2025 Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes and Places

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The University of Virginia School of Architecture is pleased to announce that Lincoln L. Lewis, PhD Candidate in the Constructed Environment, and William “Andy” Packwood (BS Arch ’25) have been jointly awarded the 2025 Richard Guy Wilson (RGW) Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes, and Places.

Named in honor of esteemed Professor Emeritus Richard Guy Wilson, the RGW Prize recognizes the best scholarly or creative work by UVA students focused on a historic building, landscape, or place. Each year, the prize is awarded by a faculty jury selected by the Chair of the Department of Architectural History and carries a $5,000 cash award. 

2025 Richard Guy Wilson Prize Winning Submission

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Tangier Island Watermen Working Landscape (May–August 2023) documentation efforts by Lincoln Lewis and Andy Packwood: (clockwise, from top left) Chesapeake Bay As Working Landscape; Dan Dise's Crab Shanty Plan and Elevation; Dan Dise's Crab Shanty, photo: Lincoln Lewis; Mailboat Harbor Site Plan.

Tides of Time: Documenting Tangier Island's Built Environment & Cultural Landscape
A Cross-level, Collaborative Portfolio of Historic Research (May 2023–May 2025) 
by Lincoln L. Lewis and William "Andy" Packwood

Lewis and Packwood’s collaborative project documents the endangered working landscape of Tangier Island, a rural island community in the Chesapeake Bay whose history dates to the 17th century. Shaped by generations of watermen’s labor, Tangier’s vernacular architecture and cultural landscape face mounting threats from climate change, sea level rise, and sinking lands—pressures that place the island’s future, and its historic way of life, at risk.

The project began in summer 2023 through an Environmental Futures Fellowship awarded by the University of Virginia’s Environmental Institute (EI). "The working waterman landscape of Tangier, Virginia is integral to the island's culture and community," Lewis reported in this EI article. "However, their way of life faces many challenges due to sea level rise. Andy and I are excited to listen and learn from the community about how our efforts for the grant can best assist their needs." That initial research, which resulted in a series of multi-scale, detailed drawings of Tangier's landscape and built environment, and a 36-page historic report, earned the duo First Place in the National Park Service’s 2023 Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) Challenge. This research, now archived at the Library of Congress, marked the first comprehensive documentation of Tangier’s watermen working landscape.

Since then, Lewis and Packwood have expanded the scope and methods of their work through a cross-level collaboration bridging doctoral research and undergraduate design inquiry. Their RGW Prize submission presents a holistic documentation effort that introduces Tangier Island’s history and geography; outlines five interrelated project components; details innovative field methods; and includes documentation outputs, acknowledgements, and supporting materials. 

As part of this expanded work, Lewis developed a series of Tangier oral histories in collaboration with Virginia Humanities, now archived at the University of Virginia, University of Florida, and Eastern Shore Public Libraries. These oral histories form one methodological component of Lewis's ongoing dissertation research studying how coastal communities—especially those with historic cultural assets—plan for the future amidst dynamic environmental change.

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Documenting a Landscape at Risk

Tangier Island’s settlement history has produced a distinctive vernacular landscape closely tied to the rhythms of the Chesapeake Bay. At the heart of this landscape is Mailboat Harbor, home to dozens of crab houses constructed from piling, plywood, and plank—an amphibious architecture central to the island’s identity.

Today, Tangier’s population has declined to roughly 300 residents. Environmental change, restrictive fishing regulations, economic precarity, and limited employment opportunities have accelerated outmigration, while rising seas and erosion increasingly threaten daily life. Lewis and Packwood’s work captures this moment with rigor and care, preserving both tangible and intangible dimensions of the island’s heritage.

Their documentation integrates measured drawings, landscape analysis, laser scanning, oral histories, and community engagement, creating a layered record that foregrounds the dignity of work and lived experience in an environmentally precarious tidal landscape. 

During the 2024–25 academic year, Packwood developed his undergraduate architecture thesis, A Place for Pilgrimage, which speculates on Tangier's future through the adaptive reuse of the island's water tower as a memorial and final resting place for the people, memories, culture, history, and beauty of Tangier. The project synthesizes fieldwork and research by Packwood and Lewis, which has helped shape other scholarly collaborations, including the School of Architecture exhibition Tidal Territories by former Virginia Architecture Fellow Jess Vanecek. (Packwood served as Vanecek's research assistant.)

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The RGW Prize jury praised Tides of Time for its depth, methodology, and collaborative ethos:

Through a productive cross-level collaboration, Lewis and Packwood developed a comprehensive record of Tangier Island’s built environment and cultural landscape—an important contribution given the island’s isolation and the environmental pressures it faces.

Another juror noted:

This very well-conceived and beautifully executed project evokes a rich sense of place by weaving the landscape of Tangier Island with the experiences of people who have inhabited it over time.

The jury emphasized that the project’s multidisciplinary approach, innovative tools, and careful craftsmanship exemplify the spirit of the Richard Guy Wilson Prize. 

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Lewis and Packwood’s work was supported by a multidisciplinary advisory team:

Barbara Brown Wilson, Associate Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning
Katy Clune, University of Virginia State Folklorist  
Tanya Denckla Cobb, Director, UVA Institute for Engagement and Negotiation 
Erin Putalik, Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture and Architecture 
Peter Waldman, Professor of Architecture 

Generous funding for Lewis and Packwood's research provided by:

UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes
UVA Center for Global Inquiry and Innnovation
Student Council Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow (GIFT) Grant

The RGW Prize jury also awarded this Honorable Mention entry:

Jasmine Wang, Bachelor of Science in Political & Social Thought, 2025
"The Haunted ‘Home’: Living with Diasporic Ghosts"
Drawing on diasporic experiences, American gothic literature, and Asian diasporic art, this thesis interrogates what "home" means after displacement and imagines alternative architectures of belonging beyond property, citizenship, and permanence.

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Goff, Associate Professor of English and American Studies

2025 Richard Guy Wilson Prize Jury

Michael Gallmeyer, Professor, McIntire School of Commerce
Ekaterina Marakova, Associate Professor, Sociology, College of Arts & Sciences
Inés Martín-Robles, Associate Professor, Architecture, School of Architecture

Learn more about the RGW Prize, which is now open for submissions (due May 22, 2026) by clicking on the button below.