2017 marked the first year of the UVA Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes and Places, an annual $5000 prize, open to undergraduate and graduate students across the University of Virginia. The prize is named in honor of Richard Guy Wilson, a noted architectural historian and the Commonwealth Professor in Architectural History at UVA’s School of Architecture. Wilson left a lasting impression on Mallory Walker, an alumnus of the College of Arts and Sciences, when he was a student in Wilson’s class. As Walker described, “Professor Wilson is an extraordinary teacher at ease in demonstrating how political, economic, technological and artistic elements influence what we see and vice versa. He asks students to think about objects and places and the forces that were at work when a building or space was conceived. Were there political considerations? Was there a new artistic style created at the time? Did the building or place utilize a new technology? He asks us to critically think about the larger context of time and place when we study the constructed world.” The impact of Wilson’s teaching and his ability to inspire this kind of criticality led Mallory to generously endow the prize in Wilson’s honor with a recent gift of $100,000. The Richard Guy Wilson Prize now supports current and future students in their scholarship, research and study of places, and these places’ contexts and impacts on our lives.

Wilson’s accomplished career has been dedicated to the critical study of American architecture from the 18th to the 20th centuries, including the authorship or co-authorship of sixteen books on the subject. Specifically, Wilson has made major written contributions on the work of renowned architects, RM Schindler, David Alder, and McKim, Mead & White. As a curator, major museum exhibitions on the American Renaissance, the Arts and Crafts Movement in America, the Machine Age in America, and Thomas Jefferson’s role as an architect for the University of Virginia have been crafted by Wilson’s vision. His most recent exhibition, opening in late January 2018 at the Fralin Museum of Art at UVA, is titled From the Grounds Up: Thomas Jefferson’s Architecture and Design. Curated by Wilson, the exhibition will investigate and illuminate Jefferson’s many architectural accomplishments as well as the classical tradition to which his architecture was aligned. Consisting of drawings, prints, paintings, photographs, building artifacts and other archival materials, the exhibition will elucidate how the built environment created by Jefferson was a testament to his far-reaching philosophy and vision, grounded on education’s central place in a free society.

This value in the ethical role of education and its connection to the built world is at the core of UVA’s mission and is carried forward by the UVA Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes and Places. Its first recipient in 2017, Claire Eager (PhD, English, 2017), was awarded this honor for her submission titled, “Complicit Paradise: Invasive Species and Collaborative Design in Donne and Bedford’s Twick(e)n(h)am,” a chapter from her PhD dissertation.

“It is an honor to receive the first RGW prize. It will allow me to continue my ongoing field research investigating how the sensory effects of paradisal settings in texts accord with the physical experiences of extant and restored period gardens in the UK and elsewhere,” said Eager. Eager’s submission, working between literary study and garden history, exemplified the way in which place (in this case, the English garden at Twickenham Park) can be examined through a particular lens (in this case the poem by John Donne), and can simultaneously be the lens for understanding and contextualizing a literary work (in this case, the history of the garden and its design helps to clarify the setting described in the poem). Eager, now a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Department of English at UVA, received the Richard Guy Wilson Prize in early December 2017 at a dinner hosted by the Dean of the Library John Unsworth and his wife, Maggie, in Pavilion II on the Lawn. In addition, Matthew Scarnaty (MArch and MLA, 2017), was awarded an honorable mention for his submission, a cultural landscape analysis of the history of local food production in downtown Charlottesville, incorporating diverse sources – oral history, cartographic interpretation, and contemporary diagrams – to reveal unexpected insights into Charlottesville’s socio-ecological history.

Submissions for the prize are reviewed annually by a rotating panel of UVA faculty members from various disciplines. Last year’s reviewers included faculty from Creative Writing, American Studies, Landscape Architecture and Architectural History, underscoring the inherently interdisciplinary nature of scholarship on place and the importance of perspectives that are both heterogeneous, analytical and creative. Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture and Chair of the 2017 RGW Prize jury, Beth Meyer, noted of the first round of submissions, “This year’s jury enjoyed reviewing essays, research papers, urban analyses, and design proposals for a broad array of themes and places. Our students’ varied interests and experiences, evident in their submissions, captured Wilson’s intellectual breadth and our donor’s aspirations. For over four decades, Wilson has shared his curiosity about the constructed environment of places—from the house and individual building to campuses, exhibition grounds, public landscapes, suburbs and cities.”

The UVA Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes and Places provides students, both undergraduate and graduate, with an opportunity to examine and reflect upon the value of place – and the diverse ways through which we all contribute to the shaping of the built and natural environment. The prize encourages students from any discipline at UVA to participate; submissions include but are not limited to writing, design, poetry, painting, legal/business briefs, scholarly research and essays, film, and photography. During his recognized tenure at UVA, Richard Guy Wilson has significantly impacted (and continues to impact) the lives of innumerous students through his knowledge, teaching, mentorship, humor and dedication. Now, as Beth Meyer stated, “We owe College alumnus Mallory Walker so much gratitude for his generous endowment of the RGW Prize, and all it does to foreground how many of UVA departments and schools are enriching their disciplines with spatial, material, and geographic approaches. At a university such as UVA, with such a significant social and architectural history, we hope the RGW Prize will encourage innovative scholarship and creative work, compelling narratives as well as new research methods and lenses for asking why, and how, place and space matter.”

Submissions for the 2018 RGW Prize will be due in May. More information can be found at www.arch.virginia.edu/rgw-prize.