The Canada Council for the Arts has announced the winners of its Prix de Rome and J.B.C. Watkins Awards. Neeraj Bhatia is the winner of the Professional Prix de Rome, and Kinan Hewitt has won the Emerging Practitioner Prix de Rome. Desiree Valadares was awarded the J.B.C. Watkins Architecture Award.
Neeraj Bhatia is a Toronto architect and urban designer whose work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. Bhatia is the founder of The Open Workshop, a trans-scalar design-research office that examines the
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negotiation between architecture and its territorial environment. As an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts, Bhatia holds a master?s degree in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT, and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.  Bhatia received the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture, which is awarded to a young practitioner of architecture or an architectural firm that has completed their first built works and has demonstrated artistic potential. The prize proposal, entitled ?Learning How to Live Together,? is a study of communal housing typologies. Bhatia will travel to Israel to visit various Kibbutzim, Germany to the Baugruppen experiments and Japan, China and Korea to see the Share-Houses.  
Kinan Hewitt is the recipient of the Emerging Practitioners Prix de Rome in Architecture.
Photo Courtesy of canadacouncil.ca
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