The Wheelwright Prize is a $100,000 travel-based research grant that is awarded annually to early-career architects who have demonstrated exceptional design talent, produced work of scholarly and professional merit and who show promise for continued creative work.

Throughout its history, Harvard GSD has had a strong global outlook, attracting deans, faculty, and students from all over the world. Moreover, a mainstay of the GSD curriculum is its traveling studio, which emphasises the acceptance of ideas and practices with a diversity of origins. The Wheelwright Prize extends the school’s ethos, encouraging a broad-minded approach to architecture that seeks inspiration from unexpected quarters.

The Wheelwright Prize is intended to spur innovative research during the early stage of an architect’s professional career. Now open to applicants from all over the world, the prize aims to foster new forms of research informed by cross-cultural engagement.

“The idea is not just about travel – the act of going and seeing the world – but it is about binding the idea of geography to themes and issues that hold great potential relevance to contemporary practice,” says Harvard GSD dean Mohsen Mostafavi.

The winner will be selected via an open call for proposals and a rigorous review process and will receive:

• $100,000 cash prize to support travel and research-related costs
• invitation to lecture at Harvard GSD
• possibility to publish research in a Harvard GSD publication

The Wheelwright Prize organising committee includes Harvard GSD dean Mohsen Mostafavi, professors K. Michael Hays and Jorge Silvetti and assistant dean Benjamin Prosky.

The Wheelwright Prize is available to individual entrants only. Applicants must have graduated from a professionally accredited architecture degree programme in the past 15 years, need not be registered or licensed and may not have received the Arthur Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship previously. The application process will be entirely online and will begin receiving entries on 20 January, 2014. The deadline for submissions is 4 March, 2014.

For further information including a full list of conditions, visit the website.