PhD Architecture Graduate Group Faculty Vanessa Grossman Earns CAA's Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award

Assistant Professor Vanessa Grossman received the College Art Association (CAA)'s  2026 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions for the publication Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha.

The award recognizes the book she co-edited with Jean-Louis Cohen, which is the first major retrospective publication to emerge from the archive of Paulo Mendes da Rocha since the establishment of his archive at the Casa da Arquitectura in 2021.

The award was presented at the College Art Association Conference in Chicago, where Grossman also presented new research on the design of company towns in the Amazon and their relationship to Pennsylvania’s industrial history.

In addition, Grossman was invited to speak at a symposium at MIT Architecture on the work of Paulo Mendes da Rocha and to open a small exhibition organized by MIT Professor Angelo Bucci and his students. The exhibition included films by Ciro Miguel and Felipe de Ferrari, originally produced for the Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha exhibition, which was co-curated by Vanessa Grossman and Jean-Louis Cohen.