Isabelle “Belle” Verwaay Delatour received her Master of Architecture degree with distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in May 2018. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants from the university, including the Clifford Wong Prize in Housing Design - for her thesis on housing in her native Port-au-Prince - as well as the Faculty Design Award and the Walker Beale Scholarship.
A Haitian-American, Belle was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and moved to Miami, Florida to complete her secondary education at Palmer Trinity School. In 2014, she graduated with high honors from Dartmouth College where she majored in Geography, Studio Art, and International Studies. An Alfred K. Priest Fellow, Belle was awarded the Alumni Scholar Award, the Student Art Acquisition Award, and the W. David D. Fine Arts Award during her time at Dartmouth.
Her work from the GSD has been featured and exhibited in GSD’s Platform 9 and Platform X, Unbuilt GSD’s exhibition at Design Miami, as well as Wallpaper Magazine, featured as one of ten of the world’s top graduates in Design. Belle is an associate AIA member. She has previously worked at Perkins Eastman and LA DALLMAN Architects and has interned at Arquitectonica, Spatially, and LGL Consultants.
Belle’s philosophy and commitment to design stems from her belief that design, at both the architectural and urban scale, bears the responsibility of enhancing the human experience and quality of urban life. Belle’s interests lie in opportunities and practices that deform and transform typologies to arrive at creative solutions, as well as projects that revitalize calcified sites into new civic spaces that add value to the urban narrative.