Bart Voorsanger MArch ’64
Bart Voorsanger MArch ’64 understands the value of connected multidisciplinary design. The founding partner and principal of Voorsanger Architects PC in New York City, his firm works on projects ranging from small residential interiors to multi-million dollar residential and institutional buildings, many of which involve collaborations within other design disciplines. Voorsanger sees a future in which design disciplines increasingly intermingle. To ensure that students at the GSD are at the forefront of these intersections, he established the Voorsanger Fellowship Fund. The fund will support four top-performing students, one from each of the GSD’s disciplines—architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and design studies—who hold “great promise for making a significant contribution to these fields.”
Harvard has an ambitious, kaleidoscopic mix of professional talent at the GSD that will not only contribute to the quality of the students’ educational experience but will also sustain a level of excellence and reputation to assure the future of significant design contributions in the public realm.
“The future of design is this absolute, multidimensional world of integrating design disciplines. We’re all overlapping, and there are fewer barriers between them,” he says. Harvard has an ambitious, kaleidoscopic mix of professional talent at the GSD that will not only contribute to the quality of the students’ educational experience but will also sustain a level of excellence and reputation to assure the future of significant design contributions in the public realm.
Voorsanger believes that creating synergies and producing outcomes across disciplines is vital to the mission of the GSD. The Voorsanger Fellowship Fund stipulates that the four selected finalists come together annually to present to the GSD community in the connected fields of their studies. Voorsanger’s ultimate wish is that the fellows be able to focus on their passion for their work, unhindered by concerns about student loan debt. “The GSD has continued to excel in both the art and practice of architecture, which are two very different things, keeping them in a state of colloidal excellence,” he says. “It’s really extraordinary, and I hope my gift will inspire other architects and those who love design to support the GSD and encourage the best to come to Harvard.”
