Ellen Peirson, a London-based architect, writer, and AN contributor, was awarded the 2026 Wheelwright Prize by Harvard GSD. Peirson will receive $100,000 over the next two years to support her research project titled Ultra-Processed Kitchens: Infrastructures of Extraction in the Home.

Ultra-Processed Kitchens will analyze kitchens as “mineral landscapes” made up of clay, gypsum, and silica, per a research statement. The project will delve into the kitchen as a site of “extraction, petrochemical dependence, and waste,” and the “supply chains, aspirations, and tastes” behind its industrialized reproduction. 

As a counter project, Peirson proposes an alternative where kitchens are not pollutive or environmentally toxic, but rather “support well being and sustain ecological limits through an aesthetic of reuse and care.”  

In London, Peirson splits her professional life practicing and writing. Working back and forth is an important part of her process. “Writing has been the way I have learned to see the bigger picture around architecture,” she told AN. “I use writing as a way of thinking and as a way of slowing down assumptions.”

“I have always found myself caught between the two forms of work: when I am writing about buildings, I feel the pull back to practice; when I am designing or on site, I find myself thinking that I should write about what is happening,” Peirson continued. “That tension has been useful. It has helped me understand architecture beyond the object, as something shaped by materials, labour and the global systems.”

Moving forward, Peirson affirmed she will keep up her routine as she advances her Wheelwright topic. She said she will be “researching and practicing in tandem, because each gives the other more depth.” 

“Practice keeps the research close to the realities of how things are actually built and realised, while the prize will give me the freedom to ask questions that cannot be fully answered within the confines of a client-architect relationship,” Peirson added.

This year’s Wheelwright Prize jury included Harvard GSD dean Sarah Whiting, associate professor Mariana Ibañez, lecturer Marina Otero Verzier, and Master in Design Studies program co-director Charles Waldheim. 

Jennifer Newsom, Dream the Combine cofounder and Cornell assistant professor; and Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian’s architecture critic and 2026 Loeb Fellow, were also jurors.

Pierson was awarded the prize over four other distinguished finalists: Olga Cobușcean, Junho “Sohun” Kang, Mohamad Nahleh, and Brittany Utting.

The 2025 Wheelwright Prize winner was Mauro Marinelli, an Italian architect and educator. Marinelli explores the region where he practices, the Alps, as well as other mountainous parts of the world, namely the Andes and Himalayas.