AIA Europe supports the future generation of architects who aim to think and work across borders.

The 2023 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Brittany Siegert

Brittany Siegert, AIA grew up in Clayton, a satellite town of Raleigh, North Carolina. She received her Bachelor of Architecture in 2020 with honors from North Carolina State University. 

After working for several years at in situ studio, an intentionally small, design-based architecture practice in Raleigh, she moved to Madrid to participate in the 2023 edition of the Master in Collective Housing. MCH is a post-graduate professional program focusing on cities and housing hosted by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and ETH Zurich. The program challenges existing standards of housing and conceptualizes a future of housing that is more amenable to all, providing a framework to implement the beliefs that housing is crucial infrastructure for the health of our cities and a right for every individual.

Upon completion of the master’s program, Brittany hopes to stay in Europe to practice, research, and teach. She will use the AIA Europe Scholarship funds to pursue opportunities to continue housing research and to purchase the necessary design tools and supplies throughout the remainder of her studies. 

The 2022 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Thomas Ibrahim

Thomas Ibrahim is an architecture graduate and initiator of Kibe-Projekt and Inhabit! in Tbilisi, Georgia — projects focused on the appropriation of historically significant monuments through focal interventions. These projects are done with the intention of catalyzing further communal adaptations and appropriations, bringing conserved structures to contemporary relevance for collective needs. His research and practice has been exploring buildings as complex assemblages; giving equal priority to all material manipulations by human and non-human agents, and emphasizing the evolution of buildings as morpho-political objects which tell the narrative of the city through their strata. The interest in practice goes beyond building: emphasizing cultural evolution, collective habits, the individuation of communities, and the attenuation of culturally reductive and subverted nationalist narratives.

Ibrahim completed his Bachelor of Science in Design (BSD) in Architecture at The Design School at Arizona State University in 2017. He subsequently initiated the Undetermined symposium in 2017 to broaden the discourse on the adaptive reuse of non-functioning Late-Soviet civic buildings in Tbilisi. In 2018, he co-organized the inaugural Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, conducting the New Economies, New Landscapes (Informalities) Panel, among other lectures and events. He has contributed to peer-reviewed architecture journals, and participated in international exhibitions and conferences. In 2022, he completed his Master of Science (MSc) in Architecture at Delft University of Technology with the thesis The House is Never Complete which is focused on alternative conservation practices for the ezo (courtyard) housing typology in Tbilisi.

The 2019 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Michael Salka

Michael Salka is a Gates Cambridge PhD in Architecture candidate (2021 - 2025) at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, with a Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings& Biocities (2018 - 2019) from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Barcelona, Spain, and a Bachelor in Environmental Design (2009 - 2014) from the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.

Michael’s formative years in the southwest Rocky Mountains were spent shaping, and shaped by, non-human nature. His architectural career proceeded to harness environmental forces through the planning, design and construction of communal rainwater catchment pavilions in Rwanda; solar/geo-thermal powered, net-zero energy neighborhoods and mixed-use urban infill projects in the USA; and prototypical, self-sufficient, digitally-fabricated engineered timber homes, greenhouses, public space interventions, and future ‘Biocities‘ in Spain. His academic work has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while his architectural work has been published in such popular media outlets as The New York Times. Currently, his doctoral research investigates how geospatial data can inform nature-based value chains for development which catalyze the sustainable regional economies we’ll need to meet the demand for a worldwide doubling of built floor area by 2060 - while mitigating and adapting to global climate change by advancing carbon neutrality, resource security, biodiversity, and ecologic resilience alongside human health and wellbeing. This research is a direct evolution of the design+build master’s thesis completed at IAAC’s Valldaura Labs with support from the 2019 AIA Europe Scholarship and presented at the 2019 AIA Continental Europe Conference in Brussels.

The 2018 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Amanda Bryant

Amanda Bryant is a graduate student at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. From Louisville, KY, she received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from The University of Kentucky in 2014. After gaining work experience in the architecture field, Amanda chose to pursue a Masters of Urbanism from TU Delft. 

The program at TU Delft Urbanism offers a unique design approach to research when compared to planning and policy studies in the United States.  Amanda’s master’s thesis applies this way of working to the U.S. context and focuses on The Effects of Automobile Dependence on U.S. Cities as her main topic. Her interests lie in the design of public spaces and the impact that transportation has on them and the people who live in the city. In addition, she aims to make the connection between the U.S. and European approach to urbanism in order to improve the built environment at both the scale of the street and the city. Amanda will present the findings from her master thesis at the AIA conference in Budapest in September. 

The 2017 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Johana Elizabeth Monroy

Johana Monroy is a Masters Student at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC) in Barcelona, Spain. Johana is from Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. where she received her Bachelor of Architecture with Honors from the Pratt Institute in 2013.

Johana will present her current work and research at the AIA Europe / AIA International Region Conference in Prague this October. Johana says of her time studying in Europe, "My goal is to share with others the many things I have learned here. I plan to teach at a university and impact students in their thinking that architecture involves learning from many disciplines, understanding a multitude of cultures, accepting different ways of living and thinking, and making design come alive through experiences that are outside of your comfort zone." We look forward to welcoming Johana in Prague.

2016 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Jasmin Sadegh.

Jasmin Sadegh is a graduate student at the University of Stuttgart Integrative Technology and Architectural Design Research program (ITECH).  After earning a degree in Civil Engineering from Tufts University, USA in 2013, Jasmin moved to Germany to immerse herself in the legacy of German collaborative architectural-engineering practices.  At ITECH, she studies architectural design from various perspectives, including structural, computational and fabrication, while her Master's research focuses on lightweight textile structures and Frei Otto’s form finding methods developed in Stuttgart.

2015 AIA Europe Scholarship Recipient, Julia Kwolyk.

Julia earned her Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia in May of 2015 where she graduated with a concentration in Design and Health and Historic Preservation. In July of 2015 she was awarded the The AIA Europe Scholarship to attend the Fontainebleau School outside of Paris, France. At the Fontainebleau, she worked closely with classical musicians and contemporary composers, relating music to architecture through the concept of resonance. Julia's prior educational background is in classical music; she holds a B.A. in Music from Furman University and has continued her vocal and violin performance career while studying architecture, drawing on her understanding of structure and pattern to influence her design process.  She currently lives in Charlottesville, VA, and works for VMDO Architects, a collaborative firm that designs 21st century schools for progressive education.  Julia describes her experience with AIA Europe:  "I am forever grateful to the AIA Europe Chapter and Alan Schwartzman for the generous gift that allowed me to study at The Fontainebleau School.  The professional support and engaging conversations that I had with Bertrand Coldefy and other architects during that summer and during my subsequent participation in the AIA Europe Vienna Conference have continued to inspire me both professionally and personally."  She can be contacted at kwolyk@vmdo.com.