About The Prize
Raymond Lifchez
1932-2023
The international Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence (BERKELEY PRIZE) was founded by Raymond Lifchez, Emeritus Professor of Architecture and City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED), through the result of a generous gift to the CED's Department of Architecture by the late Judith Lee Stronach.
During the past twenty-five years, the Prize has received 2985 Essay, Travel, and other Fellowship proposals from 3785 individual students representing dozens of schools of architecture in 88 countries. The Prize has responded by making 188 cash awards to 225 individual students.Please See, In Memoriam: Raymond Lifchez
The Endowment Berkeley Prize Through The Years Book In Progress
Student Participants
Countries
Awards Granted
Individual Winners
Berkeley Prize Through The Years
Question To Past Winners: How do you think the Prize has influenced your professional life as an architect or in any other profession or career pursuit?
Benard Acellam, Assistant Architect at DE-ZYN FORUM LTD; Assistant Lecturer in Architecture at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; BP Essay Prize Winner, 2015.
Essay Prize
Each year, the PRIZE Committee selects a topic critical to the investigation of the social art of architecture and poses a Question based on that topic. Full-time undergraduate students in an architecture degree program or majoring in architecture in accredited schools of architecture throughout the world, including Diploma in Architecture students, may submit a 500-word essay proposal responding to the Question. Entries by teams of two students are encouraged and the second team member can be an undergraduate studying in fields related to architecture.
2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999Question To Past Winners: How do you think the Prize has influenced your professional life as an architect or in any other profession or career pursuit?
Philipp Goertz, Graduate Student at RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; BP Travel Fellow, 2018
Travel Fellowship
Semifinalists who select this option are invited to submit proposals demonstrating how they would use the opportunity to travel to an architecturally-significant destination of their choosing, preferably to participate in a hands-on service-oriented situation. This is an exciting opportunity to explore a different part of the world and to participate in an organized project that will assist the winner in gaining a deeper understanding of the social art of architecture.
2023 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004Past Fellowships
Community Service Fellowship Competition
Semifinalists who select to compete for a Community Service Fellowship are invited to submit proposals demonstrating how they would use the opportunity to initiate a program or join an on-going program that reflects the content of their Essay proposals. This is an exciting opportunity to explore how to start and/or to participate in an organized project that will assist in the overall understanding and application of the social art of architecture.
Architectural Design Fellowship
From 2008 to 2011 the BERKELEY PRIZE Committee offered students the opportunity to compete in the Architectural Design Fellowship Competition to foster the study of the social art of architecture by helping to sponsor local and regional architectural student design competitions that were run by students themselves. This competition challenged the candidates to produce a thorough and practical proposal for a design competition that would benefit their community and bring attention to the resources available to the community from their school.
Teaching Fellowship
From 2013 to 2014 a new BERKELEY PRIZE Teaching Fellowship was offered to undergraduate architecture studio design faculty from around the world. The primary goal of this Fellowship was to support innovative thinking by faculty as they work to focus their students' attention on the social, behavioral, and physical characteristics of the users of the buildings and spaces being designed.
Each year the Berkeley Prize Committee invites a distinguished professor or scholar in the field of architecture or the related social sciences to write about some aspect of the year's Berkeley Prize topic.
- They are meant to help focus students' thoughts on the issues surrounding the year's Question.
- They are a model for excellence in writing.
- They exhibit both how defined and how broad the range of possible response to a Question.
The social art of architecture encompasses a large field of inquiry that links design studies to people studies. In an ever-growing corpus of published work, researchers from a variety of disciplines work with architects to investigate how to make architecture better for all people. The various topics of the history of the BERKELEY PRIZE give a glimpse into the range of these studies. Each year, the PRIZE publishes "resources" to help participants further understand the specific topics. Included in The LIbrary is a selection of these resources as well as other articles and links that detail why architecture is and must be, first and foremost, about people.
Learn moreCommittee Members
Click on the individual photos to see the Member's full profile
Question To Past Winners: How do you think the Prize has influenced your professional life as an architect or in any other profession or career pursuit?
Ghina Kanawati, Architect and Researcher at CatalyticAction, Beirut, Lebanon; BP Essay Winner, 2018
Berkeley Prize In The News
Conversations on Social Justice and Design
The College of Environmental Design and the Department of Architecture hosted a day-long symposium in April 2022 titled Conversations on Social Justice and Design, to honor Professor Emeritus Raymond Lifchez, Founder and Chair of the BERKELEY PRIZE. The symposium featured a spectacular list of speakers who have been instrumental leaders in shaping contemporary practices addressing social justice, particularly in universal design.
Speakers included Darren Walker, Maddy Burke-Vigeland, Jeffrey Mansfield, Elaine Ostroff, Valerie Fletcher, Victor Pineda, and Susan Schwelk with a keynote talk by Christopher Downey, our inaugural Lifchez Professor of Practice in Social Justice.
