Rough Hand Sketch Earns College of Architecture Student an Inaugural Gensler Opportunity Scholarship
After submitting a simple sketch of a residential marketplace surrounding an abandoned train track in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, an Illinois Tech College of Architecture student was one of the first to be awarded a prestigious $10,000 scholarship from the Chicago office of architectural giant Gensler.
Hai Truong (B.ARCH. 5th Year) was one of five students who won Gensler’s 2025 Opportunity Scholarship + Design Challenge, which the firm created this year to “break down the barriers of entering the architectural profession and provide opportunities for all students.”
Recipients of the scholarship were required to create a hand sketch to address one of four prompts; Truong chose a prompt asking applicants to “provide engaging and quality design for communities that have been historically neglected.”
Truong’s sketch proposes a pair of narrow residential buildings to be placed on either side of a section of the Englewood Nature Trial, which will recycle an abandoned rail corridor on Chicago’s South Side. The old rail line would be transformed into a park, a narrow bridge would stretch over the buildings, and an additional adjacent structure would house an indoor open market space that could accommodate either kiosk venders or larger performances.
Truong’s application also included an additional project that he created in a third-year College of Architecture design studio.
That project, titled “Pockets of Light Library,” envisions turning a downtown Chicago parking garage into a library, with large skylights above lower-floor cutouts allowing sunlight to inundate the entire structure. Interior flexible dividers and a frosted glass facade allow for even more natural light.
In a video that accompanied his application, Truong noted, “I started this project with one question: How do different spaces influence us to have different emotions?”
Growing up in Vietnam, Truong witnessed how design choices can dramatically alter the way people view their larger environment. While attending middle school in a small neighborhood in Ho Chi Min City, Truong vividly remembers the construction of the city’s first modern skyscraper. The Bitexco Financial Tower had a curved-glass exterior, something he’d never seen before. This was remarkably divergent from the linear boxes with corrugated metal roofs that made up most of the buildings in his neighborhood.
Seeing the affirming, hopeful effect the building had on residents, including himself, Truong decided to pursue architecture. He left high school as a junior and attended a community college in Seattle before enrolling at the College of Architecture. In 2024, he received a $25,000 scholarship from the Sean F. Mellon Scholarship fund.
Image: Hai Truong (left) next to the hand sketch that won Gensler’s 2025 Opportunity Scholarship + Design Challenge
