2023 Vectorworks Design Scholarship Winners

It’s that time of the year.

Vectorworks is proud to unveil this year’s Vectorworks Design Scholarship winners, recognizing 21 students across the globe. And with over 1,000 submissions, Brenda Vaca Michan's "Venus" project is this year's Richard Diehl Award winner.

Continue reading to learn more about the talented winners.

Vaca Michan’s Award-Winning Project

The winning Richard Diehl submission by Vaca Michan, “Venus,” is a lighting design project for the 19^th-century play written by Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by Mike Payette at the National Theatre School of Canada.

Vaca Michan used Vectorworks Spotlight for the lighting design to maintain consistency when working with the lighting plots for a diverse cast. “Vectorworks has allowed me to understand space and light as an imperfect language,” said Vaca Michan. “I’m extremely appreciative of this award as it signifies strength to my thoughts, voice, and creation.”

The project, which won the equivalent of $10,000 USD, was selected by an expert panel of international judges that evaluated all the submissions in five categories: design, technology, originality, presentation, and writing.

One of this year's scholarship judges, Len Levine, lighting designer and International Cinema Lighting Society member, was impressed with Vaca Michan's submission. "Brenda's project description communicated the long and complicated journey of the main character and how she resonated with the plot,” he said. “Secondly, she perfectly used light to create different moments as the set piece remained the same throughout while trying to maintain a cohesive look for the show. Finally, her clear documentation in the overhead and deck plots made the show straightforward to rigging."

Other Design Scholarship Winners 

The other 2023 award winners come from all over the world, including Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Winners received the equivalent of up to $3,000 USD in their local currency, and their schools also received free Vectorworks Design Suite software and free virtual training for faculty and students.

“This year’s winners should be very proud of their achievements. It’s evident the next generation will continue to make ground-breaking contributions to the design community,” said Joshua Schulman, Vectorworks product marketing manager – entertainment.

Architecture Winners:

• “Bunny” by Kenneth Anggara and Marco Kuo, University of British Columbia
• “Cohabitation Berlin” by Lena Polte and Celina Rodewald, Leibniz University Hannover
• “Loch on Wood” by Dylan Baliski, University of Dundee
• “Over the Coal Ruins” by Nicolas Moraga, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• “Reground” by Elischa Bischof, ETH Zurich
• “Sailing in the Valley” by Yuta Saito, Tokyo University of the Arts

Interior Design Winners:

• “Designing security in isolation. Supportive penal architecture based on conceptual interior design project of women's prison in Ostróda” by Ksenia Makala, Academy of Fine Arts Katowice
• “Nightsleeper - Redesign of the Interior” by Hanna Leiber, Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences
• “Unite Student Accommodation Design Proposal” by Kimberly Affleck, Solent University
• “[Waves] High Involvement – Public Art in the Park” by Li Zhounan, Osaka University of Art

Landscape Winners:

• “Church Street Escape” by Zoya Mohsin, Barlett School of Architecture
• “Journey - A Regeneration Process of New Life” by Muen Zhang, Harvard University
• "Together City Alone" by Vincent Wenk and Katharina von Unold, Technical University of Munich
• “Retrofitting for the Symbiocene” by Hannah Merrett-Kaufman, Victoria University of Wellington

Entertainment Winners:

• “(Mourning) Star” by Xotchil Musser, Carnegie Mellon University
• “The Gemstone Forum - Marc Palladis” by Jakob Grimm, Central Hesse University of Applied Sciences
• “Urban Sprawl” by Enza Kim, University of the Arts London
• “Venus” by Brenda Vaca Michan, National Theatre School of Canada

View the Award-Winning Designs

To look at the work of all this year’s Vectorworks Design Scholarship winners, click the button below: