Recent architecture graduate Elizabeth Israel ‘11 has been awarded the 2011 ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship to research European-settled hill stations in South India. Now in its sixth year, the scholarship enables ADAM Architecture, a UK-based firm specializing in classical and traditional architecture and urbanism, to support outstanding research.
Israel plans to investigate a regional network of hill stations for patterns in the urban morphology, particularly with regards to environmental and cross-cultural conditions. The Indian hill stations were high-altitude towns formerly developed by Europeans as summer retreats. She plans to explore what urban types evolved from the exchange between the European settlers and the local Indian peoples, as well as analyze how the urban space and architectural language engaged the topography, climate, local materials, and traditional building methods. She will travel to India during December 2011 and January 2012.
Cited as "a jury favorite," her proposal was enthusiastically embraced. The judging panel included Robert Adam and George Saumarez Smith, directors at ADAM Architecture, Prof. Georgia Butina Watson, Head of the Department of Planning at Oxford Brookes University and World Architecture News Editor in Chief, Michael Hammond.