We are delighted to announce that Isabel (Izzy) Lane, a student in the MS in Urban and Community Planning program at the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, is the 2025 Pratt School of Architecture William ‘Bill’ Menking Travel Award recipient.
Izzy Lane’s proposal is related to her ongoing research into food systems and regional resilience, which she believes can be formed across urban and rural communities. Having worked on a homestead farm in Maine before beginning her degree at Pratt, she continues her hands-on work as an intern at the Urban Farm on Randall’s Island. She also turns her focus on NYC’s food systems and climate resiliency plan. She researches community gardens as sources of self-sufficiency and self-expression, and how small-scale agriculture production is critical to provide access to low-cost, healthy produce.
As a case study, Izzy will travel to Quebec, Canada, and engage with farmers, planners, and policymakers to examine urban agricultural production in Montreal and the extensive province-wide food system, which is 50 percent self-sustaining. Izzy plans to bring that research back to New York State and examine the potential supply chain network for New York City.
Bill Menking’s love of travel, experimentation, and making connections is evident in Izzy’s proposal. She wrote: “As a young person, one of Bill Menking’s many roles included organizing for farmworker unions; later, as an architect, he was not simply concerned with the final form, but with the labor conditions in its construction. Tributes to Bill Menking portray him as a teacher who challenged his students to engage with big, cross-disciplinary questions and never distract from their work’s social implications. This is reflective of Pratt’s School of Architecture’s purpose – to prepare its students to meet moments “of consequence” with firm principles and technical proficiency towards progressive ideals. In this moment of excitement and traction for urban agriculture at scale, I hope that my travels allow me to share with the Pratt community a critical analysis of the opportunities and risks of planning for urban agriculture through the frameworks of social, racial, and environmental justice.”
Isabel’s award comes after a rigorous application process with a selection committee composed of three faculty members: Professor Meredith TenHoor, Assistant Professor Yuliya Dzyuban, and Assistant Professor Mark Heller. The committee was tasked with reading applications and forwarding a shortlist of candidates to the Dean of the School of Architecture. We thank all the applicants for their well-developed proposals and the care and passion with which the committee evaluated them.
Please join us in congratulating Izzy Lane on receiving this award. We look forward to Izzy sharing her work with the larger Pratt SoA community this Fall.
More About Bill Menking and the Award
The William “Bill” Menking Travel Fund is intended for penultimate-year Graduate Students in the School of Architecture for academic or internship travel outside of the United States. Upon return, the student is asked to give a presentation about their experience to the school community. In recognition of Bill’s significant contribution to architectural journalism, they will produce a written article about their travel for the School newsletter.
“Bill” Menking was a much-loved member of the School of Architecture Faculty and taught for three decades at the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE), where he led a history survey course. He taught in the Pratt Berlin Studio for several years. He was a longtime aficionado of Italian radical design and its collectives like Superstudio and Archizoom, co-curating the 2003 exhibition Superstudio: Life Without Objects, a collaboration between Pratt Manhattan Gallery and Storefront for Art and Architecture. He founded The Architect’s Newspaper in 2003 with his wife, Diana Darling. In 2008, he curated the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale—an event he attended every year since its founding in 1980 and which he explored in co-editing the 2010 book Architecture on Display: On the History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture. He served on the Board of Directors at Storefront for Art and Architecture and The Architecture Lobby. In every position, his spirited enthusiasm for architecture and its possibilities radiated through his work. Bill had an incredible impact on the teaching of architecture and planning. He was passionate about interdisciplinary education and created connections across campus so that students could understand the social issues in their field and challenge the industry’s status quo and its institutions.
An announcement for the Summer 2026 award will be circulated early in the Spring 2026 semester.