The OBEL Foundation has opened applications for the fourth edition of the OBEL Teaching Fellowships, offering a grant of up to €75,000.
Prospective fellows from around the world are invited to apply in partnership with a host institution. Selected courses are expected to begin in 2027 (or shortly thereafter) and will centre on the 2026 OBEL Award focus: Systems' Hack.
The fellowship supports deeper exploration, development, and dissemination of knowledge on this critical theme within the built environment.
"Supporting influential ideas and approaches that can drive architectural discourse is a key focus for the foundation. We are excited to welcome applications from around the world to gain diverse perspectives on the Systems' Hack agenda. Ultimately, we seek fellows who explore how architecture can critically engage with the systems that underpin contemporary society — from infrastructure and energy to food, water, education and information. Just like the Systems' Hack agenda, education can work in a similar way: moving beyond conventional problem-solving and instead intervening in the very systems on which society and nature depend," explains Jesper Eis, Executive Director at OBEL.
The 2026 fellowship cycle provides funding that enables universities to introduce new voices into academia and develop impactful courses examining how architects can expose, infiltrate, and reconfigure entrenched structures — not by rejecting them, but by transforming how they function. The theme asks whether architecture can become an active participant within ecological and social systems, operate within planetary boundaries, and help reshape the networks of production, governance, and influence on which it depends.
Further information about the Systems' Hack focus can be found here.
