Assistant Professor Brittany Utting has been named the 2023 recipient of the Sophia Meyer Farb Prize for Teaching. Selected by Rice’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter based on student evaluations of all eligible faculty, the award honors a non-tenured assistant professor or assistant teaching professor for outstanding work in the classroom. Utting will be celebrated at this year’s Rice University Teaching Award Ceremony and Phi Beta Kappa's annual induction ceremony. Originally endowed by Rice Alumnus Aubrey Farb in honor of his mother, the award also includes an honorarium.
"Great teachers bring immense energy, inspiration and care to their students and all those are attributes of assistant professor Brittany Utting’s teaching practice, too,” said Igor Marjanović, the William Ward Watkin Dean of Rice Architecture. “We are delighted that she is being honored with the Sophia Meyer Farb Prize, which is a recognition of not only her stellar teaching, but also of the importance of creative practice and design studio pedagogy in a comprehensive university like Rice."
Cofounder of the research and design collaborative HOME-OFFICE with Daniel Jacobs, Utting joined Rice Architecture in 2019. Her work examines the intersection between space, politics, and the environment. Currently, she is working on a book project entitled Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common (Routledge, 2023). She previously taught at the University of Michigan as the 2017-2018 Willard A. Oberdick Fellow. Brittany received her Master of Architecture from Yale University and a B.S. in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She practiced at Thomas Phifer and Partners as project designer for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. She also has editorial experience at Log, Journal for Architecture and served on the board of CARTHA Magazine.
HOME-OFFICE recently won the 2022 Houston Design Research Grant from the Rice Design Alliance for their research on several unique building typologies present in Houston.