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Dear Alumni,

Thank you to those of you who were able to join the GSD to celebrate design and kick off our Grounded Visionaries campaign on September 12 + 13. It was joyous!

For our community, the Campaign is the embodiment of a virtuous cycle of engagement: It begins with the trays of Gund Hall, an architectural romance of intellectual and creative capital. That continues to flourish in the world beyond the GSD’s walls, replete with the social relationships spawned in late-night design sessions in the various corners of Gund Hall. Ultimately, fomenting and nurturing all of this creative, intellectual, and social capital requires financial capital…the tithe of citizenship.

Ours is a place making community of creatives that daily impacts the environment in ways that no other design community does. Our alumni community came together strong from around the world to engage in meaningful discussions about design and the future of our GSD in September. As Chairman of the Alumni Council, I have the pleasure of working alongside my colleagues to promote and advance the work of the GSD and our entire, multi-generational, multi-disciplinary, ubiquitous lifelong Alumni community. I am grateful to the members of the Council—past and present—for their generosity, leadership, and participation, and for helping to welcome back alumni and friends who descended upon Cambridge to take part in a milestone event.

We have gained much momentum this year, and it is up to us to keep it going. I invite you to join us at one of our upcoming fall events. The GSD will be holding alumni receptions in New Orleans to welcome Loeb Fellows on October 16 (co-hosted by Alumni Council members Collette Creppell AB ’82, MArch ’90, Kevin Harris MAUD ’80 and Sabeen Hasan MArch ’09); in New York for the ULI Fall Meeting (co-presented with REAI) on October 22; and in Denver for the ASLA Annual Meeting on November 22 (hosted by Mark Johnson MLAUD ’82). We are also excited to present our annual Alumni + Friends Weekend on December 6-8 in conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach. You won’t want to miss it!

Today, we begin anew to fortify, and rejoice in these relationships. We are community and we are family: touched, formed, and renewed by this astonishing place of teaching, learning, and making.

From one Grounded Visionary to another,
Michael B. Lehrer FAIA, MArch ‘78
Alumni Council Chair, GSD