PAYETTE is pleased to announce Michelle Ovanessians is the recipient of a Merit Award for Excellence in Architecture Student Design from the AIA Fort Worth for her thesis “Armenian Genocide, Rituals and How We Memorialize: Criticism of Monuments and Memorials Towards a New Methodology.”
Michelle is a recent graduate of the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design and recipient of the 2023 PAYETTE Sho-Ping Chin Memorial Academic Scholarship. Michelle is an Armenian American Architectural Designer who yields a careful response of expression in her projects, emphasizing beliefs and specificities of the population that might not have been considered before. Cultivated through her upbringing in Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United States, this exposure to vast lifestyles drives her sense of design where she strives meticulously to integrate site-specific stories, both essential and transformative, to provide awareness of social and cultural perspectives.
Michelle’s project stood out amongst the entries and was a clear favorite of the jury…
Jury comment