An update on our Scholars

As we get closer to announcing the winner of the 2015/16 Scholarship, we take a look back at our two previous scholars and what they have been up to since they were awarded the Jonathan Speirs Scholarship.

Our first Scholar, Alex Stewart, has graduated with honours from Parsons School of Design and has begun working with the award-winning Brooklyn-based firm Bernheimer Architecture. At Bernheimer, he has assisted on the design and development of two affordable housing projects within the five boroughs of New York, and is currently overseeing the construction of a high-end residential building in the West Village district. This past fall he took a position as adjunct faculty at Parsons, teaching in the Masters of Architecture program, while in December, his studio project from the previous fall with his colleague, Kristen Garibaldi, was selected by the Architect’s Newspaper as the Student Project of the Year.

Alex comments: “Working with light is paramount to the designs I’m developing with Bernheimer, and in my own, personal projects. Though we are an architecture firm in practice, we consider light to be a free building material, one that through formal manipulation produces more intimate and democratic space, no matter the client and budget.”

Last year’s Scholar, Cashel Brown, graduated in October 2015 from Edinburgh Napier University last year after completing his dissertation on the topic of lighting festivals and their role in urban design. He has since moved to London and is now working as a lighting designer at Nulty+. Cashel is currently working on his submission for SLL’s Young Lighter of the Year and will be speaking at their annual Jonathan Speirs Memorial Lecture later in the year. He has also been included on Lighting Magazine’s 40 Under 40 list of emerging talent within the lighting design profession.

He comments: “Working with Nulty+ has been a steep learning curve, as I take what I learned during the course of the MA Lighting Design programme and apply it to real projects with real budgets. The diverse range of projects within the office has taught me a lot about the multi-faceted nature of the lighting design profession. Much of this is with thanks to the Scholarship, as it provided me with a platform to develop these skills, alongside creating conversation with those in the profession.”