J.B.C. Watkins Award: Architecture

Desiree Valadares

Current Winner

Desiree Valadares

Desiree Valadares is a landscape architect with degrees from the University of Guelph (MLA) and McGill University (M.Arch II). She is a PhD candidate in the Architectural History program at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. In particular, she studies how historic preservation (U.S.) and heritage conservation (Canada) laws are applied to geographically disparate and remote World War II ruins and landscapes (prisoner of war camps, labour camps, internment sites) in two former U.S. territories and in the unceded lands of British Columbia. She argues that present-day legal mechanisms that enshrine sub-surface World War II military heritage and sites of significance to the Japanese diaspora fail to properly acknowledge Native Hawaiian, Alaska Native and Coast Salish connections to those lands, and their longstanding claims to sovereignty, demilitarization and decolonization.

What is this prize?

The J.B.C. Watkins Award: Architecture is offered to a Canadian architectural student wishing to pursue postgraduate studies outside Canada, ideally in Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Iceland.

Prize amount

$5,000 each

How to qualify

Apply to the Council.

A peer assessment committee will select the recipient from among all applicants.

For eligibility criteria, the application form and further information on this prize, see the J.B.C. Watkins Award: Architecture Guidelines and Form.

Deadline(s)

Annual

1 October 2020

Who created this prize?

This award is funded by a bequest from the late John B.C. Watkins.