P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

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Leen Katrib, 2016

MArch, Princeton University

Leen Katrib is an immigrant from United Arab Emirates

Fellowship awarded to support work towards an MArch in Architecture at Princeton University

Leen was born in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates to Syrian and Lebanese immigrants. Her memory of the architectural, economic, and social inequalities between Sharjah's concentration of forced migrants and Dubai's rapid urbanization developed her passion in architecture and urbanism. After numerous threats of deportation to Syria, she relocated with her family to West Virginia when she was 14 years old to pursue permanent legal presence for the first time.

In 2014, Leen received a Bachelor of Architecture degree with honors from the University of Southern California, where she was awarded the A. Quincy Jones Memorial Scholarship for Exceptional Promise in Architecture and the Robert Allen Rogaff Memorial Award for Excellence in Delineation, and was designated a Discovery Scholar and Global Scholar for her independent research on immigrant suburbanization. 

Leen was awarded the George H. Mayr Travel Grant to study the future of immigrants in Parisian suburbs, as well as the William and Neoma Timme Travel Grant to examine mimetic suburban practices in China's countryside. Her work was recently published in Pidgin, a journal of architectural theory at Princeton University, and exhibited in an architecture and design gallery in Los Angeles.

Upon completing her undergraduate degree, Leen worked for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. She currently works as a project designer in Manhattan. In 2016, she will pursue a Master's in Architecture. Leen plans to become an academic, writer, and an architect leading her own post-disciplinary practice that will rethink the spatial discourse of immigrants and refugees in suburbs in the United States and abroad. 

Education
  • MArch Architecture | Princeton University 2018
  • BA Architecture | University of Southern California 2014
Awards
  • DELF (Diplôme d'études en langue française)
  • Global Scholar Designation
  • Discovery Scholar Prize, Finalist
  • Robert Allen Rogaff Memorial Award for Excellence in Delineation
  • A. Quincy Jones Memorial Scholarship for Exceptional Promise in Architecture
  • George H. Mayr Travel Grant
  • William and Neoma Timme Travel Grant
  • Hult Prize Regional Finalist
  • International Development in Action Competition, Honorable Mention
  • Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship in Architecture.
Select Publications
  • "Made in China: the Rise of the Mimetic Suburb," Pidgin Magazine, Issue 19 Magic, Princeton University, 2015
Work History
  • MADA s.p.a.m,
  • OMA*AMO,
  • Peter Marino Architect,
  • Pidgin Magazine, Editor
  • Princeton University, Assistant Instructor
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