Rotch Travelling Scholarship 2021 Finalists
The Rotch Travelling Scholarship is an annual two-stage design competition that results in one person, deemed the Rotch Scholar, traveling the world for at least six months studying architecture. In the first stage of the selection process, a weekend-long preliminary design competition is held. Finalists from this competition go on to compete in the second stage, a 10-day competition culminating in a design presentation to a distinguished jury in Boston.
Please use the following pages to explore the competition challenge and the submissions from the finalists below.
Preliminary Competition:
Outdoor Classrooms
This brief asks for a radical reconceptualization of the
elementary school classroom—not only as a temporary
response to the pandemic, but also as a catalyst for new
models of learning for the 21st century. Entries must define
a new and fast-built prototype for an outdoor classroom—a
solution to this pressing moment of remoteness that can
allow children to be together safely—but that might also
spark the creation of new pedagogical models free from the
failed twentieth century school buildings.
To view the full competition brief, click HERE.
Kyle Barker AIA (winner)
William Smith (runner-up)
Final Competition:
Hidden in Plain Sight (Architecture and Latency)
You will design urban form that serves the parallel needs of our digital and physical lives; that provides an architecture for machine needs at the core and human leisure at the edges. The processing program—a data hotel where server space is rented by the square foot, and where performance is measured in latency, energy efficiency, and cooling capacity—will be dark and hidden from sight. Public access to the site will be digital, remote, and invisible but also immediate, tangible, and visible.
To view the full competition brief, click HERE.
Kyle Barker AIA (winner)
William Smith (runner-up)
About the Rotch Travelling Scholarship
FOUNDING
Founded in 1883 in honor of Benjamin Smith Rotch, the Rotch Travelling Scholarship is the oldest of its kind in the United States and its influence has been felt throughout the entire profession. The roster of Rotch Scholars includes 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.
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.
In 2002, the Rotch Trustees expanded upon the mission of architectural education through foreign travel with the establishment of the Rotch Travelling Studio grant.
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 $38,500 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.
