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16 Sep 2022

GSD Comeback: Alumni & Friends Celebration

Alumni Updates

Alumni Spotlight

Gary R. Hilderbrand MLA ’85 Appointed Chair of the GSD Department of Landscape Architecture

Alison Von Glinow MArch ’13 and Lap Chi Kwong MArch ’13 Named a 2022 Design Vanguard by Architectural Record

“Live Learn Eat: Architecture” by Anthony Poon, MArch ’92, published by ORO Editions

Ronald M. Druker LF ’76 to present Druker Award at Boston Public Library

Michael Meredith MArch ’00 and Monica Rhodes LF ’22 Named Winners of Rome Prize

Calvin Tsao, FAIA MArch ’79 and Zack McKown, FAIA MArch ’79 awarded AIA Medal of Honor

John Ronan MArch ’91 publishes book with Actar Publishers

News

4 August 2022

GSD Alumni Council Award Recipients

4 August 2022

Honoring the 2022 GSD Alumni Council Award Winners

30 June 2022

Harvard Design Press Announces Fall 2022 Titles

Support the GSD

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Harvard University Graduate School of Design #HarvardGSD

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Aug 12

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Fresh from the printer: A–Z—the GSD's new publication series created exclusively for graduating students—features drawings, renders, collages, illustrations, excerpts, abstracts, models, captions, diagrams, and vignettes representative of projects and research produced by each year’s graduating class.⁣
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Graduates from the classes of 2020 and 2021 are invited to submit their mailing addresses to publications@gsd.harvard.edu for a free copy. ⁣
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@hubersterzinger @nohawai ⁣
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#HarvardGSD #HarvardGSDAlumni

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Aug 11

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It's August, but we're still getting some reading in before the academic year starts. If you've been looking for a book on design, we've got an eclectic selection from GSD faculty, students, and alumni: everything from a deep dive on the history of cross-laminated timber to a murder mystery set at an architecture competition. Check out our #LinkinBio!⁣⁣
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Pictured: @mikebelleme and @chrisreedstoss's Mise-en-Scène: The Lives & Afterlives of Urban Landscapes.⁣
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#HarvardGSD #Architecture #UrbanDesign #UrbanPlanning #books

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Aug 8

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It's #InternationalCatDay! We love @remytheharvardcat at GSD (and, judging from how much he hangs out at Gund, he loves us too). Keep sending us your Remy content! #cats #catsofinstagram #HarvardGSD

📸: @garethgerarddoherty with @get.repost

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Aug 3

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"Miami Gateway: Affordable Housing for Resilient Communities" by Nicolas Carmona @ig.ncg (MArch II ’22), George Guida @george.guidadesign (MArch II ’22), and Manu Moritz @manurainforest — Recipients of the Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize, Second Prize. Instructors: Elizabeth Whittaker @elizabethwhittaker7 and @coreyzehngebot.⁣
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"Miami Gateway proposes an interdisciplinary and intergovernmental plan in pursuit of housing security and climate resilience. Located in Miami, Florida, our project aims to leverage publicly owned vacant land to erect prefabricated cross-laminated timber dwelling units for residents living below the local area median income." Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣⁣
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#HarvardGSD #Architecture #ArchitectureStudent

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Aug 1

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"Urban Health Catalyst: An Innovative Health Themed Development Model in Miami Health District" by Vicky Chen (MAUD/ MDes REBE ’22) and Xudong Zhu @zhu_xudong_ @onland_studio (MAUD ’22) — Recipients of the 2022 Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize, Third Prize. Instructors: Elizabeth Whittaker @elizabethwhittaker7 and @coreyzehngebot.⁣
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"Our project strives to provide an accessible living environment for healthcare employees by introducing mixed-income housing and health-themed programming to the institutional Health District. We also plan to utilize the healthcare resources to stimulate the surrounding distressed neighborhoods." Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣⁣
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#HarvardGSD #Architecture #ArchitectureStudent

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Jul 29

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"Fluid Permanence – A Shotengai-Archive in Tokyo" by Qin Ye Chen @qinye_c (MArch I ’22) — Recipient of the James Templeton Kelley Prize, Master in Architecture I. Faculty Advisor: Mohsen Mostafavi.⁣
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"This thesis questions the notion of linear time and deals with concepts of adaptation and modification. It explores propelling permanence that provides a past that can still be experienced and is attached to the present everyday reality. It asks the question: How can we construct an architecture that allows us to explore the intersection of past and present and to rethink the notion of active history? Can public space be a repository of collective memory and achieve propelling permanence in a city that is constantly changing?" Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣⁣
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#HarvardGSD #ArchitectureThesis #ArchitectureStudentWork

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Jul 27

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"Priorities in Building Decarbonization: Accounting for total carbon and the time value of carbon in cost-benefit analyses of residential retrofits" by Allison Hyatt (MDes ’22) — Recipient of the Design Studies Thesis Prize. Faculty Advisor: Holly Samuelson.⁣
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"Energy consumption in new construction is decreasing thanks to stricter building codes, but few codes limit emissions from existing buildings, particularly from existing homes. This study investigates the carbon- and cost-effectiveness of three decarbonization strategies in residential retrofits: electrifying buildings, upgrading envelopes, and adding renewable energy. Each strategy is further divided into distinct retrofit interventions to guide homeowners and policymakers in prioritizing energy upgrades. Focusing on pre-1980s single-family homes in Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, the study analyzes homes in cities with distinct climates and grid emission rates." Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣⁣
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#HarvardGSD #ArchitectureResearch #DesignStudies

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Jul 25

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Looking for something to read this summer? A new book by Bert De Jonghe @bertdejonghe (MDes ’21, DDes '24), Inventing Greenland: Designing an Arctic Nation (@actar.publishers, 2022), examines the intense transformation of Greenland through the lens of urbanization. The book is based on De Jonghe’s MDes thesis, advised by Professor of Landscape Architecture Charles Waldheim @charleswaldheim, who also wrote the book’s foreword.⁣⁣
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The book explores Greenland’s cultural, social, and environmental realities and recognizes an array of relationships supported and produced by the built environment. Aimed at architects, landscape designers, and urban planners, it draws attention to the island’s emerging opportunities and ongoing challenges.⁣
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De Jonghe’s interest in Greenland began during a research trip in 2017 as part of his MLA thesis at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. He describes Kulusuk, a small town in East Greenland, where “the airport became a public space in which the community would gather to socialize, people-watch, and have a snack.” It was this observation that “spurred a design project emphasizing the relationship between Kulusuk’s community and the airport as a gathering place.” While De Jonghe’s final design is not featured in the book, the project spurred his interest in Greenland’s unique relationship with urban and infrastructural landscapes, and led him to continue the work at the GSD.⁣⁣
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As a first-year DDes student, De Jonghe has been investigating the Arctic urbanization of Russia while drawing attention to emerging influences and ambitions of the “near-Arctic state,” China. Before studying at the GSD, De Jonghe worked as a landscape architect in Belgium, South Africa, and Norway. He is also the founder of Transpolar Studio @transpolarstudio, a spatial design practice specializing in landscape architecture, urbanism, and design research in the Arctic and subarctic regions.⁣
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#HarvardGSD #LandscapeArchitecture #Greenland

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Jul 22

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"HERE LIES DARBY VASSALL: Rendering the obscured and concealed history of slavery at Christ Church Cambridge" by Nicole Piepenbrink (MDes ’22) — Recipient of the Design Studies Thesis Prize. Faculty Advisors: Susan Snyder, George Thomas and Krzysztof Wodiczko @krzysztof_wodiczko.⁣
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"By reading against boundaries, materiality, and identity projections, this project situates the Christ Church Cambridge in Harvard Square within broader, interconnected landscapes of dispossession and extraction, making connections to places and people beyond the fiction of 'historic' boundaries to — in W. E. B. Du Bois’s words — the 'foundation stone' (Black labor) of 'Northern manufacture and commerce.'" Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣⁣
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#HarvardGSD #ThesisProject #DesignStudent

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Jul 21

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Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol @turbatol, a collective project on display as part of the 59th Venice Biennale @labiennale, features an interdisciplinary team of Chilean creatives, including Alfredo Thiermann @athiermann, design critic in Architecture at the GSD. The pavilion is a multisensory sound and video installation that exhibits the cultural, political, and environmental relevance of the peatlands in Patagonia and their relationship with their original inhabitants, the Selk’nam people. Turba Tol Hol-Hol aims to provide an experimental path toward conserving the peatlands through research, education, and collaborations with the Wildlife Conservation Society–Chile, Karukinka Park in Tierra del Fuego, and the Selk’nam Hach Saye Cultural Foundation.⁣⁣
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The Chilean Pavilion is curated by Camila Marambio, an independent US-Chilean curator who founded Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol as a research project and collective “emerging out of eco-relational philosophy and post-humanist cultural theory, particularly related to the ethics of living and dying in a time of ecological crisis.” “Hol-Hol Tol” means the “heart of peatlands” in the language of the Selk’nam people, who are Indigenous to Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia. The peat fields in this region are part of a delicate natural environment and are drying up under the threat of climate change, mining, peat moss harvesting, and ecological degradation. Once drained and destroyed, peatlands go from being carbon sinks to being sources of carbon emissions, releasing enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The Selk’nam believe that their first ancestors became mountains, rivers, trees, and animals, and every element of nature is sacred. Members of the Selk’nam people are also involved in the project.⁣⁣ Read more at #LinkinBio!
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#HarvardGSD #venicebiennale #architecture #Patagonia #Chile

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Jul 20

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“Bracing Peter Bracy: Reclaiming Power & Retaining Roots (BPB) in New Rochelle, NY” by Hana Cohn (MLA I ’24), Youngju Kim (MAUD ’23), Arami Matevosyan @aramiesme (MDes REBE ’22), and Naksha Satish @naksha_satish (MAUD ’22) — Recipients of the Plimpton-Poorvu Design First Prize. Instructors: Gina Ford @ginamarieford and Rhiannon Sinclair @agencylp.
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"BPB is guided by the idea that housing is more than a physical structure or financial asset—it’s a powerful economic engine for local communities. With that as a principle, BPB puts forward a non-privatized vision to redevelop the only remaining traditional public housing project in New Rochelle, New York." Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣
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@harvardurbandesign #HarvardGSD #LandscapeArchitecture #UrbanDesign #LanscapeArchitectureStudent

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Jul 18

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Bay State Cohousing, a 30-unit cohousing community, is neatly woven into the low-density neighborhood fabric of Malden, Massachusetts. Slated to open this summer, the award-winning project from Jenny French @jennyfrancais and her practice, @French2D, is redefining what high-quality and community-oriented housing can look like in Greater Boston, especially in the face of growing unaffordability and displacement.⁣
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In a recent conversation over Zoom, French spoke about the process behind designing the Bay State Cohousing project, the importance of relationship-building as a designer, and why she is optimistic about the future of cohousing. Read the interview and learn more about the project on our site. #linkinbio

#HarvardGSD #Architecture

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Jul 14

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Today, we're featuring an Instagram Stories takeover by James Carrico (@james__carrico)!⁣
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A 2020 GSD graduate, MUP / MArch II alum James Carrico is now in Singapore completing a Fulbright research grant. His topic of focus is a unique type of urban space known as a “city room”, an enclosed, publicly accessible space that facilitates community interaction as a centralized collector of temporary events, permanent programs (like food!), and ordinary everyday life. A U.S. State Department awarded grant, James is also fulfilling the Fulbright program’s aspiration to promote bilateral US-SG relations by working with scholars at the National University of Singapore, Docomomo Singapore, and numerous other individuals who work and live in the Southeast Asian region. During his time so far, he has since written articles for Docomomo and Rice Media. Follow more of his work and writing at jamescarrico.substack.com.⁣
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#HarvardGSD #Architecture #UrbanPlanning

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Jul 13

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"The World Was Their Garden: Plant introductions at the US Department of Agriculture, 1898–1984" by Anny Li @annnnyli (MDes ’22) — Recipient of the Design Studies Thesis Prize. Advisor: Edward Eigen.

"In 1898, the US Department of Agriculture established the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction (SPI) to systematically collect and introduce plants of economic interest to US soil. Yet traditional accounts of federal plant introduction often leave out what it took to integrate these collections into the agricultural landscape: systematic experimentation that inhered in monumental record-keeping practices, imperial relationships, and the ravenous need for industrial agriculture to reproduce itself at scale—thus motivating continual investment in seeds as 'experimental capital.' This thesis thus re-situates the SPI’s administrators and explorers as actors in the US imperial environmental management state emergent at the turn of the century, examining the archival logics of the state infrastructure built to accumulate and manage the living substrate of industrialized monocultures."

Learn more about this and other prize-winning projects and students by visiting our website. #LinkInBio⁣⁣⁣

[1] Pages from US Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introductions, New Plant Introductions 1914–1915
[2] Source: Special Collections, USDA National Agricultural Library.
[3] Source: Matthew Roth, Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America, Lawrence, KS,
University Press of Kansas, 2018, 84.
[4] Source: William Lyman Phillips Papers, Frances Loeb Library Special Collections, Box 1.

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#HarvardGSD #DesignStudent #DesignResearch #MDes

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Jul 11

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The GSD Alumni Council and Frances Loeb Library recently announced the 2022 winners of the Unsung Hero Book Prize: Junainah Ahmed MArch '23, Aeshna Prasad MAUD '21, MDes '22, Sarah Page MAUD '23, Naksha Satish MAUD '22, and Arshaya Sood MDes '22, MUP '23.

Now in its sixteenth year, the Unsung Hero Book Prize celebrates GSD students who act in selfless ways to make the School a better place. Deserving students are nominated each spring by fellow GSD students, faculty, and staff. The winners are presented with a book of their selection, and a second copy is donated to the Frances Loeb Library with a bookplate commemorating the award.

[1] This year's honorees were celebrated during a virtual reception on May 17, 2022.
[2] "Eileen Gray: An Architecture for All Senses" chosen by Junainah Ahmed.
[3] “Brodsky & Utkin” chosen by Aeshna Prasad
[4] “Routledge Companion to Rural Planning” chosen by Sarah Page
[5] “Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence: Convergent Systems for Planning, Design, and Operations” chosen by Naksha Satish
[6] “Le Corbusier Sketchbooks, Vol. 4, 1957-1964” chosen by Arshaya Sood

To learn more about the Unsung Hero Book Prize and this year's awardees, read the announcement on the GSD Alumni & Friends website. #LinkInBio

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Future Design Leaders Match

Upcoming Events

GSD Comeback: Alumni & Friends Celebration

Alumni Updates

Gary R. Hilderbrand MLA ’85 Appointed Chair of the GSD Department of Landscape Architecture

Alison Von Glinow MArch ’13 and Lap Chi Kwong MArch ’13 Named a 2022 Design Vanguard by Architectural Record

“Live Learn Eat: Architecture” by Anthony Poon, MArch ’92, published by ORO Editions

Ronald M. Druker LF ’76 to present Druker Award at Boston Public Library

Michael Meredith MArch ’00 and Monica Rhodes LF ’22 Named Winners of Rome Prize

Calvin Tsao, FAIA MArch ’79 and Zack McKown, FAIA MArch ’79 awarded AIA Medal of Honor

John Ronan MArch ’91 publishes book with Actar Publishers

News

GSD Alumni Council Award Recipients

Honoring the 2022 GSD Alumni Council Award Winners

Harvard Design Press Announces Fall 2022 Titles

Support the GSD

harvardgsd

Make a Difference. Support the GSD.