UNM School of Architecture + Planning announces On the Brinck | Places Prize awardee

Benjamin Mehigan, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Architecture + Planning at The University of New Mexico, has been awarded the On the Brinck | Places Prize.

On the Brinck | Places Prize is a partnership between the UNM School of Architecture + Planning and Places Journal. Places Journal is an industry publication focused on the future of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Named to honor the spirit of landscape writer and critic John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the On the Brinck | Places Prize supports ambitious public scholarship focused on the Southwestern United States.

Mehigan, a London-native who is studying architecture research at the Royal College of Art, received an honorarium of $7,500 to research and write a major work of public scholarship for publication in Places Journal and present a related public lecture at the UNM School of Architecture + Planning.

His research focuses on the Roadless Rule and the ways in which the Trump administration's current proposal to rescind this regulation jeopardizes the protection of public lands throughout the United States, specifically nearly 3 million acres of roadless forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

Publication of his work and the public lecture are expected to take place in Fall 2027.

Prize committee members were UNM faculty Catherine Harris, associate professor and chair of landscape architecture, and Sarah Soakai, assistant professor of community and regional planning, and Places staff members Nancy Levinson, editor/executive director, and Frances Richard, senior editor.

For more information on the On the Brinck | Places Prize and the UNM School of Architecture + Planning, visit saap.unm.edu.