The Banham Fellowship in the Department of Architecture is intended to support design work that situates architecture within the general field of socio-cultural and material critique.
Peter Reyner Banham taught at UB from 1976-1980 and left an important legacy in experimental architectural criticism.
The fellowship honors the legacy of Peter Reyner Banham, who taught at UB from 1976-80 and produced a foundational body of scholarship on material/visual culture as a reflection of contemporary social life. Banham spent his time in Buffalo engaged in a scholarly project on the imaginary of American industrial architecture at work in early modernism that took the form of historical research, hands-on engagement and seminar instruction, resulting in his landmark work, A Concrete Atlantis.
In celebration of Banham's legacy of experimental criticism, this fellowship supports the research and creative activity of emerging practitioners. Over the course of a year, fellows teach, deliver a public lecture and prepare an exhibition culminating from their research and creative work at the school.
Tiffany Xu, a designer at Spiegel Aihara Workshop, carries forward Banham's legacy through research focused on modernity and housing. A graduate from UC Berkeley and Rice Architecture, where she was co-editor of PLAT Journal and received the William D. Darden Thesis Award, her recent work explores modes of depiction in film and architecture.
A licensed architect in California, Tiffany has been a regular contributor to the New York Review of Architecture since 2021, and taught at Northeastern University at Mills College, CA in 2022. Her focus this year will be centered on exploring construction systems in terms of material and contemporary fiction.
Fun fact: Tiffany drove 8 days across the country, from San Francsico, CA to Buffalo.