Stanek awarded 2025 Graham Foundation grant for upcoming book
Taubman College’s Łukasz Stanek, professor of architecture, was awarded a 2025 individual grant by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for his upcoming book on socialist architecture in the Global South.
Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation works to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. To achieve this goal, the foundation has awarded $45 million in grants to 5,200 projects to date. This year, the foundation awarded 42 grants out of more than 600 applications.
Stanek, who focuses on global urbanization and the exchange of architecture between the Global North and South, is a prolific writer. He received the grant for his upcoming book The Gift: Spaces of Global Socialism and Their Afterlives (Jovis Publishers, 2026), which features essays from 24 contributing authors about how gift-giving and its geopolitical implications continue to impact urbanism in Africa and Asia.
The book is inspired by a series of exhibitions and lectures on the topic presented by Stanek since 2024. “The Gift: Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture” was a 2024 exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TUM in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany. Featuring case studies from North Macedonia, Ghana, Mongolia, and California, the exhibition explored the generosity and violence of the gift giving dynamic. Stanek also presented on the topic in a 2025 lecture to the American Association of Geographers.
