practices, and material ethics.
Key Dates:
* Applications due: Friday, January 19, 2024
* Qualified applicants notified: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
* Start of preliminary competition at 12:00 PM EST: Friday, February 23, 2024
* End of preliminary competition at 12:00 PM EST: Monday, February 26, 2024
* Finalists notified: Friday, March 1, 2024
* Start of final competition: Friday, April 5, 2024
* End of final competition: Monday, April 15, 2024
* Jury for final competition + Winner Announcement: Friday, April 19, 2024
Benjamin Smith Rotch of Milton, Massachusetts studied painting in Paris in 1847 and cultivated an early appreciation for the value of foreign travel in stimulating young architects’ imagination through contact with great buildings of the past. One of his sons, Arthur Rotch, studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1874 to 1879 and further cemented this belief, as well as the Rotchs’ active patronage to fellow artists.
Upon the senior Rotch’s death in 1882, Arthur and his siblings—Abbot Lawrence, Edith, Aimee (Mrs. Winthrop Sargent) and Annie Lawrence (Mrs. Horatio Appleton Lamb)—established the Rotch Travelling Scholarship on October 1, 1883.
Today, the Rotch Travelling Scholarship provides one emerging professional—an architecture graduate of the past 10 years, with one year of experience in a Massachusetts firm or a degree from a Massachusetts institution—with a stiped to cover a minimum of six months of travel and architecture study abroad.
In 2002, the Rotch Trustees expanded upon the mission of architectural education through foreign travel with the establishment of the Rotch Travelling Studio grant.
The Value of Travel Scholarships
Past Rotch Exhibitions
2023—Rotch Scholar: Stephanie Lloyd
2022—Rotch Scholar: William Smith
2021—Rotch Scholar: Kyle Barker
Meet the Rotch Travelling Scholars—Emerging Projects
Session hosted June 15, 2021
About the Rotch Travelling Scholarship with Peter Wiederspahn AIA
Endowment
When the Rotch family executed an indenture of trust on December 29, 1883 for “the advancement of education in architecture,” the stipend was set at $1,000 per year for two years of travel abroad. In 1912, the stipend amount began to increase gradually until 1936, when the Rotch Trustees and Scholarship Committee substantially increased the sum and reduced the required travel time. Today, the Rotch Scholar receives $40,000 or more for at least six months of travel.
History
In 1980, the Rotch Trustees requested that the Boston Society of Architects appoint a Rotch Scholarship Committee to advise and “develop a scheme of examinations.”
From the start, applicants were expected to be proficient in a variety of topics, including knowledge of architectural history, construction, French and drawings from the cast. In 1892, a two-stage system of design examinations was established. The preliminary jury would select several drawings that displayed evidence of “architectural potential” from which the final jury would select the Rotch Scholar. In 1959, the Rotch Scholarship Committee moved from this type of preliminary competition toward a “search for imaginative capacity” in future Rotch Scholars. Today, that search is conducted through a two-stage design competition.
Contact
If you have any questions about the competition, please reach out to Ben Peterson at [email protected].
