It is with great pride and pleasure that we share the news that the Canada Council has awarded the 2016 Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners to Piper Bernbaum.
Piper recently graduated with a M.ARCH from the Waterloo Architecture program. Her thesis, entitled “Atlas of Legal Fictions”, considered the Eruv, a boundary created by Jewish communities to delineate a space that can be considered private, forming a ritual enclosure on the Sabbath for orthodox Jews. Through maps and photographic surveys, she analyzed theses spaces and produced an exemplary thesis that looked at the architectural presence, the urban dimensions and the social implications of these religious spaces that effectively overlap with the public realm. (Her thesis can be downloaded here).
With the Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners Grant, Piper will continue to research the Jewish Eruv in Israel and Poland, considering it specifically as a multicultural architecture of place-making and plurality in modern cities. She will also be collaborating with an expert on the Eruv Manuel Herz, an architect based in Basel, Switzerland.
After conducting her research and internship, Piper’s ambition is to return to Waterloo Architecture to share her research as part of a broader conference on multiculturalism in architectural practice, using the Eruv as a way of investigating other aspects of peaceful cohabitation in Canada’s urban multicultural landscape. It is great to know that Piper will be back to continue to share her work here at the School!
This price is a wonderful honour to Piper, as it is for Waterloo Architecture. The Prix de Rome is awarded annually to a recent graduate from a Canadian School of Architecture in recognition of exceptional promise in architectural design. For additional details on the price, you can visit the Canada Council webpage.
Congratulations Piper!