Today the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has named Aleksandra Jaeschke as recipient of the 2019 Wheelwright Prize. The Polish-born, U.S.-based architect’s winning proposal, UNDER WRAPS: Architecture and Culture of Greenhouses, was selected out of more than 145 applicants from 46 countries. This year’s jury included Tatiana Bilbao, Loreta Castro Reguera, K. Michael Hays, Eric Höweler, Erik L'Heureux, Mohsen Mostafavi, and Megan Panzano. 

A graduate of the GSD and the Architectural Association in London, Jaeschke is an architect licensed in Italy as well as assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jaeschke co-founded the firm AION in Italy with Andrea Di Stefano in 2008 and served as co-director until 2013.

The Wheelwright Prize, which originated at the GSD in 1935 as the Arthur C. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, is an international competition, now in its seventh year, that awards a $100,000 grant for travel-based research to early-career architects. With her prize, Jaeschke will spend two years studying greenhouse agriculture and the interactions between human and plant life in cultures and contexts across the globe.