Professor Tameka Baba Awarded 2025/26 Rome Prize

Tameka Baba, assistant professor of practice in Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School, has been awarded the Garden Club of America/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize from the American Academy for her proposal “Urban Tapestry.” The project is centered on the Piazza de Popolo in Rome and continues Baba’s research on the practice of weaving, reimagining it as a “method for reshaping urban environments.”

“Urban Tapestry is both a metaphor and a methodological approach, which aims to reimagine Rome’s piazzas as dynamic, green oases,” Baba wrote in her proposal. “This project asks: how can traditional garden elements be grafted onto urban sites to create a ‘soft density’ of vegetation that transforms these public spaces?…In the context of rising global temperatures, could weaving emerge as a critical design tool for reimagining the piazza as a garden landscape?”

Throughout her career, Professor Baba’s work has focused on the reclamation and transformation of underutilized or abandoned urban spaces, particularly those impacted by the decline of retail industries. She herself is passionate about creating places of gathering for underserved communities and rethinking the traditional concepts of community gardens and public spaces, often by incorporating traditional textile crafts such as weaving and sewing into her design process.

Since 1894, the American Academy in Rome has functioned as a residential center for research and creativity. Its purpose has always been to enable highly motivated scholars and artists to immerse themselves in the experience of Rome, ancient and modern, and to be inspired by daily exchange with the other members of this creative community.

The Academy has made an outsized impact on the intellectual and cultural life of the United States; its Fellows and Residents have been recognized with 622 Guggenheim Fellowships, 74 Pulitzer Prizes, 54 MacArthur Fellowships, 26 Grammy awards, 5 Pritzker Prizes, 9 Poet Laureate appointments, and 5 Nobel Prizes. Approximately 35 Fellows are selected as winners of the Rome Prize each year by rotating juries in the different fields. The prize provides a rare opportunity for individuals to deeply engage with their art or scholarship in collaboration with creatives from other disciplines. It offers time and space to think freely, reflect on personal and cultural identity, and engage with the mosaic of human achievement that is Rome.

Read more at the American Academy of Rome