The Stories Beneath Rome: Meet the GCA Centennial Rome Prize Fellow

August 26, 2026

By: Bernadette Tramm

As the GCA celebrates 100 years of scholarships, one scholar is heading to Rome, Italy to uncover stories hidden beneath the city itself. Professor Caroline Lavoie, the Centennial Rome Prize Fellow in Landscape Architecture, will explore the aqueducts, buried rivers, and historic fountains that continue to shape the experience of Rome today.

Lavoie, Fellow of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at Utah State University, where her three decades of teaching have shaped future designers through community-engaged studios and international collaborations, earning her the Council’s Excellence in Teaching Award. A former practicing landscape architect, she brings a professional and cross-cultural foundation to her work.

Her Rome Prize project, Drawing the Invisible Waters: Rome, Memory, and the Embodied City, will trace Rome’s hidden water systems—its aqueducts, buried rivers, and historic fountains—not as ancient infrastructure but as living landscapes, shaped by centuries of memory and human experience. Through drawing, she will connect Rome’s water history to contemporary ways of seeing and inhabiting the city.

During this centennial celebration, GCA scholarships shattered three records for the Class of 2026: 545 applications received, $604,000 in grants awarded, and 130 individual scholars received funding. 

From its first relationship with the American Academy in Rome in 1926, the GCA now collaborates with 16 partner organizations and offers 29 merit-based scholarships in 12 areas ranging from botany to urban forestry.
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Meet the Class of 2026 and learn more about 100 years of GCA scholarships on the GCA website.  https://www.gcamerica.org/scholarships/scholars?sid=20&yeargiven=&firstname=&lastname=&DoFilter=