SOM Foundation awards 2025 Research Prize to UVA Architecture's Ali Fard
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Ali Fard, Assistant Professor of Architecture, has been awarded the 2025 Research Prize by the SOM Foundation. The award supports his work that examines the Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail, a critical infrastructural corridor and converted rail line in Northern Virginia, and asks: how can design reassess the potential of secondary mobility corridors at the edge of major urban areas as alternatives to car-centric networks?
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Car-centric suburban sprawl still dominates development at the edges of most American cities. Vehicular traffic in these urban regions accounts for most trips, not only for work but also for short local trips, such as running errands, shopping, or school drop-off. The networks that facilitate this circulation further separate moments of urbanity, which are becoming more specialized and isolated. Additionally, regional mobility corridors, dominated by highways, while catering to regional movement patterns, create local disconnection, fragmentation, and splintering.
Yet, in many of these sprawling geographies, we can identify another breed of linear infrastructure with significant potential to serve as secondary mobility corridors. These include recreational trails, linear parks, utility transmission corridors, and other infrastructural spines that, if redesigned, could greatly reduce the load on regional networks while promoting more accessible, walkable, and connected urban environments.
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The SOM Foundation Research Prize provides a tremendous opportunity to collaboratively rethink the future of mobility at the edge of American cities.
As the rush to meet the demands of AI is bending entire territories in Northern Virginia to the centralizing ethos of tech corporations, the SOM Foundation's support enables essential research into urban forms and innovative spatial strategies that promote more accessible, sustainable, and resilient urban futures in the region," said Fard. "The infrastructural spine of the W&OD provides a potent case study into the role of design in examining secondary mobility corridors as alternatives to car-centric transportation networks within and beyond Virginia. I am grateful to the SOM Foundation for its continued support of design research, and I look forward to contributing to this remarkable collective body of work."
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Fard's prize-winning project, Through the Cloud: Remapping Mobility in the Technical Landscapes of Northern Virginia, is grounded in research and design experimentation, and aims to recenter the currently backgrounded linear park to explore its potential as a regional mobility corridor. Through four phases (grounding, experimentation, synthesis, and output), supported by the SOM Foundation Research Prize, the project will catalyze new urban forms and novel spatial strategies and will build a collaborative platform for rethinking the future of mobility at the edge of major metropolitan areas.
Through the Cloud was one of two projects selected for this year's SOM Research Prize. The other, Visioning Eco-Connectivity with Youth in the Rio Grande Valley, is being led by UVA School of Architecture alumna Maggie Hansen (MArch and MLA '10), Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture—along with her colleague at UT Austin, Associate Professor Miriam Solis.
About Ali Fard
Ali Fard is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and the director of MIST Lab at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Fard’s work explores the spatial, ideological, and environmental dimensions of contemporary infrastructure. Through award-winning design and research projects, Fard's work emphasizes architecture's critical and multiscalar role within the territorial dynamics of urbanization, offering a timely and critical lens on the systems that shape urban life. His writing, research, and design work have appeared in Footprint, MONU, MAS Context, Bracket, Telematics and Informatics, and Harvard Design Magazine, among others. Fard is the co-editor of NG7: Geographies of Information (Harvard University Press, 2015) and the author of the upcoming monograph, Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data (University of Minnesota Press, Summer 2026). Fard has held teaching roles at the Harvard GSD and the University of Waterloo. He was a research associate at the Urban Theory Lab at the GSD and served on the editorial board of New Geographies (2013–2018). Fard holds a Doctor of Design (DDes) in architecture and urbanism from Harvard University, and a Master of Architecture (M.Arch) from the University of Toronto.
About the SOM Foundation Research Prize
In 2018, the SOM Foundation introduced the Research Prize to cultivate new ideas and meaningful research that addresses the critical issues of our time. Each year, two $30,000 prizes are awarded to faculty-led interdisciplinary teams based in the United States to conduct original research that contributes to the SOM Foundation’s current topic.
The Research Prize is open to faculty currently teaching at a professionally accredited bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, or PhD program in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, urban design, or engineering in the United States. The research must be developed in a studio and/or seminar within the academic institution. The lead faculty member(s) will be expected to work in a collaborative manner with faculty from other disciplines, leading professionals, nonprofit organizations, and/or community representatives in addition to students enrolled in the studio and/or seminar. Collaborator(s) can be based worldwide. The winning teams will be required to thoroughly document their research findings and develop conclusions or suggestions for application to professional practice.
2025 Research Prize Jury
Gia Biagi
Julia Day
Iker Gil (Chair)
Kit Krankel McCullough
Jeffrey Sriver
