Rotch Travelling Scholarship 2024 Finalists
Pardon Our Appearance
Maintenance work is all around us, yet it is 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 Traveling 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.
Preliminary Competition
Face Value
In Boston’s Downtown Crossing, a neighborhood spanning less than 1.5 square miles, there are currently over 50 vacant retail storefronts, totaling roughly 300,000 square feet. Some of these properties have been subjected to a rapid turnover of failed businesses, others have remained unoccupied for years, taking a toll on neighboring property values, and perceptions of public safety. Lined with sheets of plywood, brown butcher paper, or glossy vinyl advertisements, vacancy reduces the architecture of the storefront to a single, defensive surface—a universal symbol of the privatization of the public realm, and a loss of faith in the possibility of a return to collective life. But what if we looked beyond this image of abandonment? What would we find in the empty spaces that are left behind? Could these gaps within an otherwise saturated real-estate market tell us something about the possibility of life after retail?
The 2024 Rotch Preliminary Competition builds on the momentum of our current moment to
call for radical reuse scenarios for the retail storefront that reposition this overlooked typology
as a public good. Devoid of its original function, the vacant storefront serves as a provocative
site for exploring alternative spatial practices, programmatic pairings, or forms of collective
maintenance that reimagine how private resources could be redistributed for public use.
The site for the project takes the form of two vacant retail storefronts—Building A (No. 40-42) and Building B (No. 44-46)—located next to each other on Winter Street in Downtown Crossing. Both properties were previously occupied by commercial tenants and vacated during
the past year.
View the full preliminary competition brief.
Lindsey Krug (Winner)
Nathan Karlsen (Runner Up)
Final Competition
Maintenance Planning
Maintaining our cities is an essential but often overlooked component of urban living. In addition to the buildings that make up a city’s urban fabric, infrastructural systems such as roads, bridges, tunnels, public transit, etc., must all be maintained in coordination. In the United States, this responsibility falls predominantly on governmental Public Works departments, whose ongoing efforts ensure the smooth operation of our cities.
The Boston Public Works (BPW) department is responsible for maintenance throughout the city. BPW’s website states:
“Our department provides core basic services essential to neighborhood quality of life. We direct the general construction, maintenance, and cleaning of approximately 802 miles of roadways throughout the City. We operate two major drawbridges, maintain 68,055 City-owned street lights, and supervise contracts for the removal and disposal of approximately 260,000 tons of solid waste. We also operate Boston’s recycling program with an annual diversion of approximately 44,000 tons.”
This year's Rotch Traveling Scholarship’s Final competition brief seeks proposals that improve the overall appearance and site of the BPW facility, making the building and its site more accessible and engaging with its community and its adjacent urban fabric.
View the final competition brief.
Lindsey Krug (Winner)
Nathan Karlsen (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.
