European Research Prize 2025

The European Research Prize 2025 Fellowship, organized by the SOM Foundation, stands as one of the most significant opportunities for academic researchers and design practitioners in Europe. Introduced in 2021 as an expansion of the US-based Research Prize, the fellowship offers €20,000 to a faculty-led interdisciplinary team to conduct original research tied to the Foundation’s annual theme. For 2025, the focus is “Exploring the Potential of Mobility Corridors.”

This fellowship aims to address how infrastructure and systems of movement shape our built environments and daily lives. It encourages new approaches that look beyond transportation efficiency to broader impacts—how mobility corridors can foster sustainable growth, improve ecological resilience, and strengthen communities. The prize emphasizes collaboration across disciplines, calling for partnerships between architects, engineers, urban designers, and landscape architects, as well as professionals from other fields and community representatives.

By providing financial and institutional support, the fellowship allows teams to conduct research that is both rigorous and visionary. The expectation is not only to document findings but also to propose practical applications that can shape policy, design practices, and urban development strategies. With its strong academic grounding and commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, the prize positions itself as a platform to advance critical thinking on pressing urban and environmental challenges.

Fellowship Overview and Topic

The European Research Prize 2025 will award €20,000 to one interdisciplinary team based in Europe. The focus topic—mobility corridors—invites participants to consider infrastructure at multiple scales: from pedestrian routes to freight systems, from ecological linkages to digital connectivity.

Key guiding questions include:

• How might rethinking mobility corridors drive sustainable urban growth?
• What role can interconnected infrastructure play in supporting ecosystems and communities?
• In what ways could mobility systems shape the future of cities?

Eligibility

• Open to faculty currently teaching at accredited bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD programs in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, urban design, or engineering within Europe.
• Proposals must be developed within an academic institution, through a studio or seminar format.
• Collaboration with other disciplines, professionals, nonprofits, and students is required.
• Collaborators may be based worldwide.
• Exclusions: SOM employees, previously awarded faculty. However, institutions with past awards may apply again.

Application Requirements

Applicants must prepare a single PDF file (maximum 35 pages, 100 MB, A4 format) including:

• Title Page (research title, names, affiliations, keywords, date)
• Abstract (max. 250 words, covering need, research question, scope, outcomes)
• Description (max. 750 words, outlining scope, methodology, team, facilities, expected outcomes, images encouraged)
• Work Plan (collaborators, milestones, schedule, budget, syllabus draft)
• Preliminary Budget (detailed allocation, with limits on admin and publications)
• Supporting Documentation (CVs, examples of student work, letter of support)
• Supplemental Documentation (up to 20 pages of related material)

All applications must be submitted in English.

Tables

Entry Fees

Prizes and Awards

Timeline

Jury

The 2025 jury is chaired by Iker Gil, SOM Foundation Executive Director, alongside:

• Pedro Gadanho – Architect, author, independent curator (Lisbon)
• Meredith Glaser – CEO, Urban Cycling Institute; Professor of Cycling, Ghent University (Amsterdam / Ghent)
• Carlos Mínguez Carrasco – Chief Curator, ArkDes (Stockholm)

Evaluation Criteria

Proposals will be judged on:

• Relevance to the annual topic
• Innovation, clarity, and rigor of the proposal
• Potential impact of research outcomes
• Student involvement across stages
• Feasibility of methodology, timeline, and budget
• Team’s expertise and track record

Architectural Analysis

The fellowship’s design logic centers on interpreting mobility corridors as more than transit systems—they are spatial frameworks shaping ecological, social, and economic landscapes. By situating research in academic studios, the program integrates pedagogy with experimentation, ensuring that outcomes are academically rigorous and practically applicable.

Material use and context appear in the emphasis on infrastructure as layers of design: roads, rails, bike paths, waterways, and ecological connectors. Each becomes a “material” within a larger composition, influencing sustainability and cultural identity.

Critically, the prize repositions mobility not only as a technical problem but as a design typology with political and cultural dimensions. The expectation of visual documentation underscores the importance of communicating research through design media—drawings, models, mapping, and visual narratives. This approach reflects an architectural ethos: bridging technical research with expressive, accessible formats that resonate beyond academia.

Project Importance

This fellowship highlights how research-driven design can contribute to shaping urban futures. It encourages architects and designers to rethink mobility corridors as ecological and cultural lifelines, not just channels of transport.

For the discipline, the project advances typological thinking—mobility infrastructures can be seen as a form of “urban connective tissue” shaping entire regions. This contributes to architectural knowledge by linking material design with large-scale systems thinking.

At this moment of climate urgency and urban transformation, the prize matters because it underscores sustainability, interdisciplinarity, and adaptability. It pushes architects to ask: how can corridors move beyond efficiency to foster inclusivity, ecological health, and civic identity? The answers generated through this fellowship will shape the discourse of design research in Europe and beyond.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

The European Research Prize 2025 frames mobility corridors as design landscapes where infrastructure, ecology, and community intersect. Visuals are expected to demonstrate systems of movement as spatial compositions that link scales, from urban grids to regional connections. A critical point lies in the fellowship’s reliance on academic structures—can studios effectively balance experimental inquiry with applied outcomes? While this tension raises questions, it also ensures rigor through accountability. Ultimately, the prize’s strength is in positioning mobility as both a design challenge and a societal opportunity, offering a framework for future-oriented architectural research.

Conclusion

The European Research Prize 2025 Fellowship is more than a financial award—it is an invitation to reframe the way we think about infrastructure. By situating research within academic institutions and demanding interdisciplinary collaboration, the fellowship ensures that projects are not siloed but open to diverse perspectives and real-world application.

Its focus on mobility corridors comes at a timely moment. Cities and regions worldwide are grappling with climate adaptation, sustainable growth, and questions of connectivity. The fellowship provides a platform for teams to test innovative ideas, propose visionary systems, and develop new typologies of infrastructure that prioritize human and ecological well-being.

For architects, urban designers, and engineers, the fellowship underscores the importance of research-led practice. It reminds us that infrastructure is not neutral—it is a stage where culture, politics, and ecology converge. By documenting, analyzing, and disseminating results widely, the prize amplifies the impact of research and contributes to ongoing debates in architectural practice.

In essence, the European Research Prize 2025 shapes a discourse that is both intellectual and practical, urging the design community to see mobility not just as a function of movement but as a framework for resilient, equitable, and visionary urban futures.

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