Julie Bargmann MLA ’87 was featured in the New York Times article “How the ‘Queen of Slag’ Is Transforming Industrial Sites” for recent work on abandoned industrial sites. “Three decades ago no landscape designer was looking at the vast manufacturing and mined landscapes, landfills and every type of degraded landscape. When I thought about the number of acres, it was astonishing. That set me off. Folks might think I’m a bit crazy, but I’m going to go find the landscapes that I want to work on, not more or less already perfect landscapes.” said Bargmann in response to a question about her career focus. Ms. Bargmann is the founder of D.I.R.T Studio in Charlottesville, VA.
Visionaries is a limited series that looks at figures who are trying to transform the way we live.
AGi architects, the international design firm led by Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea MArch ’02 and Nasser B. Abulhasan MArch ’02/DDes ’07 has been shortlisted for the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture for their Wafra Wind Tower. This residential building is one of the 20 finalists for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2022, as announced by the organization at the beginning of June.
“It’s a great honour to be shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Our practice is rooted primarily within Muslim communities, where we seek an understanding between tradition and contemporary lifestyle without losing sight of our essence.”
Follow AGi Architects: @agi_architects
Kwong Von Glinow, a Chicago-based architecture practice led by Alison Von Glinow, MArch ’13 and Lap Chi Kwong, MArch ’13 has been selected as part of the 2022 Architectural Record Design Vanguard. Architectural Record annually “honors 10 emerging practices advancing issues of form, construction, sustainability, and community engagement.”
Kwong Von Glinow recently completed Ardmore House in Chicago and the new Swiss Consulate headquarters in the Chicago Hancock Center. The firm’s current projects include the renovation of a 12,000-square-foot Howard Van Doren Shaw home in Highland Park, IL for an art collector family; the Art Outpost Residence in a Chicago greystone; and, a three-flat housing project along Chicago Avenue.
Follow Kwong Von Glinow on Instagram @kwongvonglinow
Notable architectural writer, Michael Webb, and ORO Editions publish the work of Anthony Poon, FAIA March ’92, and his studio, Poon Design Inc. Webb writes, “Anthony Poon’s passion for music inspires a vibrant architecture that engages its users and the environment. This monograph explores three fields in which Poon Design has excelled: housing, schools, and restaurants. It explains how they enrich the experience of living, learning, and eating, and promote social interaction. Affordability and sustainability are hallmarks of Poon’s designs, which fuse quality and innovation.”
Available at local bookstores and Amazon.
Follow Anthony Poon on Instagram @anthonypoondesign
Ronald M. Druker LF ’76 will be in attendance to present the Druker Award on June 4th, 2022 at the Boston Public Library.
This year’s awardee, Chef/Owner of the Boston-based Barbara Lynch Collective, will be in conversation with Boston Public Library President David Leonard. Following the discussion, which will include details about Barbara Lynch’s memoir Out of Line: A Life of Playing with Fire, there will be an audience Q&A. Druker Company President Ronald M. Druker will give welcoming remarks.
For more information on how to register, please visit the event webpage.
Michael Meredith MArch ’00 and Monica Rhodes LF ’22 have been named winners of the 2022-23 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. These highly competitive fellowships support advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities. This year, the gift of “time and space to think and work” was awarded to thirty-eight American and four Italian artists and scholars. They will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, starting in September 2022.
Meredith has won the Arnold W. Brunner/Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize in the area of Architecture with his firm, MOS Architects.
Rhodes has won the Adele Chatfield-Taylor Rome Prize in the area of Historic Preservation and Conservation.
For information on all this year’s winners, please visit here.
John Ronan MArch ’91 has published the book Out of the Ordinary (Actar Publishers, 2022). This publication on the work of John Ronan Architects explores the firm’s spatial-material approach to architecture and the underlying themes of its typologically diverse output. Out of the Ordinary proposes an architecture of innovation rising from ordinary concerns, about relationships not form.
For more on John Ronan and John Ronan Architects, visit here.
Calvin Tsao, FAIA MArch ’79 and Zack McKown, FAIA MArch ’79 have been honored with the AIA Medal of Honor for their firm, Tsao & McKown Architects. The Medal of Honor, conferred by AIA New York since 1914, is the Chapter’s highest form of recognition. It acknowledges an architect or firm of architects for distinguished work and high professional standing.
“Calvin and Zack have been treasured members of our New York City architecture community for many years. Countless people here in this room have worked with them, and their collaborative approach and joie de vivre has influenced many of us. Their commitment to our civic organizations, like the Architectural League, Center for Architecture, and others, has been steadfast. They are a valuable and much-loved part of what makes New York City such a special place to practice.” – AIANY President Andrea Lamberti
For more on the 2022 AIANY Honors and Awards Luncheon, please visit here.
Three alumni have been named winners of the 2022 Architectural League Prize of New York. The Architectural League Prize is an annual competition, lecture series, and exhibition organized by The Architectural League and its Young Architects and Designers Committee. The winners’ lectures and installations provide a lively public forum for the discussion of their work and ideas. These winners will create installations of their work onsite at a location of their choice or in a digital format to be presented in an online exhibition on archleague.org, opening June 14th, 2002. This year’s theme of the League Prize: Grounding.
Congratulations to:
Francisco Quinones MArch ’14, Departamento del Distrito
Maggie Tsang MDes ’19, Dept.
Isaac Stein MLA ’20, MDes ’20, Dept.
To learn more about each winning project, please visit:
Dept.
Departamento del Distrito
Visit here for the full list of 2022 Awardees.
Stanislas Chaillou MArch ’19 recently published ‘Artificial Intelligence and Architecture, From Research to Practice’ with publisher Birkhauser. This book provides an introduction to Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) encounter with Architecture, through the triple-lens of History, Application, and Theory. A chronology of Architecture’s technological evolution first puts AI back in the context of the discipline. The author then presents a collection of AI’s applications in Architecture. The book finally gives the stage to contributors working at the forefront of this revolution. From Harvard to Foster & Partners, their perspectives provide a panorama of the discourse surrounding AI’s presence in the field. Halfway between research and practice, this publication offers to unveil the promise and challenges AI holds for Architecture.
Follow Stanislas Chaillou on Instagram: @stanislaschaillou
Chan Byun MArch ’89, AIA, LEED AP, has joined CHA Consulting, Inc. (CHA) as Director of Design based in Boston, MA. Recognized nationally for his design excellence and innovation, Chan will provide design leadership to CHA’s architecture and building design group.
Chan comes to CHA with more than 30 years of experience in healthcare, education, and institutional projects. His design portfolio includes recent work for the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Morgan State University, Caroline County Public Schools, and the Pennsylvania State University. Chan’s work has garnered numerous awards for excellence and creativity, including National and State AIA Design Awards. Chan has earned NCARB and LEED AP Accreditation and is a licensed architect in Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Vermont. He is a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design and Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning.
For more information on CHA Consulting, visit here.
Nine GSD alumni and faculty have been elevated by the 2022 Jury of Fellows from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to its prestigious College of Fellows. The honor recognizes architects who have “achieved a standard of excellence in the profession and made a significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level.”
The GSD congratulates:
- Prof. Ricardo A. Alvarez-Diaz AMDP ’20
- Mr. Hans-Ekkehard Butzer MArch ’99
- Kenneth Harold Luker MArch ’96
- Prof. Kiel K. Moe MDes ’03
- Mr. Anthony C. Poon MArch ’92
- Mr. Steven Rajninger MArch ’92
- Mr. Mark P. Schendel MArch ’89
The GSD also recognizes Associate Professor of Architecture Faculty member Mr. Eric Howeler was also selected as a fellow this year.
For the full list of 2022 Fellows, visit the AIA website.
The GSD remembers John Andrews MArch ’58 who passed away on March 24th, 2022 at the age of 88. Andrews was an architect with a global legacy. Some of his most well-known designs include Scarborough College and the GSD’s home, Gund Hall.
GSD Department of Architecture Faculty, Moshe Safdie, FAIA shares a remembrance of John Andrews.
You can read more about John Andrews’ life and legacy here.
Chana Haouzi MArch ’14 has been honored with a 2022 AIA Young Architect Award. Each year, the Young Architects Award honors individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers.
As the article states, “In order to bring new communities into architecture, we also need new models of leadership who translate skill and experience to communities to help those communities realize their visions—Chana embodies this new spirit of leadership.”
For more information about Chana, visit here.
Frida Escobedo MDes ’12 has been selected to realize the vision for the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The project will encompass a full reimagining of the current modern and contemporary galleries, which The Met has been seeking to revamp for more than a decade, creating 80,000 square feet of galleries and public space. The cost of the renovation is estimated to be $500 million. Escobedo established her eponymous studio in Mexico City in 2006. Her practice operates across a wide array of scales and mediums, from buildings and experimental preservation projects to temporary installations and public sculpture, limited-edition objects, publications, and exhibition design. Escobedo was chosen following a comprehensive international search and will be the first woman to design a wing at The Met.
From the Met’s press release: “The new wing will be a vibrant, exhilarating space that meets The Met’s current and future needs while promoting a lively representation and reevaluation of the art of the 20th and 21st century in the context of 5,000 years of art history,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met. “Frida Escobedo is an outstanding architect of our time. In her practice, she wields architecture as a way to create powerful spatial and communal experiences, and she has shown dexterity and sensitivity in her elegant use of material while bringing sincere attention to today’s socioeconomic and ecological issues. Already through her partnership, Frida has demonstrated her vision to create enthralling galleries that will challenge the embedded hierarchies of our history and chart a more accessible trajectory for the new wing.”
For more from the New York Times on this announcement, please visit here.
For more information on Frida Escobedo, please visit her website.
Aliza Sovani MLA ’15 and Sonja Vangjeli MLA ’15 have been named two of eight recipients of the 2022 Annual Grants Program by Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation. This highly competitive program in support of research, communication, and scholarship was adjudicated by a National Jury from public, private and academic practices areas, representing the different regions of Canada.
To read more on the winning proposals, please visit the press release from LACF.
Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) announces Gary R. Hilderbrand MLA ’85 as new chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, effective July 1, 2022. Hilderbrand is the Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor-in-Practice at the GSD, where he has taught since 1990, and Founding Principal and Partner of Reed Hilderbrand.
Hilderbrand succeeds Anita Berrizbeitia MLA ’87, Professor of Landscape Architecture, who joined Harvard GSD as a Design Critic in Landscape Architecture in 1991. Appointed in 2015, Berrizbeitia is the 14th chair of the oldest landscape architecture department in the world, and only the second woman to hold the position.
“Gary’s sensibilities as a teacher and as a practitioner are one and the same—his unyielding efforts to reconcile imminent, often intractable forces of urbanization with ecological sustainability, cultural history, vegetative regimes, and thoughtful kindness are central to his pedagogy and practice both. I could not be more delighted he has accepted this appointment, and I am excited for what is to come under his leadership of the department. I also look forward to celebrating Anita’s important tenure as chair of the department and thank her for all that she has brought to the school,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture.
“I’m humbled and honored in equal measure by this appointment, and I am grateful to Dean Whiting for her confidence and support,” Hilderbrand says. “For more than a century, Landscape Architecture at Harvard has positively shaped discourse in research, teaching, and practice in the field. We continue that legacy forward with renewed urgency in the face of ever more dramatic environmental and social upheaval. I’m grateful for Professor Anita Berrizbeitia’s remarkable and humane intellectual stewardship over the past seven years, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the department and the school to uphold the commitment to design leadership that is demanded of us in this time. We stand well prepared.”
Gary Hilderbrand is a Founding Principal and Partner of Reed Hilderbrand. Works by Reed Hilderbrand have received more than 100 design awards to date. A committed practitioner, teacher, critic, and writer, Hilderbrand’s honors include Harvard University’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award with Douglas Reed, and the 2013 ASLA Firm of the Year award. DesignIntelligence named Hilderbrand one its “25 Most Admired Educators” of 2016. Gary is the recipient of the 2017 ASLA Design Medal, the highest design honor available to an American landscape architect.
Hilderbrand is committed to positioning landscape architecture’s role in reconciling intellectual and cultural traditions with contemporary forces of urbanization and change. Over the course of his prolific career, Hilderband has collaborated with Tadao Ando, Annabelle Selldorf, and Gensler on the expansion of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA; developed four phases of revitalizing the Hudson River waterfront at Long Dock Park, Beacon, NY; and led the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan for the City of Cambridge, MA. More recently, Reed Hilderbrand were part of five firms participating in the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, a design ideas competition that reimagines the future of Washington, D.C.’s iconic Tidal Basin. Current works include the repositioning of New York City’s Lever House, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the new Farrand House at Dumbarton Oaks, and major interventions at the Storm King Art Center.
Hilderbrand’s essays have been featured in Landscape Architecture, Topos, Harvard Design Magazine, Architecture Boston, Clark Art Journal, Arnoldia, New England Journal of Garden History, and Land Forum. Hilderbrand is co-author of Visible | Invisible, a Reed Hilderbrand monograph (2012), and he has produced two other books: Making a Landscape of Continuity: The Practice of Innocenti & Webel (1997), which was recognized by ASLA and AIGA (50 Best Books); and The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism (1999).
He has served on the editorial boards of Spacemaker Press, Harvard Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. As a competition juror, he’s participated in Harvard’s Green Prize for Urban Design (2006, 2013); I Premi Europeu de Paisatge Rosa Barba Barcelona (2000, 2002, 2003, 2018); and “Suburbia Transformed” for the James Rose Center (2010). He chaired the ASLA National Awards Jury in 2005 and the ASLA Annual Student Awards Jury in 2006.
Bert De Jonghe MDes ’21, DDes ’24 has recently published his master’s thesis as a book, called Inventing Greenland – Designing an Arctic Nation (Actar Publishers, March 2022). Through the lens of urbanization, Inventing Greenland provides a broad understanding of a unique island undergoing intense transformation while drawing attention to its historical and current challenges and emerging opportunities. Geared towards architects, landscape architects, and urban planners, this book examines the local cultural, social, and environmental realities with a distinct spatial sensitivity, recognizing the diverse array of relationships that the built environment both supports and produces. By exploring Greenland as a complex and interconnected cultural and geographical space, Inventing Greenland reveals and anticipates transitional moments in the region’s highly intertwined urbanized, militarized, and touristic landscapes.
Follow Bert De Jonghe on Instagram: @bertdejonghe
Timothy Carey MArch ‘15 and Laura Greenberg MAUD ’20 have been named as one of the five winners of the 2021 Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant. Administered by the Center for Architecture, AIA New York, this grant is a national award intended to further the personal and professional development of an architect in early or mid-career through travel.
For Carey, his proposal entitled “Some Assembly Required: Performing Arts Architecture and the Idea of Audience” focuses on the shifting relationships between the performing arts building, the concentrated “audience” of previous eras, and the dispersed “public” of the present-day – brought about over the past century by the technological means to consume culture outside of the auditorium. While the discourse on the performing arts building often details attempts to “crack open” the typology, during the COVID-19 shutdowns these institutions were suddenly only able to address their dispersed public. Carey’s research will investigate how those aspirations might be reframed and reevaluated following a time of crisis for the building type. This research extends the work that he originally developed in his thesis (with advisor GSD Professor Grace La) and for which he has gained further significant professional expertise in practice.
For Greenberg, her proposal studies public school closings that have become common in certain US cities as populations decline and disinvestment compounds. Closings tend to disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities, eliminating associated educational and community benefits. Her proposal, “School’s Out” explores equitable re-use strategies that prioritize community input and retain public benefits from former public school sites. The project will focus on district-scale processes (how re-use decisions are made, who is involved, how information is communicated transparently, etc.) and building-scale outcomes. Laura Greenberg will travel across the American Midwest and Northeast to examine the transformation of former public schools.
Miguel Guitart MArch ’03 has published the book ‘Behind Architectural Filters: Phenomena of Interference’ (New York/London: Routledge, 2022). The book explores the active role of architectural filters in generating physically and sensory charged spatial experiences. The book addresses how the material and the psychological strategies of permeable physical boundaries determine our perceptual experiences of the spaces we occupy.
Follow Miguel Guitart on Instagram: @miguel.guitart
Nader Tehrani MAUD ’91 with his firm NADAAA announces his work with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to redesign their Ancient Near East and Cypriot galleries. NADAAA is working in collaboration with Moody Nolan on the $40 million, 15,000 square foot project. The design team is working closely with Museum construction leadership and curators Kim Benzel and Seán Hemingway to develop the design.
It’s an honor to be selected for this project, which will address the need for more diverse narratives in the displays of art from the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean regions. In bringing disparate layers of the Museum’s architectural history into dialogue, the proposed design hopes to bring the formal, spatial, and material properties of these galleries into alignment with The Museum’s mission. By working in collaboration with The Met’s curatorial and construction teams, we’ll be able to recondition these spaces while facilitating the connection between cultures, civilizations, and geographies to tell a whole new story.
Follow NADAAA on Instagram and Twitter: @nadaaainc
Follow NADAAA on Facebook: NADAAAInc
Follow NADAAA on LinkedIn: nadaaa-inc
COLLECTIVE ( collective studio), a Hong Kong, Madrid and San Francisco-based firm founded by Betty Ng MArch ’09, co-directed by Chi Yan Chan MArch ’08, Juan Minguez MArch ’09 and Katja Lam, was awarded Silver for the Best Futura Project at MIPIM Asia Awards 2021, one of the largest real estate awards in Asia. The podium architectural design of the King Lam Street Commercial Development forms the base for a new set of commercial twin towers situated in Lai Chi Kok, an old industrial district in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The design is made up of three levels and comprises four main program components: retail and F&B shops; two main office lobby entrances providing access to the two towers; a reconfigurable and multifunction auditorium; and finally, a large outdoor gathering area composed of a continuous parametric green landscape of steps which extends from the second floor down to the ground level.
Learn more about the project at COLLECTIVE’s website.
Find COLLECTIVE on Instagram @collective_studio
The GSD remembers David Raphael MLA ’77 who passed away on January 12, 2021. Raphael was a landscape architect, planner, and graphic designer. He founded the award-winning interdisciplinary firm, Landworks in 1986.
You can read more about David Raphael’s life and legacy here.
Guy Nordenson Loeb Fellow ’94 has been elected as a new member of The National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He currently serves as a professor of architecture and structural engineering, Princeton University.
Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.” Election of new NAE members is the culmination of a yearlong process. The ballot is set in December and the final vote for membership occurs during January.
Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting on Oct. 2, 2022. A list of the new members and international members follows, with their primary affiliations at the time of election and a brief statement of their principal engineering accomplishments.
View the 2022 New Member list here.
Three Alumni have been named in The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices Awards. This award spotlights North American individuals and firms with distinct design voices that have the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. The jury reviews significant bodies of realized work and considers accomplishments within design and academia.
The work of each Emerging Voice represents the best of its kind and addresses larger issues within architecture, landscape, and the built environment.
Congratulations to:
Alumni Council Member Paola Aguirre Serrano MAUD ’11 , Borderless Studio
Alumni Council Member Sekou Cooke MArch ’14 , sekou cooke STUDIO
Daniel Adams MAR ’05, Landing Studio
Visit here for the full list of 2022 Awardees.
Anthony Poon, MArch ’92 has authored his third book, Death by Design at Alcatraz, published by Goff Books. This novel examines the architect’s ego, arrogance, and redemption within the design process. Taking place in San Francisco, architects are being murdered as they compete for a new museum of art at the notorious Alcatraz Island.
“The Fountainhead meets Squid Game in this mystery of obsession and murder set in the fancy but cut-throat world of contemporary architecture… With lofty ideals succumbing to greed and ambition, this allegory of the world of modern architecture is written by an insider of the trade…” – Shana Nys Dambrot, Arts Editor, LA Weekly
Available at local bookstores and Amazon.
Follow Anthony Poon on Instagram @anthonypoondesign
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the appointment of Edith Hsu-Chen MUP ’97 as Executive Director of the NYC Department of City Planning. Edith served as the Manhattan Borough Director for City Planning since 2008. In her new role, she will oversee and implement the Mayor’s development agenda, promoting inclusive, equitable growth throughout the five boroughs and putting the city on a path toward robust recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Edith currently serves as a member of the GSD Alumni Council.
“I am incredibly honored to be named Executive Director for the Department of City Planning. I have spent my career at DCP – a community where extraordinary professionals work side by side with the public to help build New York City’s brightest future. I am thrilled to work alongside incoming City Planning Commissioner Dan Garodnick, and I thank him, Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer, and Mayor Adams for the faith they have placed in me and for the service to this city we will forge in the coming years,” said incoming Department of City Planning Executive Director Edith Hsu-Chen.
Read more on Edith’s appointment.
Atelier Cho Thompson, a New Haven and San Francisco-based firm founded by Ming Thompson MArch ’10 and Christina Cho Yoo MArch ’11, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition. Inspired by New York’s tapestry of cultures and people, the project, entitled Interwoven, celebrates the joys of reconnecting in public space. The project is on view through January 2, 2022 and will then move to a new downtown public park in New Haven.
Follow Atelier Cho Thompson on Instagram
Gandong Cai MLA ’17 has won the first prize of the NE[O]ASIS Design Idea Challenge organized by Dubai EXPO, UN-Habitat, Ingenious Women Initiatives, and other academic institutes. After two rounds of judging, Cai and partner Mingjie Cai were selected out of 140 international teams to be the first prize winners, with their proposal PALM-OASIS: Reimagining A More-than-human Dubai Waterfront.
NE[O]ASIS is a design idea challenge directed towards combatting desertification through sustainable urban and architectural development. The challenge aims to contribute urban/architectural/landscape solutions for the self-resilience of climatically challenged regions in deserts and drylands and encourages participants to contribute with ingenious design ideas to new interpretations of traditional oasis systems. The challenge sites are set in locations across Australia, the Arabian Peninsula and Africa. A video detailing the project can be found here.
Follow on Instagram @donchoi0702
Follow on Facebook/Twitter Gandong Cai
For more information and photos please visit https://www.caigandong.com/
The College of Environmental Design at UC Berkley (CED) has named Lisa Iwamoto MArch ’93 as the new Chair of the Department of Architecture, effective in December of 2021. She has been a full-time faculty member at UC Berkley for nearly two decades and serves as a founding member of the award-winning San-Francisco-based practice, IwamotoScott Architecture, with partner Craig Scott MArch ’94.
“I am pleased to appoint Lisa Iwamoto as the next chair of the department. She has dedicated her career to balancing practice with academia and enters the position with a well-rounded approach to architectural education that can meet the contemporary environmental challenges and opportunities we face” says Renee Y. Chow, Dean of the College of Environmental Design.
Learn more about Iwamoto’s appointment.
“On Rigor” is the newly released monograph of the work of Johnsen Schmaling Architects, the Milwaukee-based design studio founded by Sebastian Schmaling MAUD ’02. Published by ORO, the book includes an introduction by architectural critic and longtime editor at Architectural Record, Clifford Pearson.
From the publisher: “In a world that fetishizes aesthetic frivolity and iconographic bombast at the expense of substance and nuance, the critically acclaimed work of Johnsen Schmaling Architects stands out for its conceptual rigor, profound simplicity, and quiet repose. Formally restrained and informed by innovative tectonic and material experimentations, Johnsen Schmaling’s precisely crafted architecture creates poetic atmospheres of enduring clarity.”
Follow Johnsen Schmaling Architects: @johnsenschmaling
AGi architects, the design firm led by Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea MArch ’02 and Nasser B. Abulhasan MArch ’02/DDes ’07, has designed the Mission Possible: The Opportunity Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. This thematic pavilion encapsulates the concept of ‘Opportunity’: the idea that any action we take can create an impact; that anything is possible with a small step. It is conceived as a large plaza, providing continuity to the Opportunity District in which it is situated. The design builds on the rich urban history of the plaza throughout millennia, from Roman times to the modern-day – the concept of a plaza is universal and lends itself to multiple cultures, whether it is a piazza, Saha, common, or the town square. This universal urban language is important because the pavilion aims to be a platform for social and cross-cultural engagement.
Follow AGi Architects: @agi_architects
Honghao Deng MDes ’18, with partner Jiani Zeng, was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for their startup Butlr in the Manufacturing & Industry category. Butlr designs and manufactures smart building sensors to make architecture more responsive and understand users’ needs.
“Butlr’s patented technology is now being deployed for fall detection in senior living facilities and to help people age in place.” – Forbes
AGi architects, the international design firm led by Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea MArch ’02 and Nasser B. Abulhasan MArch ’02/DDes ’07, completed Wafra Living in Kuwait. This residential project proposes an innovative housing organization, a new type of multi-family living as a social response to housing needs in the country. The complex combines at different levels domestic and collective scales that are both private and public. It is composed of 16 types of living typologies distributed across five cores to cater to a variety of tenants. Wafra Living is socially driven, environmentally responsive, and behavior-conscious. This development has set an example of how to approach urban issues and redefining areas; thereby becoming a catalyst for the city’s future growth.
Follow AGi Architects: @agi_architects
Steven Bloomfield MArch ’72/MCP ’73 and his firm, Bloomfield/Schon, were recognized by the State of Ohio for their renovation and repurposing of the Peters Cartridge Factory into a mixed-use community. This is the firm’s fifth major historic renovation project. The Peters Cartridge Factory was built in 1918 with the original purpose being to make cartridges and armaments but is now a unique apartment building with 134 units “that offer urban living in the suburbs with lifestyle amenities.”
Visit the Peter Cartridge Factory Website for more.
Gregory Haley MAUD ’98, Associate Principal with Henning Larsen participated in the Panel Debate: Building the Irresistible Circular Society, Brick by Brick sponsored by the AIA New York, Creative Denmark, the Danish General Consulate in New York City, & NYCxDESIGN on November 17th in New York City.
Watch the panel debate.
Follow Henning Larsen: @henninglarsenarchitects
Ruderal, a design firm founded by Sarah Cowles MLA ’05, with landscape architect Ben Hackenberger MLA ’20, has won the Landezine International Landscape Awards Special Jury Award for their project “Arsenal Oasis”. This is a public landscape in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia. The jury recognized the project for its “newfound and unique roughness reflects a relevant dialogue between what was, what is, and the suggestion of what ought to be. The project addresses wider spatial issues in Tbilisi and will hopefully act as a catalyst to spark positive change regarding neglected areas in the city.” Ruderal was founded by Cowles in 2019 to support a new generation of landscape architects in the Caucasus. Based in Tbilisi, the firm pursues a wide variety of projects in the Black Sea region and Central Asia as well as in Europe and the United States.
Follow RUDERAL: @_ruderal_
Follow Sarah Cowles: @ditch_daily
Follow Ben Hackenberger: @bhackenberger
Nashid Nabian DDES ’06 and her practice [Shift] Process Practice has been assigned as the architectural designer of Iran’s Pavilion in the Dubai Expo 2020. The pavilion has been officially inaugurated after completion on October 1st, 2021 with the opening of the Dubai 2020 Expo. The project has been identified as one among “the eight architecturally significant pavilions of Dubai 2020 expo,” by Architectural Digest.
“Inspired by 1001 nights of Shahrzad, which is a seminal piece of literature in Persian culture, narrating the story of Shahrzad, who decides to go for 1001 nights of storytelling for the king to postpone his violent verdict against those who did not deserve it, the Iran pavilion in Dubai Expo 2020, is designed as a field condition as opposed to a monolithic building, consisting of several spatial pockets, each functioning as an agent to deliver a part of the story of contemporary Iran. Each pocket is a blue box, inspired by the metaphor of the sky, and wrapped in a curtain out of beads that implies the contrast between the heavens and the earth. This duality adds to the sensational aspects of the spatial experience of visitors. The architecture transforms to an operate-able apparatus, with which the spectator is allowed to interact. The pavilion is not a building but a rhizomatic network of connections between different narratives of contemporary Iran. Each visitor is allowed to have her own course within this architecturally configured landscape. Each visitor can tell a different story of Iran based on the numbers of the spatial pockets she visits and the sequence in which she interacts with this field of possibilities. The duality of the resulting space in the pavilion, is not limited to the differing material condition of the blue cubes and their brownish bead curtains. The contrast between the discreet interiors of the cubic spaces and the networked exterior condition of the in-between spaces in open-air also contributes to this duality. It is as if the in-between spaces create an exterior condition that is interiorized within the boundary of the pavilion. It is the in-between space that transforms the project to an architectural stage for the ‘informal’ to occur, while the interior, admits the formal narratives that are housed within the boxes. The resulting space is welcoming the curiosity of the spectator with negotiable boundaries hinted upon by the malleability of the bead curtains. The spatial narrative offered by Iranian pavilion is not linear in a Hegelian sense with predefined sequences. It is more theorized in the sense of hyper-temporality, allowing for leaps from one story to the other.”
Follow [Shift] Process Practice @shift.studio.architects
Follow Nashid Nabian @nashidnabian
Michael Lehrer MArch ’78 and his firm, Lehrer Architects, will collaborate with the City of Los Angeles on their award-winning transitional housing design for a project to combat homelessness in Los Angeles. The Tiny Homes Transitional Housing Project at the Whitsett West site will be the firms fourth collaboration with the city.
Sofia Koutsenko MArch ’15 and her practice DROM were selected by Wallpaper* as one of 20 Architects’ Directory 2021 practices from across the globe. Together with two other partners, Timur Karimullin and Timur Shabaev, they launched their practice in 2017 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Since this time, they have been fortunate to build a number of projects. Among them is an award-winning public space, Azatlyk Square in Naberezhnye Chelny, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. Current projects under construction include an expansion of a factory campus in Zulte, Belgium, a new park in Derbent, Russia, and affordable housing in cities across Russia.
Find DROM on Instagram @drom_rotterdam
Cultured Magazine named Kate Orff MLA ’97 and Martha Schwartz GSD ’77 to their list of Landscape Living Legends.
- Kate Orff is the Founding Principal of SCAPE. She focuses on retooling the practice of landscape architecture relative to the uncertainty of climate change and creating spaces to foster social life, which she has explored through publications, activism, research, and projects.
- Martha Schwartz is Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the GSD. For more than 40 years, she and the firm, Martha Schwartz Partners, have completed projects around the globe, from site-specific art installations to public spaces, parks, master-planning and reclamation.
According to Cultured: “In recent decades, landscape architects and designers have played an increasingly significant role in shaping our communities and developing urban spaces that are more hospitable to pedestrians, bicyclists, pet owners and people who want to gather or just need some fresh air. But these professionals generally remain less lauded than the high-profile architects who design our buildings. While perhaps they’ve yet to achieve starchitect status, we believe these five designers—all of whom think deeply about our relationship with the natural world—deserve a prominent place in any good design pantheon.”
Read the full article.
Image below: In Chongqing, China, the 2019 hot pot master garden at the upper Yangtze River City flower art expo was designed by Martha Schwartz Partners.
David De Celis MArch ’98 and his firm, DCVL Design, have been honored by the US Department of Energy (DOE) with a 2021 Housing Innovation Award for their Zero-Energy Home, in collaboration with Energy Vision Homes, Hollis, NH.
According to the website: “Since 2013, the DOE Housing Innovation Awards have honored the very best in innovation on the path to zero energy ready homes by recognizing forward-thinking builders delivering American homebuyers with a better homeowner experience.
Wendy W Fok DDes ’17 is one of 500 New York City-based artists to receive $5,000 through the City Artist Corps Grants program, presented by The New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment as well as Queens Theatre. Fok was recognized for “Things Left Unsaid” and their research on “digitalSTRUCTURES”, which will bring the exhibition and talk-series to a physical exhibition at NEW Inc. incubator venue organized by the New Museum in New York, and at the Italian Pavilion in the Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy. The two-city exhibition, along with the digital exhibition is to allow a larger network of creatives who could be reviewing the materials locally and internationally. Events will be from August 27, 2021, to November 21, 2021.
The two-part project will include the exhibition of the “Things Left Unsaid” talk-series, and digital objects of everyday objects that will be partnered with a marketplace digital auction, research published in a post-exhibition book within the larger research umbrella of digitalSTRUCTURES. All the pre-recorded (audio/visual) videos are processed and edited to 30-minute formats. They are available to the public on social media (see below) and virtually at the CityX Venice website and digitalSTRUCTURES.cc.
Instagram: @WendyWFok
Twitter: @W_W_F
Message for Dr. Shoichi Kajima’s Memorial delivered by Professor Peter G. Rowe on July 14, 2021.
“Well after his passing in 2020, Dr. Shoichi Kajima is and will be gratefully and respectfully remembered by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. where he received his Master of Architecture degree in 1957 prior to his PhD in architecture at Tokyo University and his assumption of the directorship of the Kajima Corporation. The great, great grandson of the corporation’s founder, Dr. Kajima oversaw the company’s flourishing as one of the oldest and largest construction companies in Japan, providing services in design, engineering, construction, and real estate. Indeed, during an untimely downturn in the 1990s, he expanded operations into the fledgling yet important environmental sector. Throughout this activity he was particularly involved in the design and construction of the headquarter office buildings, consistently creating spaces that were rational, functional, and restrained without special attachment to style. In addition to receipt of his professional architecture degree from Harvard, Dr. Kajima established the Kajima Chair in Architectural Design in 1989, the fourteenth endowed professorship at the school and occupied since its inception by B. Mack Scogin, the former Chairman of the Department of Architecture. Kajima also served as a member of the Visiting Committee to the Graduate School of Design between 1986 and 1992, contributing to the School’s excellence. Today he is well remembered as a dignified and constant inspiration for generations of architects to come.”
Peter G. Rowe
Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
Former Dean of the Faculty of Design, 1992-2004
The Climate Boot Camp is a training initiative created by the Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment (HACE) shared interest group and Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s The Climate Reality Project. HACE, an official Harvard Alumni Association shared interest group, developed the Climate Boot Camp, which launches in October. The program is designed for leaders who are deeply concerned about the climate crisis and want to know more about proven strategies, approaches, and tools that support win-win action plans and help drive organizational change.
The Climate Boot Camp is a five-session online program that starts October 14th – see registration for the full schedule. Register Now.
The GSD remembers Cornelia Hahn Oberlander BLA ’47 who passed away at age 99 on May 22, 2021. Oberlander was a pioneer in the field of sustainable design, an early proponent of green roofs, and a champion of collaboration. She once said that her dream is “green cities with green buildings where rural and urban activities live in harmony.”
A member of the class of 1947, Oberlander was one of the first women admitted to the GSD. She described herself as “elated” upon receiving her acceptance letter from Dean Joseph Hudnut and recalls sharing desk space with Lawrence Halprin BLA ’44, who became a good friend. She was taught by Walter Gropius, a leader of the Bauhaus movement. While at the GSD, she met her late husband H. Peter Oberlander MCP ’47, PhD ’57 at a picnic.
Oberlander shared with the Harvard Alumni Association in 2014, “Landscape architecture is a fabulous field that is more in demand than ever,” she says. “We need to take care of our environment. We have to have places to play for children. We have to have places for recreation. It means having a corner in the city, and a bench, and a tree to sit and contemplate away from a very busy world.”
~Anita Berrizbeitia, FAAR, MLA ’87, Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture
You can read more about Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s life and legacy as published by the New York Times.
Photo below: Cornelia Hahn Oberlander BLA ’47 (center) at a GSD event in 2014 with Peter Walker MLA ’57 (second from the right) and Gary Hilderbrand MLA ’85 (far right).
Acelab, an information marketplace of building products for architects, manufacturers, contractors, and clients founded in 2019 by Vardhan Mehta MAUD ’21 and MIT alumnus Dries Carmeliet, recently announced it had raised $3.5 million in investment from institutional investors and industry angels. Among participating investors in its first round of funding were Pillar VC, Alpaca, Draper Associates, MIT MET fund, Emily Fairbairn, and Erik Jarnryd.
As architectural designers, Mehta and Carmeliet recognized the vast numbers of hours architects spend gathering information on building products—“from sifting through manufacturing brochures and spec sheets to contacting salespeople with questions about product specs, pricing, and availability,” says Mehta. He notes that Acelab allows architects to “spend more time designing, and less time on the busy work involved in product sourcing and specifying” and manufacturers to “increase visibility and get in the spec.”
Acelab is currently running pilot partnerships with a select group of architecture and manufacturing firms in the US to prepare for its general availability launch.
Daniel Fetner, principal at investing firm Alpaca VC, explained the need for a tool like Acelab, describing it as a way to automate the “manual and time-consuming process of sourcing building materials and drafting spec sheets.” Pillar VC’s Russ Wilcox elaborated, saying, “It’s challenging for architects and building products manufacturers to coordinate, especially in this time of supply chain interruptions. Acelab’s platform makes it easy for everyone to stay on the same page. Architects can select and specify exactly the right products, manufacturers can sell more efficiently, and builders waste less time returning wrong orders.”
Last year, Acelab won the Harvard Real Estate Venture competition, received grants from MIT DesignX and MIT Sandbox, and was a finalist in Harvard Innovation Lab’s President’s Innovation Challenge. Currently, Acelab is running pilot partnerships with a select group of architecture and manufacturing firms in the US to prepare for its general availability launch.
When Yoni Angelo Carnice MLA ’20 first visited Cayuga Playground in San Francisco, he was struck by a wooden sculpture of a woman dressed in the traditional Filipino Maria Clara gown, with a graceful elegance that reminded him of his grandmother. The distinctively personal atmosphere of the park stayed with Carnice, and later became the basis of his year-long research project, “Eden of the Hinterlands: Reclaiming Asian-American Garden History,” under the Douglas Dockery Thomas Fellowship in Garden History and Design, sponsored by the Garden Club of America and the Landscape Architecture Foundation.
Before coming to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Carnice worked in ecological restoration and climate-based policy work. “I was doing very regimented invasive plant removal, and planting native plants, in a more binary way.” He sought a more fluid, holistic approach to landscape architecture. His time at the GSD and his experience at Cayuga Playground, which “weaves landscape narratives, plants, and architecture together in a beautiful way,” was a revelation. Located in the Outer Mission district, it is an unexpected, idiosyncratic gem in a city dominated by “mow and blow” parks. And it is largely the work of one man, Demetrio Braceros, a Filipino immigrant who became Cayuga’s gardener in 1986.
Read the full story on the GSD website.
Arielle Assouline-Lichten MArch ’13 is featured on HBO Max’s new design competition TV show Ellen’s Next Great Designer. Her furniture designs received accolades throughout the 6 weeks of challenges, landing her a finalist in Los Angeles to design a full collection in just four days. Arielle plans to introduce some of the pieces into her current body of work, under her brand name Slash Objects.
Read more about the show and her new work in Surface Magazine: “Undeterred by her second-place finish on Ellen’s Next Great Designer, the Brooklyn-based founder of Slash Objects is heralding a promising new chapter by dialing into her newfound flow state to fine-tune her most well-received pieces.”
Follow on social media @slashobjects @arielleassouline-lichten
Seven GSD alumni have been elevated by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) as fellows for their exceptional contributions to the landscape architecture profession and society at large. Election to the ASLA Council of Fellows is among the highest honors the ASLA bestows on members and is based on their “works, leadership and management, knowledge, and service.” ASLA will formally recognize its 2021 Class of Fellows during the annual conference in Nashville on Sunday, November 21.
Congratulations to the GSD alumni in the 2021 Class of Fellows (pictured below left to right).
- Juan Antonio Bueno MLA ’86
- Claude Cormier MDes ’94
- Shauna Gillies-Smith MAUD ’95
- Eric F. Kramer MLA ’98
- Allan Webster Shearer MLA ’94
- Glenn LaRue Smith LF ’97
- Roderick R. Wyllie MLA ’98
For the full list of 2021 Fellows, click here.
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