James Leng Named 2013 SOM Fellow
SOM Foundation
August 2013

James Leng is the recipient of the prestigious 2013 SOM Prize, a $50,000 Travel and Research Fellowship. Mr. Leng received his Master of Architecture degree in March 2013 from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he was also awarded the highly competitive GSD Thesis Prize. Growing up in Castro Valley, CA, James attended UC Berkeley where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture degree in 2007.

James plans to utilize his SOM Foundation Fellowship to travel to regions on four continents, carrying out his winning research proposal on the topic, “Useless Architectures: A Search for New Meanings After Obsolescence.” As James explains, “The notion of the obsolete is a familiar theme in architecture… However, the circumstances surrounding a building’s fall into disuse vary broadly from cultural shifts, disruptive technological innovation to even catastrophic disaster. As the rate of technological innovation and progress increases, it becomes critical to ask what becomes of architecture after usefulness?”

Since graduation from GSD, James has relocated to Los Angeles, where he is currently employed in the office of Michael Maltzan Architecture.