Awards

UMassBrut Receives Boston Society of Architecture's  2024 BSA Commonwealth Award 

UMassBrut, a collaborative advocacy group of students, faculty, and staff from across the UMass system, was awarded the Boston Society of Architecture’s Commonwealth Award at a ceremony on March 5, 2025 in Boston. Accepting the award on behalf of UMassBrut was Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Senior Campus Planner and Architect at UMass Amherst, along with Lincoln Nemetz-Carlson ‘23. The BSA, a partnership between the Boston Society of Architects and the BSA Foundation, presents the Commonwealth Award annually in recognition of “an outstanding influence on our built environment or our awareness of it.”

Since its inception in 2019, UMassBrut has worked to educate and advocate for the conservation, renovation, and reuse of Brutalist architecture. The group sponsors dozens of events each year, including public tours, educational programs, and exhibitions, to underscore the complex history and formal grandeur of the mid-century modern architecture on UMass campuses throughout the Commonwealth.
One such exhibit, Windows on UMass, just completed a 3 week-long residence at UMass Dartmouth after its highly successful debut at UMass Amherst in the fall of 2024. The exhibit featured works by students from UMass Amherst and UMass Dartmouth inspired by the windows of Brutalist buildings on each campus. The project was conceived by UMassBrut founding members Timothy M. Rohan and Pavlova-Gillham, and curated by Rohan, Nemetez-Carlson, Erica DeWitt '23, and UMass Dartmouth faculty, including Anna Dempsey, Laura Franz, Stephanie McGoldrick, and Rose Botti-Salitsky (read more about the UMass Dartmouth exhibit).

Docomomo Modernism in America Award of Excellence in the Inventory/Survey Category (2022)

UMassBRUT was honored with a 2022 Docomomo Modernism in America Award of Excellence in the Inventory/Survey Category, and, on November 3rd, six members of the Executive Committee traveled to New York to accept the award in person.

Society of Typographic Arts, STA 100 2021, International Typographic Excellence Awards  

Michelle Bowers, Graphic Designer and Associate Professor of Art + Design, UMass Dartmouth, receives two prestigious design awards for her design of the UMassBrut logo and campaign honored Society of Typographic Arts, STA 100 2021, International Typographic Excellence Awards  

 https://100.sta-chicago.org/winners/2021/umass-brut.  

United Designs Alliance 2022 International Design Competition

Michelle Bowers honored by the United Designs Alliance 2022 International Design Competition, Signs, Systems and Letterform Marks, Silver Award for UMassBrut logo,  http://uniteddesigns.org/ssl-2022-awards/