Texas Tech University

College of Architecture Receives Prestigious Graham Foundation Grant

Lucy Greenberg

September 22, 2021

Architecture Building

The college will use the grant to publish its ninth edition of “CROP,” a bilingual publication that includes submissions from Texas Tech students, faculty and external contributors.

Texas Tech University's College of Architecture has been awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation, which will be used to publish “CROP:09 Shed,” the college's ninth edition of its student-led publication. Texas Tech joins the list of granted institutions alongside schools such as Harvard University, Yale University and Rice University, the University of London and others.

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CROP gathers essays, interviews and design work that reflect the richness of the college's architectural production and the diverse cultural geography of its two campuses: one in West Texas and the other on the U.S.-Mexico border. Noémie Despland-Lichtert, a visiting instructor, oversees the publication as its faculty editor.  

“We are extremely honored to receive this grant,” Despland-Lichtert said. “We greatly look forward to the opportunity of working with the Graham Foundation, sharing the production of the college with the broader Texas tech community and beyond. We are so proud to join the ranks of other excellent universities, museums and cultural institutions as 2021 awardees.” 

Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture and society.  

“We are delighted that professor Despland-Lichtert and her colleagues were awarded this prestigious and highly competitive grant,” said Hazem Rashed-Ali, associate dean of research and innovation for the College of Architecture. “The $5,000 grant will enable ‘CROP:09' to be developed at the high-quality level we always strive to achieve to the benefit of our students, the college and Texas Tech as a whole.”  

The ninth edition, “Shed,” interprets the word as both a noun and a verb, investigating a double meaning of “to shed,” by examining what we store and protect, as well as what we disseminate and let go of, articulating the tension between releasing and containing, a matter crucial to architectural production.