“Design by Fire: Resistance, Co-Creation, and Retreat in the Pyrocene” by Emily Schlickman MLA ’12 published by Routledge
Emily Schlickman MLA ’12 has recently published “Design by Fire: Resistance, Co-Creation, and Retreat in the Pyrocene” with collegue Brett Milligan (Routledge 2023). Across the world, the risks of wildfires are increasing and expanding. Due to past and current human actions, we dwell in the age of fire – the Pyrocene – and the many challenges and climate adaptation questions it provokes. Drawing upon fieldwork, mapping, drone imagery, and interviews, this publication curates 27 global design case studies within the vulnerable and dynamic wildland-urban interface and its adjacent wildlands.
The book catalogs these examples into three general approaches: those that resist the creative and transformative power of fire and forces of landscape change, those that embrace and utilize fire while also trying to guide landscape forces, and those that intentionally try to retreat and minimize human intervention in fire-prone landscapes coevolved to human agency. Rather than serving as a book of neatly packaged solutions, it is a book of techniques to be considered, evaluated and tested for the cascading, compounding, and aggregating challenges of wildfire.
Follow Emily on Linkedin and Twitter.
posted November, 2023
Several Alumni Collaborate on newly published “Landscape Approach: From Local Communities to Territorial Systems”
“Landscape Approach: From Local Communities to Territorial Systems” edited by Hannes Zander MLA ’15, Shelagh McCartney DDes ’12, MDes ’07, Samantha Solano MLA ’16, and Sonja Vangjeli MLA ’16 has recently published by Applied Research & Design. The book promotes a landscape approach to understand and address complex interdependent issues of environmental change, ecological degradation, and socio-cultural inequalities. Through a variety of landscape-informed narratives, it aims to provide strategies which can help envision futures that are socially and environmentally just and sustainable.
“Landscape Approach” is the second book publication by the International Landscape Collaborative which formed at the GSD in 2016, a group of emerging scholars and practitioners who are interested in questions related to landscape and territory. The book features twenty-three essays from different geographic contexts across six continents, many of them written by GSD alums, and with a foreword by GSD Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture Nina-Marie Lister.
posted April, 2023
Frida Escobedo MDes ’12 selected to realize new Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing at the MET
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.
posted March, 2022
Robert Pietrusko MArch ’12, Katy Barkan MArch ’10, and Kevin Benham MLA ’01 Named Winners of 2020-2021 Rome Prize
GSD Alumni Robert Pietrusko MArch ’12 and Katy Barkan MArch ’10 are among the recipients of the 2020 Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships granted by the American Academy in Rome. These highly competitive fellowships support advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities.
Robert was awarded in Landscape Architecture and Katy in Architecture.
More information about the Rome Prize and this year’s recipients is available through their press release.
posted December, 2020
Exhibition Curated by Sae Kim MAUD ’12 and Featuring GSD Alumni/Faculty Opens at BSA Space
Balancing Act: Urbanism & Emerging Technologies, curated by Sae Kim MAUD ’12, is on view at the BSA Space through September 27, 2019. The exhibition looks at ways in which human-centered technology can have a positive impact on our urban experience. “With cities undergoing remarkable change, there is an urgency to find the balance between technology and urban life,” states the exhibition text. Kim currently serves as Associate Principal at Boston-based design firm CBT.
The show also features a number of GSD-affiliated contributors, including:
- Jennifer Birkeland MLA ’11
- Elizabeth Christoforetti MArch ’09
- Greg Chung Whan Park March ’11
- Jonathan Scelsa MAUD ’11
- Andres Sevtsuk, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard GSD
- Andrew Witt MArch ’07, MDes ’02, Assistant Professor in Practice in Architecture, Harvard GSD
- Kaz Yoneda MArch ’11
A Curator Tour will take place on Thursday, June 27, 2019, 6:00 PM 8:00 PM.
posted June, 2019
Charles Sharpless MArch ’12 Studio Wins 2019 City of Dreams Pavilion Competition, Launches Kickstarter
Somewhere Studio, led by Charles Sharpless MArch ’12 and Jessica Colangelo, has won the 2019 City of Dreams competition with their design Salvage Swings. Hosted by Figment NYC, the AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA), and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY), the annual competition is to design and construct a pavilion in Lighthouse Park on Roosevelt Island.
Salvage Swings consists of 12 modules made of salvaged cross laminated timber that are arranged to create a gathering space and a backdrop for the festival. The Arkansas-based studio will be fabricating the project entirely in Arkansas and the wood will all be sourced from scrap from a local dormitory project.
The project has received a $7,000 grant from Figment to get started, but needs additional support. Visit the project’s Kickstarter campaign to help bring the pavilion fully to life!
In addition to running Somewhere Studio, Sharpless currently teaches at the University of Arkansas.
Images courtesy of Somewhere Studio.
Update 5/29/2019: Salvage Swings will open to the public during the Figment Arts Festival on June 1-2, 2019. The pavilion will subsequently be on display in Lighthouse Park on Roosevelt Island in NYC. The Figment Arts Festival is free and open to the public. Free ticket required. Learn more.
posted March, 2019
Alumni Honored by Exhibit Columbus with Research Fellowships, Miller Prize, Washington Street Civic Project Leaders
Alumni across disciplines are being honored by this year’s Exhibit Columbus, an annual exploration of Columbus, Indiana’s architecture, art, design, and community.
Marshall Prado MArch ’11, MDes ’12 and Etien Santiago MArch ’11, PhD ’19 each received 2018-19 University Design Research Fellowships, created to “showcase current research by leading professors of architecture and design and highlight innovative research exploring ways that architecture and design can improve people’s lives and make cities stronger.”
Of the five firms honored with a 2018-19 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, four are led by GSD alumni:
- MASS Design Group, co-founded by Alan Ricks MArch ’10 and Michael Murphy MArch ’11;
- Frida Escobedo Studio, founded by Frida Escobedo MDes ’12;
- SO-IL, led by Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, and Ilias Papageorgiou MArch ’08; and
- Agency Landscape + Planning, led by Gina Ford MLA ’03 and Brie Hensold MUP ’07
Each firm was selected for “their commitment to the transformative power that architecture, art, and design have to improve people’s lives and make cities stronger.”
Two organizations led by GSD alumna, LA-Más and Borderless Studio, were selected as Washington Street Civic Project Leaders, an award provided to five mission-driven organizations that use “architecture, art, and design to improve people’s lives, connect communities, and catalyze efforts to make cities more equitable and sustainable.” LA-Más is co-directed by Elizabeth Timme MArch ’10, founder and Co-Executive Director, and Helen Leung MPP/UP ’11, Co-Executive Director, and Borderless Studio is led by Paola Aguirre MAUD ’11.
Photos courtesy of Exhibit Columbus.
posted September, 2018
Berkshire Residency Project Developed by Tessa Kelly MArch ’12 Featured in Dwell
The Mastheads, a public humanities project located in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and developed by Tessa Kelly MArch ’12 and her husband, is the topic of a recent feature in Dwell. Consisting of an annual writers’ residency, as well as other community programming, the idea for The Mastheads grew from work by Kelly for her GSD thesis, “Projective Preservation and the Small American City” advised by Ingeborg Rocker. Inspiration also came from the course “Critical Preservation Practices” taught by K. Michael Hays.
“I wanted to do something about the city of Pittsfield because it’s a de-invested city that is losing population,” Kelly told Dwell of her hometown. “Designing very expensive transit hubs or art museums didn’t feel like a reality for the place I came from.”
The designs for the residency’s five mobile studios take cues from the architecture of the structures in which five iconic American writers worked while living in Pittsfield: Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Henry David Thoreau. “We wanted to reference the historic structures, but we also wanted them be abstract, curious forms,” said Kelly.
Applications for the July 2018 writers’ residency will be accepted through February 28, 2018. Learn more.
Photography by Iwan Baan.
posted February, 2018
Alumni Work Recognized with 2017 ASLA Professional Awards
The work of Harvard University Graduate School of Design alumni is well represented in this year’s American Society of Landscape Architects Professional Awards, which recognize the best of landscape architecture from the United States and around the world. Winners received their awards at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Los Angeles last October. Those honored include:
GENERAL DESIGN CATEGORY
Honor Awards
Andrea Cochran MLA ’79, Megumi Aihara MLA ’07 (Windhover Contemplative Center)
Mikyoung Kim MLA ’92 (Chicago Botanic Garden: The Regenstein Learning Campus)
RESIDENTIAL DESIGN CATEGORY
Award of Excellence
Andrea Cochran MLA ’79, Lin Peng MLA ’12 (Birmingham Residence)
Honor Award
Andrea Cochran MLA ’79 (Telegraph Hill Residence)
Stephen Stimson MLA ’87 (Northeast Harbor, a Restoration on Mount Desert Island)
Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architecture, led by by Principals Gary Hilderbrand MLA ’85 and Douglas Reed MLA ’81 (Proving Grounds – A 20-Year Education in American Horticulture; Agrarian Modern – The Recovery and Renewal of Manatuck Farm)
Bruce Jett MLA ’92 (Northpoint Apartments)
ANALYSIS AND PLANNING CATEGORY
Honor Award
Charlotte Barrows MLA ’06 (The Olana Strategic Landscape Design Plan: Restoring an American Masterpiece)
Leo Alvarez MLA ’81, Ralph Johnson MArch ’73 (Waterfront Botanical Gardens)
Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architecture, led by by Principals Gary Hilderbrand MLA ’85 and Douglas Reed MLA ’81 (Conservation at the Edge – Prototyping low-intervention conservation in the Patagonian wilderness)
Gordon Gill MArch ’93 (Positioning Pullman)
Katharyn Leah Hurd MLAUD ’12 (Texas Capitol Complex Master Plan)
COMMUNICATIONS CATEGORY
Charles Birnbaum LF ’98 (The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin)
More information, including the full list of 2017 winners.
Photo: Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford University, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture.
posted November, 2017
GSD Alumni Honored with Architectural League of New York’s 2017 Emerging Voices Award
Harvard University Graduate School of Design alumni were recently honored with Architectural League of New York 2017 Emerging Voices Award. The program 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. Winners will lecture in New York City in March 2017 as part of the award program (more information here).
GSD alumni winners include:
Brian Bell MArch ’97 and David Yocum MArch ’97, Principals, BLDGS, Atlanta, Georgia
Eduardo Cadaval Narezo MAUD ’03 and Clara Solà-Morales MArch ’97, Principals, Cadaval & Solà-Morales, Mexico City and Barcelona
Frida Escobedo MDes ’12, Principal, Frida Escobedo, Taller de Arquitectura, Mexico City
Thomas F. Robinson MArch ’00, Founding Principal, LEVER Architecture, Portland, Oregon
Jonathan Tate Mdes ’08, Principal, OJT, New Orleans, Louisiana
Photo courtesy of The Architectural League.
posted March, 2017
Alums Organize Free Panel on Designing for the Global Refugee Crisis (Feb. 23, 2017, AIANY)
On February 23, 2017 the AIANY Global Dialogues Committee, co-chaired by Elie Gamburg MArch ’08 and Benjamin Gilmartin MArch ’97, will host a free panel discussion about mass migration and how the design community can respond appropriately to the needs of refugees facing economic distress and environmental degradation. Speakers will include Robert Pietrusko MArch ‘12, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture at the GSD, and moderator Farzana Gandhi MArch ‘06. The event will take place from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm at the Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY 10012). Learn more and RSVP here.
posted February, 2017
Stephen Fan MArch ’12 Curates and Aron Chang MArch ’09 Contributes to Exhibit, “SubUrbanisms: Casino Company Town, China Town”
An exhibit curated by Stephen Fan MArch ’12 titled “SubUrbanisms: Casino Company Town, China Town” is currently on view at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut. Featuring infographics, photographs, maps, and architectural representations and speculations by Stephen Fan in collaboration with graphic designer Shane Keaney, the exhibition explores casino urbanization, workers’ communities, and the contested suburban landscape through the lenses of architecture, landscape and planning, as well as anthropology, geography and contemporary critical art practices. The exhibit accompanies a publication that includes contributions from Stephen Fan and Shane Keaney, Society of Architectural Historians President Abigail Van Slyck, anthropologist Ellen Pader, historian Chloe Taft, and architect Aron Chang MArch ’09. A symposium will be held on March 29 at the Lyman Allyn and Connecticut College. The exhibit will run through May 12, 2014.
posted December, 2016
Dima Rachid MLA ’15, Aziz Barbar MDes ’16, and ChengHe Guan MDes ’12, DDes ’16 Enter B-More Resilient Design Competition
A GSD team of students and recent alumni won the Most Innovative Design award from AIA Baltimore, for a project titled “Wet Corridor.” Dima Rachid MLA ’15, Aziz Barbar MDes ’16, and ChengHe Guan MDes ’12, DDes ’16 entered the 2015 B-More Resilient Design Competition, and focused on “rethinking East Baltimore’s infrastructural resilience as a means to social welfare.” Read the full description and see images here.
December 2015
posted December, 2016
AIA Elevates Anne-Marie Lubenau LF ’12 to College of Fellows
Anne-Marie Lubenau LF ’12 has been elevated by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to its prestigious College of Fellows for 2016. “The Fellowship program was developed to elevate those architects who have made a significant contribution to architecture and society and who have achieved a standard of excellence in the profession. Election to fellowship not only recognizes the achievements of architects as individuals, but also their significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level.” The 2016 Fellows will be honored during a ceremony at the 2016 National AIA Convention.
February 2016
posted December, 2016
Daekwon Park MDes ’12, DDes ’16 Won Second Prize at CAADRIA Conference
Daekwon Park MDes ’12, DDes ’16, along with two other GSD graduates, won the second prize for the best paper award at the CAADRIA 2015 conference for the project developed in the course taught by Professor Panagiotis Michalatos. Additionally, Park was honored with the 2015 Young CAADRIA Award. See the complete list of award recipients here.
June 2015
posted December, 2016
Conor O’Shea MLA ’12, MDes ’14 Appointed Visiting Assistant Professor at IIT
Conor O’Shea MLA ’12, MDes ’14 has been appointed Visiting Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program in the College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. Trained as a landscape architect and urbanist, Conor teaches design, history, and theory in IIT’s emerging landscape architecture program. His research focuses on logistics as a driver of contemporary urbanization and ecologies. For more information please visit: http://arch.iit.edu/study/mla.
September 2014
posted December, 2016
André Albuquerque Passos MArch ’12 Wins Competition for TAZ Newspaper Headquarters
E2A Architects of Zurich won the international competition for the new headquarters of the Berlin based newspaper TAZ. The project is being led by André Albuquerque Passos MArch ’12. For the first phase, E2A was selected among 312 firms to be on a group of 25 offices for the second phase of the proposal submission. This group of 25 offices included some of the world’s leading practices (BIG, Staab, Max Dudler, etc). The site is on one of the most important axis of Berlin, the Friedrichstrasse, and is right next to the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind. Read more about the competition here.
August 2014
posted December, 2016
