2026 Recipient

Lydia Caston is a project curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. She specializes in contemporary art and design history, with a particular focus on fashion and photography within these fields. During her research stay in Japan, she will be conducting interviews with artists and researching at various museums and archives. This fieldwork is part of her ongoing book project, “Macabre,” which focuses on themes related to the macabre, death, and spirituality.

Michael McDowell is a New York-based architect. During his stay in Tokyo, he will conduct fieldwork in short-term rentals to investigate how the “material honesty” of traditional Japanese design—such as tatami and cypress—has been replaced by disposable synthetic materials like plastic, reducing tradition to a mere visual image for tourism consumption. His findings will ultimately be presented as a book and an exhibition.