The Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) announces 2025 Awards.
Wei (Windy) Zhao has received the 2025 New Book Award for Home beyond the House: Transformation of Life, Place, and Tradition in Rural China (Routledge, 2022), a work also recognized by the Environmental Design Research Association Achievement Award in 2024. The ARCC Book Award is offered annually to a faculty member at an ARCC member institution to recognize recently published books that demonstrate excellence in architectural research.
Wei (Windy) Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she earned her doctorate in Architecture. Zhao’s research focuses on the built environment of underrepresented social groups and issues of social equity and sustainability, and cultural diversity in the context of globalization and urbanization. Integrating theories and methodologies of architecture, urban studies, historic preservation, heritage studies, and anthropology, Zhao’s work enriches architectural and environmental design research by reframing the built environment as just a collection of technocratic entities, but as contextual, relational, and cultural constructs — sometimes consanguineous — that embody systems of relationships, activities, local knowledge, cultural values, and meanings.
Founded in 1976, the ARCC is an international association of architectural research centers, academies and organizations committed to the research culture and supporting infrastructure of architecture and related design disciplines. Through conference programming, grant and award programs, workshops and research journal Enquiry, ARCC represents a concerted commitment to improve the quality of life in the built environment.
Historically, ARCC’s members have been schools of architecture who have made substantial commitments to architectural research, often by forming centers directed to research programs. At the same time, ARCC has sponsored many projects, conferences, and other activities involving the broader architectural research community, including industrial laboratories, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and private practitioners engaged in research.
ARCC members are engaged in sponsored and theoretical research and in graduate studies intended to develop a more comprehensive research infrastructure for architecture — an infrastructure of researchers, facilities, equipment, research centers, and academic programs working to expand the knowledge base for education and practice.
To read about all of the ARCC 2025 Awardees, click here.
Wei (Windy) Zhao joined SAH in 2011. She served as a speaker at the 2019 Annual Conference, and as a Session Chair at the 2024 Annual Conference. She received a SAHARA Travel Fellowship in 2012, and an Opler Membership Grant for Emerging Professionals in 2016.
