Think of the Empire State Building, the most famous skyscraper in the U.S. and the tallest building in the world from 1930 until the 1970s.

In 2001 the American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows awarded its first Latrobe Fellowship to Philadelphia architects Stephen Kieran, FAIA, and James Timberlake, FAIA. The grant was established to fund research leading to significant advances in the profession of architecture.

Imagine thirty years from now. Will urban areas in 2030 look like Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles in the sci-fi movie Blade Runner—a prelude to Armageddon where the affluent reside in the tops of 400-story skyscrapers, and the less fortunate scratch out an unsavory existence in the seamy, polluted, and lawless regions on the surface?