Through Nov. 1, the American Academy in Rome will be accepting applications for the 2012 Rome Prize, awarded to 30 emerging artists, designers, writers, and scholars. Fields honored include architecture, landscape architecture, design, and historic preservation and conservation. Recipients of the fellowship, which lasts either six or 11 months, receive a stipend, meals, a bedroom, and a studio or study at the academy, located atop Rome’s Janiculum hill.
Of the 2011 fellows, two are architects. Angela Co, founding principal of Studio Co, is researching the Baroque style with an eye toward contemporary applications. Lonn Combs, founding principal at New York’s Easton + Coombs, is studying the material innovations of 20th-century Italian engineer and architect Pier Luigi Nervi, specifically his reinforced concrete. Architect featured the 2010 architecture fellows, Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller of Agency Architecture, in our July 2011 emerging talent section.
The academy dates to the 1893 World Fair, when architect Charles McKim and a host of sculptors and painters envisioned a colony for studying art amid Rome’s classical ruins. With financial backing from J.P. Morgan and John Rockefeller, McKim established the American School of Architecture in 1894, a forerunner to the modern academy. Chartered by Congress in 1905, the school has housed over 1,000 fellows, including composer Aaron Copeland and writer Ralph Ellison. Winners of the 2012 Prize will be announced in late April.
