Four Architects and Designers Receive Annual Fellowship from United States Artists
Today, the Chicago-based nonprofit United States Artists (USA) announced the 2025 recipients of its annual fellowship program. Consisting of 50 individuals and collectives hailing from 21 states, this year’s cohort will each receive $50,000 in unrestricted cash awards. USA was founded in 2006 in response to severe budget cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and has since distributed over $41 million to more than a thousand creative practitioners across the country. “We are honored to announce the 2025 USA Fellowship with this wonderfully skilled and multifaceted group of Fellows,” says USA president and CEO Judilee Reed. “Much like this cohort, our support through the USA Fellowship is enduring and manifold, extending beyond a momentary and monetary contribution to establish a durable and sustainable relationship that artists may draw on at each stage of their careers.”
Chosen through a year-long peer-led selection process, the 2025 group of fellows practice across a wide range of disciplines, including in the categories of architecture and design, craft, dance, film, media, music, theater and performance, traditional arts, visual art, and writing. This year’s cohort includes four architecture and design fellows, as follows.
Borderless Studio: Paola Aguirre Serrano and Dennis Milam
Photo courtesy Borderless Studio
San Antonio and Chicago
Founded in 2016, Borderless Studio is an architecture and urban design practice focused on interdisciplinary projects. Led by Paola Aguirre Serrano and Dennis Milam, the studio has collaborated on a wide range of urban interventions that aim to promote spatial justice and equity. Significant works include Creative Grounds, a series of collaborative activation projects at a former elementary school in the Chicago neighborhood of Bronzeville, the Morningside Park Ribbon Connection, a two-acre park in East Detroit, and Love Letter to the Crump, a large-scale exterior curtain installation on a historic theater in Columbus, Indiana.
Chicago Extra-Large (2017) by Borderless Studio, a map installation at a former Chicago elementary school as part of the Creative Grounds series. Photo by Ben Kolak
Finnegan Shannon
Photo by Sylvie Rosokoff
Brooklyn, New York
Shannon is an interdisciplinary artist and disability activist whose work focuses on the shared responsibility for accessible spaces. They are best known for their protest pieces, including a 2018 intervention titled Do you want us here or not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces, and the ongoing project Anti-Stairs Club Lounge. Their work has been on display at MUDAM Luxembourg, the FLAG Art Foundation, the Queens Museum, moCa Cleveland, the High Line, MMK Frankfurt, MCA Denver, and Nook Gallery.
Inside joke between me and everyone who has had to make an access request (2023) at the FLAG Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
Jerome W Haferd
Photo by Elias Williams
New York
Architect Haferd is the principal of the award-winning Jerome Haferd Studio and assistant professor of architecture at City College's Spitzer School of Architecture where he co-directs the Place, Memory, and Culture Incubator. He has previously worked in the offices of OMA/Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi Architects. Working in both urban and rural contexts, Haeford’s firm critically engages marginalized histories to unlock new potentials for architecture, design, and cultural infrastructure. Significant projects include collaborations with the Harlem African Burial Ground, the Park Avenue Armory, and the National Black Theatre. The studio is one of the first prize recipients for the International Africatown Design Competition in Mobile, Alabama, and is working on a permanent public artwork and plaza for the East River Esplanade with NYCEDC, Marvel Architects, and Stantec.
Sankofa (2023) by Jerome Haferd Studio. Photo by Anna Dave
Leah Wulfman
Photo courtesy the artist
Salt Lake City
Trained as an architect at Carnegie Mellon University and SCI-Arc, Wulfman is an educator and game designer whose work focuses on assembling hybrid virtual and physical spaces in order to prototype new relationships to technology and nature. In addition to mixed reality installations that play with and emphasize the physical, Wulfman is working on a research series focusing on gamified environments, interactions, and materials. They are currently a visiting assistant professor in the Division of Multi-Disciplinary Design at the University of Utah and have taught at multiple institutions, including UCLA, SCI-Arc, The School of Architecture at Taliesin, and University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Their work has been shown as part of various exhibitions and festivals including the Buenos Aires Architecture Biennale, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, the FiDi Arsenale, Space Saloon Design and Build Festival, Open Engagement, and the Wrong Biennale for New Digital Art.
My Mid Journey Trash Pile (2023) at /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtuality at the MAK Museum, Vienna, by Leah Wulfman. Photo by kunst-dokumentation.com
Previous Architecture & Design Fellows include Nina Cooke John, Germane Barnes, SO — IL, Ifeoma Ebo, AD–WO, Marlon Blackwell, and Amanda Williams.
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