Jose Castillo MArch ’95, DDes ’00 and Saidee Springall MArch ’96.
Jose Castillo MArch ’95, DDes ’00 and Saidee Springall MArch ’96 founded the award-winning Mexico City–based firm a|911, an independent practice based in Mexico City, committed to architecture, urban design, and planning projects. Their work includes research, cultural, institutional, housing, mobility projects, and mixed-use master plans in various cities in Mexico. Among their built projects are the expansion of the Spanish Cultural Center and the transformation of the Sala Siqueiros, both in Mexico City, and the Monterrey Center for Higher Learning of Design (CEDIM).
Awards and recognitions received by a|911 include Mexico’s National Housing Award (2011); the Bronze Medal of the Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction Latin America (2011); Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York (2012); Best of Year by Interior Design, as well as the Project of the Year by ArchDaily and Plataforma Arquitectura (2013); Travel + Leisure Design Award 2014; and the Audi Urban Future Award (2014). In 2015, a|911 was recognized as the most visionary architectural firm in Mexico by Obras Magazine.
This summer, Castillo and Springall are Richard Rogers Fellows at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) and are spending their three-month residency at the Wimbledon House, the landmarked residence designed by acclaimed architect Richard Rogers for his parents in the late 1960s. Lord Richard and his wife, Lady Ruth Rogers, generously gifted the house to the GSD to create the program, which will serve as an international platform to bring together experts and practitioners whose work is focused on the built environment and its capacity to advance the quality of human life.
In this Alumni Q&A. Castillo and Springall share their research as Richard Rogers Fellows and what inspired their work.
1. Tell us about your background.
JC and SS: We were both born in Mexico City, and we’ve lived most of our lives in Mexico City. As teenagers, we both spent a year abroad (Saidee in Cambridge, UK, and Jose in St. Louis, MO). We both have a Bachelor in Architecture degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, which came prior to our MArch II’s from the GSD and Castillo’s Doctor of Design degree.
2. Who or what inspires you and your work?
JC: Conversations with friends and colleagues continuously inspire our work. Also relevant is the discovery of unknown geographies and architectures of cities. Personally, reading fiction is a way of understanding the shaping of space and cities. Cooking and investigating about food is also connected to our work beyond a mere hedonistic/cultural pursuit.
SS: The work of young architects fascinates me. Revisiting iconic works of architecture with different eyes and after a long time is quite inspiring. I am also interested in the way that unforeseen social behavior and dynamics in urban space inform architecture.
3. What is the most significant thing you learned as a Richard Rogers Fellow?
JC and SS: One that has to do with the Wimbledon House itself, which is that radical experimentation about a set of ideas, can inform a whole life of professional work as in the case of Lord Richard Rogers. It is about using design as a tool for material, spatial, and intellectual research. The specific relationship between the open and the closed transparency and the degrees of privacy in the house are quite inspiring.
The other has to do with being neither a foreigner nor a local, neither citizen nor tourist in a place like London. You learn to see it, experience it, wander through it, and live it without prejudices of time and space. This has become a key lesson for both of us, and one we take back to our everyday practice.
4. What is your favorite memory of living in Wimbledon so far?
JC and SS: We would probably say changing our daily routine completely, taking the bus and the train to London, returning to run/walk in Wimbledon Common and cooking at home. Richard Rogers’ Birthday Party at the Wimbledon House was also a very nice moment.
From left: Ruthie Rogers, Lord Richard Rogers, Jose Castillo, and Saidee Springall at Richard Rogers’ 84th Birthday Celebration.
5. How will this experience be helpful in shaping your career?
JC and SS: The idea of ‘making a pause’ in our professional lives has been fundamental; to be able to leave the 35 person office behind for three months and re-focus our way of working, communicating, spending our time is no minor lesson. Distance allows for some shifts in the way we work. In addition, after visiting projects and offices, meeting and talking to colleagues here in London, we see challenges and will take back lessons of problems we have faced.
One tends to be really critical of one’s own city, but after three months in London, we see that the difficulties and opportunities of urban life are similar everywhere (transportation, quality of life, housing, public space, conflict & security, etc…)
6. About what design problems are you passionate
JC: I am interested in the way that ‘everyday’ aesthetics inform architecture; how material processes and tectonics we find in the generic city are adapted by formal design processes. This also relates to the notion of adaptability over time of architectures in the city; how objects, buildings, blocks, and districts become part of our ‘normative’ way of understanding the city as interesting, beautiful, or successful.
SS: I am very much interested and continuously consumed by the relationship between housing typologies, the shape of the city and the success (or not) that they have in producing community.
7. Tell us about your award winning practice based in Mexico City, arquitectura 911sc, which has shaped the face of the city through projects such as the Ara Iztacalco housing project, the Spanish Cultural Center, and others. What do you feel is your practice’s strongest area, and how have you worked to develop it over the past years?
JC and SS: In many ways, we have been lucky to be able to develop a kind of practice that engages in areas and modes of work such as research, collaborations, work at different scales, and programs. Recently we have been asked to develop much more urban design and planning work, specially needed in a place like Mexico, which connects to our previous work with affordable housing. We see this as an interesting continuum we want to keep pursuing; the relationship between ways of organizing the territory and the specific possibilities of buildings.
The office has grown to 35 people, (small for the US but medium to large sized for Mexico), and we now have a third partner and an associate. This means that the organizational aspect of the work becomes more relevant and requires different skills.
8. How did you learn about the Richard Rogers Fellowship? What motivated you to apply?
JC and SS: We learned about the Fellowship through a number of media including the alumni emails and social media. We really liked the prospect of the residency/fellowship as a way to ‘take stock’ of what we had been doing in recent years. It also connected two ideas we are curious about in our work, which is the relationship between domestic space (the house, the dwelling) and the city (how and what to ‘Learn from London’)
9. Jose, your research aims to extend the work you began as fellow of the Mexican National Endowment for the Arts, which investigates the way in which food and cooking transform cities. Tell us about your work and what you hope to gain from this Fellowship.
JC: It’s been some time since I have been fascinated with the question of food and cities (in spite of the fact that it seems to be a hot topic now). Similar to other research concerns I’ve had earlier (tourism, informality), I am keen on finding the ways in which disciplines external to architecture become relevant forces in ‘informing’ architectures and cities. We take for granted what it means, spatially, infrastructurally, culturally, to have food on our tables, to eat in a restaurant, or to buy fresh produce that was grown thousands of miles away. By relating my research on London to what I have inquired before in Mexico, I hope to ask questions and inquire about some of these issues and how can they become more useful to our understanding of cities.
10. Saidee, your research is on affordable housing in London, focused on analyzing policies and financial structures, and new models of community participation. What approach are you taking to your research? Has the Fellowship shaped the direction of your work or opened new doors?
SS: Being able to visit post-war, as well as recent housing projects in London, have shown how housing needs to be constantly reinvented; the housing question is in constant flux. It’s not only about the ‘right to housing’ but how it gets executed (or not) through new models of participation from public agencies, charities, cooperative, and integration with communities for residents with mixed income and for mixed use.
A crisis such as the fire in Grenfell tower, which happened during my time here, brought back the relevance of social housing as a public topic with multiple implications for all stakeholders; from the State to housing associations, from planners to architects.
11. Tell us about your work/life balance? What occupies you when you are not working?
JC and SS: Being partners in life and work means that we can compensate a bit on both. A few years ago, we decided to move the office out of the same building where we lived and discovered that distance from the office is important. Because of our own different strengths and interests, we avoid ‘competing’ with one another and rather find the moments where the conversation really makes the work better.
Family life is very important to us. We have two teenage daughters who we are close to and enjoy being a part of their lives. Small quotidian moments, whether taking our Vizsla dog to the forest for a walk, to cooking and hosting dinner parties is part of this shared life.
12. How do you engage with the GSD alumni community? What do you value about this engagement?
JC and SS: My ongoing teaching at the GSD has kept me in touch with colleagues who are either teaching or working in the area. We are also close with some of the alumni based in Mexico through work and or social events. There is not a year in which we are not in contact with global friends and colleagues from our times at the GSD in the 1990’s. Now during our time in London, we even got to meet some of them. For us keeping in touch is important and a way to continuously ‘take stock’ of ideas and professional work ‘distilled’ over time. Friendships are really important to us.
13. What advice do you have for GSD students and/or alumni?
JC and SS: Harvard and the GSD is an incredible resource for meaningful work and conversations. Make sure you ‘expand’ the conversation in time and space. Remain in touch because it matters. These ‘life-long’ conversations make things more interesting.
14. Jose, you have taught at several design schools including UPenn, Tulane, and the Universidad Iberoamericana. How do you think GSD students are uniquely prepared to enter the design fields?
JC: I think GSD students have a unique combination of intellectual and critical tools on top of their design and representation abilities. The design fields require more of this sort of reflexive attitude that goes beyond talent and capacities. In my mind, this is an approach where GSD students are second to none. It’s not a coincidence that an important number of deans, chairs and key faculty in architecture schools in the U.S. are GSD graduates. This relates in my mind to the double intertwined commitment to design and teaching, which is evident in Gund Hall.
15. What would surprise us about you?
JC: That in spite of my passion for architecture and urbanism, I would probably leave the profession with little hesitation and move on to a career in the food business.
SS: Most people are still surprised when I tell them that before attending the GSD, I was kicked out from four schools for bad behavior.
Jose Castillo and Saidee Springall at the Wimbledon House June 2017 event to celebrate the Richard Rogers Fellowship and House restoration. Photo credit: Lucie Goodayle.
Reunion 2017 will be taking place at the GSD Friday, October 13 – Saturday, October 14 for classes ending in 2’s and 7’2.In preparation for your reunion, the GSD tracked down photos from the archives of students and the GSD from 1972 to the 2000’s. You can join the memories by sharing photos of you and your classmates during your time at the GSD.
Upload yours to this DropBox link or emailed to [email protected]. Please label the photo file name with this naming convention: • First Initial_Last Name_Degree_Year_Function (if known) • Example: L_Grant_MArch_1996_Traylife
For more information on Reunion, please visit this page.
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K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Chair of the Department of Architecture (2000’s.)
Hometown: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Current City: New York, NY Current Position: Senior Associate, New York City Economic Development Corporation Other Degrees: BSc, Architecture, MIT
1. What was your work experience/background before coming to the GSD?
I received Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from MIT. Immediately after undergrad, I started my Master in Architecture at GSD, but as I learned more about urban planning, I became very interested in it and decided to pursue Master in Urban Planning at GSD.
2. Why did you choose the GSD?
Coming from an architecture background, I was fascinated by GSD’s approach to urban problems. Whether we accept it or not, physical surroundings dictate much of our daily lives and interactions. I thought the GSD would help me effectively use my design background in the urban planning field.
3. What made you decide to pursue real estate as a career afterward?
I realized that without implementation, all plans and designs would only be ideas. I think financial feasibility is the most challenging and crucial aspect of any project. Once developed, these projects go on to change urban environments. I also like collaborative nature of real estate, where one needs to cooperate with different people from different backgrounds to bring projects into reality.
4. What experiences at Harvard do you look back on as having been most helpful in your career?
The MUP program is very flexible, so I was able to take classes that catered my interests. I took classes at Kennedy School and MIT on a variety of subjects such as real estate, transportation, and sustainability. I think my exposure to these fields really helps me understand cities and developments comprehensively.
Hometown: Rockville, MD Current City: Los Angeles, CA Current Position: Managing Partner, Agora Partners Other Degrees: B.A. in Urban Studies and Design of the Environment, University of Pennsylvania; M.S. in Real Estate Development, Columbia University
1. What was your work experience/background before coming to the GSD?
I had a couple of jobs in architecture immediately before the GSD while living in Jackson Hole, WY. Prior to that, I also had summer internships in Washington, D.C., and Boston with architecture firms.
2. What made you decide to pursue planning as a career?
I started undergrad as pre-med, but I wasn’t too passionate about it. I took some architecture courses in high school, and that informed my decision to major in Design of the Environment at Penn, which was the architecture major. I got some advice from a friend that the Design of the Environment major was intended as a precursor for architecture school so that I should consider a double major in the event I didn’t go to grad school. I ended up adding an Urban Studies major, which ended up being a natural fit. I loved the Urban Studies major and was able to take it in a physical planning direction. I continued in that direction and, after graduation, worked in Jackson Hole, WY, including some planning work, and decided to apply to planning school afterward.
3. Why did you choose the GSD?
When you’re given an opportunity to get a Harvard education, it’s not something you can turn down easily. When I was put into the fortunate place to pick between programs, the GSD MUP program was a natural fit for me. I thought that because it is housed in a design school, I had options to explore other design programs, as well. I ended up staying focused on planning. The professors and course offerings are phenomenal. Boston and Cambridge are a great place to learn and live.
4. What areas in planning interest you the most and how are you addressing them in your career?
I’m currently working in real estate and urban redevelopment. I like how it enables me to be in a decision-making position. I like the complexities of figuring out what is “right” for a neighborhood, which can mean many different things to many different people. I like the messiness of trying to convene stakeholders with different agendas to identify solutions, and then distilling this into an actionable item. I don’t focus on a specific product type. I take a broad perspective and use stakeholder analysis, market analysis, and planning analysis, figure out what that “right” or “good” use might be. Planning is messy and can sometimes be controversial. It is part politics. There will always be someone telling you it’s wrong, and you’re not going to satisfy everyone all the time. You need to be able to make decisions and recommendations based on the best information available. Then, when you inevitably find something that doesn’t work, you have to be able to think creatively, quickly, and holistically.
5. Can you summarize the path you have taken since graduation that has led to your current position and how the GSD prepared you for it?
I had the Knox Fellowship after graduation from the GSD and went on to study the planning legacy of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Some specific development projects in Sydney caught my eye, and I met with some of the real estate professionals responsible for an article I ended up writing for Urban Land magazine. I returned to the United States and went to New York to get a M.S. in Real Estate Development at Columbia University. While in school, and afterward, I worked for BRV Corp., run by Dan Biederman, who turned around Bryant Park and many other parks around the country. At BRV, we used public spaces, parks, plazas, and streets to effectuate neighborhood turnarounds. It was an exciting niche planning job, but it also took into account design, management, real estate, politics, and finance.
I moved to Los Angeles while still working for BRV to focus on West Coast projects, and then eventually went to Macerich, a public real estate investment trust, to work on retail development. This is where I really started to get my real estate development skills, and still enjoyed the messy process of getting from point A to B. I went on to work with The Martin Group in Los Angeles and learned more about entrepreneurial development across property types and scales. After relocating back to New York, I went to work at Hart Howerton as Director of Operations and as Director of HH Development Strategies. This was during, and after the downturn, so I was advising clients on alternative investment and development strategies for their properties.
After that, I started my own company, Agora Partners, because I discovered that I am an entrepreneur at heart. In the beginning, I had some consulting clients and two investments – one in Los Angeles with partners and one in Savannah independently. They both ended up being successful and launched into the entrepreneurial real estate development business. Today, Agora Partners approaches development through the lens of entrepreneurial planning; that is to say, we espouse the principles of urban planning and couple that with the traits of entrepreneurship in order to make development become a reality. As site-driven developers, planning principles and considerations are our launching points for any project, so that I am drawing on my GSD experiences for each and every project.
6. What’s your favorite memory of the GSD?
There are too many to name! Probably indicative of my love of the GSD is that I wish it were a three-year program. There are so many great resources at the GSD. I loved being there and learned from professors and my peers. In particular, our studio on the Central EastSide of Portland, and our professors Alan Mountjoy MAUD ’96 and Greg Baldwin AB ’62, MArch ’66, MAUD ’67 brought professional and academic perspectives together and allowed us to look at both big picture planning and small site-specific efforts. Being able to work with a client, a live problem, and then figuring out a solution with multiple stakeholders shaped a lot of my thinking approaches in planning.
7. What are you current projects?
The most exciting project currently is converting a 22,000 square foot furniture warehouse into bioscience labs in East Los Angeles. It’s a beautiful double wooden bow truss building that’s been somewhat abused as a furniture and factory warehouse for nearly 80 years. We’re going to turn it into a home for 21st-century bioscience research as part of a larger economic development strategy. We’re also in the early design phases of a mixed-use and student housing project for a community college in Wyoming. We are just about done with 15 for sale townhomes in an inner ring neighborhood of San Diego as part of an emerging walkable neighborhood. We are also doing a ground-up neighborhood scale office development in Los Angeles and a transit-oriented ground-up co-living space in Los Angeles to create more affordable housing options in a neighborhood feeling a lot of affordability pressures.
8. What are some networking strategies that you’ve found most useful?
First thing is not to be shy. The GSD will get you into a lot of doors, but what you do after is up to you. Whether you realize it or not, your experiences at the GSD are unique and interesting. Share them, but also listen to other people’s experiences. If you’re going to be a planner, you better be a good listener! Second, it is vitally important to network and build two-way relationships; make sure it’s two-way and give more than you ask. Third, join professional organizations like the APA, but also more inter-disciplinary organizations like the Urban Land Institute. This will put you in the room with key decision
makers, trend makers, frontline research, and resources.
9. How did you go about securing a job at a traditional design firm with a background in urban planning?
After graduation, I did the Knox Fellowship then worked for an urban design firm in Australia. All my jobs since have come from networking and being honest about what I am interested in, and letting employers know what I am interested in learning about. I met these employers on an informational basis, and would get calls later down the road. My strategy has been to find employers that are doing what I’m in and to make connections. Also, as someone who has been involved in hiring at Hart Howerton, focus on what seem like the little things – make sure there are no spelling errors in your cover letter, make sure you have the contact name correctly spelled, make sure you do some research on the firms or people you meet with. People who will stand out to employers show an ability to think and to be excited about learning more. Employers won’t expect people to know everything. We just wanted to see people who could think creatively.
A look back at a few of the projects and moments that marked the past year at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Please also visit Dean Mohsen Mostafavi’s year in review.
June 2016
Platform 8 is named a winner in Design Observer/AIGA’s 50 Books | 50 Covers competition. “For me, this publication is an effort to simultaneously present an archaeological documentation into the working concepts of design and research—a reveal, exposing a particular moment of design culture at the Harvard GSD—and to provide a projective platform for defining new possibilities,” writes Platform 8 editor Zaneta Hong MLA ’07.
Alpine Shelter Skuta, designed by Frederick Kim MArch ’16, Katie MacDonald MArch ’16, and Erin Pellegrino MArch ’16, is honored in Core77’s annual Design Awards.
July 2016
Career Discovery, the GSD’s six-week summer program for those interested in exploring design and design culture, celebrates its 45th anniversary.
August 2016
The Bauhaus Special Collection is launched by the Harvard Art Museums. The comprehensive new digital resource, showcasing some key GSD figures, indexes more than 32,000 works and items—photographs, textiles, paintings, periodicals, and other curiosities—that comprise the museums’ Bauhaus-related archives, among the world’s first and largest such collections.
The City Form Lab at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design uses a novel fabrication method to design and build a grid structurefor the Gund Hall courtyard.
September 2016
“Towards a Critical Pragmatism: Contemporary Architecture in China” exhibition opens in the main gallery of Gund Hall. With the aim of encouraging further conversation about the present and future state of China’s architecture culture, the exhibition highlights several buildings in five thematic categories—cultural, regeneration, digital, rural, and residential—and showcases the architects’ commitment to conceptual criticality and quality of production.
“Towards a Critical Pragmatism: Contemporary Architecture in China” in the main gallery of Gund Hall.
Alumni from classes ending in 1′s and 6′s returned to campus for Reunion Weekend. Events included a mentoring breakfast with students, discussion sessions with leadership from each of the program areas, and tours of design spaces around Harvard and Boston.
A group of students travel to Japan to begin the Fall 2016 studio abroad program led by Toyo Ito, design critic in architecture.
Megan Panzano MArch ’10, design critic in architecture, receives the Harvard Excellence in Teaching Award for her instruction in the Harvard College Architecture Studies track for undergraduate students.
October 2016
The GSD launches the Richard Rogers Fellowship, a research residency for experts and practitioners whose work is focused on the built environment and its capacity to advance the quality of human life. Lord Richard Rogersand his wife, restaurateur Lady Ruth Rogers, visit and speak at the GSD as the School’s Senior Loeb Scholars.
Rem Koolhaas, professor of architecture and urban design, shares his current preoccupations during an evening lecture. “We are in a radically divided world” in which “architecture is not dealing with those political issues in a really sophisticated way,” Koolhaas told the audience.
The GSD celebrates the life and work of Zaha Hadid with an event at the School featuring some of Hadid’s closest collaborators and friends. During the event, the GSD announces the establishment of the Zaha Hadid/Omniyat Fellowship Fund to provide financial aid to qualifying students.
Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, Xin Zhang, Elia Zenghelis, and Patrik Schumacher at “Zaha Hadid: A Celebration.”
The Kid Gets Out of the Picture at the GSD, curated by assistant professor Andrew Holder, opens in the Frances Loeb Library. The exhibition uses the vocabulary of early nineteenth-century picturesque landscape architecture to explore design in a contemporary context.
Artist Christo speaks as part of the Rouse Visiting Artist Program. “Because I’m a very optimistic person, I think everything will work out,” he said. “I know we live in difficult times, but if I’m not an optimist, I would never do this work.”
November 2016
The GSD, in partnership with the Harvard University Office of the Executive Vice President, Harvard Campus Services, Harvard Planning Office, Graffito SP, and the Zone 3 initiative, announces a design-build competition in North Allstonfor GSD students. The competition site, known as the Grove, sits at the critical neighborhood intersection of Western Avenue and North Harvard Street.
President Barack Obama announces his intent to appoint two GSD faculty members to the United States Commission of Fine Arts: Toni L. Griffin LF ’98, professor in practice of urban planning and Alex Krieger MCP ’77, professor in practice of urban design.
The GSD launches the Phil Freelon LF ’90 Fellowship Fund to provide financial aid to students attending the GSD with the intent to expand academic opportunities for African American and other under-represented architecture and design students.
“Indonesia’s Urban Story” an exhibition produced by the City Form Lab at the GSD in partnership with World Bank Indonesia, opens on Harvard Plaza. “The exhibit attempts to shed some light onto the fascinating challenges the country is facing with rapid urban growth,” says Andres Sevtsuk, assistant professor of urban planning and principal investigator at the City Form Lab.
December 2016
Harvard Design Magazine launches its 43rd issue, entitled “Shelf Life” and themed around storage.
January 2017
The GSD student organization Women in Design travels to Washington, D.C. to join the Women’s March on Washington.
Over J-term, a group of eight GSD students work with Autodesk in South Boston and researchers from Tokyo University to design and build the Komorebi Pavilion: a fully transparent structure using advanced computational analysis to guide its form-making. The project emerged from a challenge issued by structural engineer Jun Sato during a two-day workshop he led last fall, in collaboration with Mark Mulligan MArch ’90,associate professor in practice.
Students hear from Jun Sato during a two-day workshop at the GSD.
Muji chairman Masaaki Kanai and product designer Naoto Fukasawa lecture at the GSD as part of the Rouse Visiting Artist Program. The following day, Fukasawa leads a workshop for GSD students on the value of good design on a tangible scale organized by Mark Mulligan MArch ’90,associate professor in practice.
February 2017
The GSD launches its first so-called massive open online course (MOOC), “The Architectural Imagination,” led by K. Michael Hays, the Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Designing Planes and Seams, an exhibition interested in the parallels between clothing design and landscape architecture, opens in the Frances Loeb Library. It is co-curated by Harold Koda MLA ’00, former Curator-in-Chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Ken Smith MLA ’87, design critic in landscape architecture; and Anita Berrizbeitia MLA ’87, professor of landscape architecture and chair of the landscape architecture department.
Twelve Gund Hall bathrooms are officially designated as all-gender. The new signage is part of a joint initiative of Student Forum, Women in Design, and Queers in Design, in collaboration with Student Services and Building Services.
The School announces the inaugural class of Richard Rogers Fellows, following the November launch of the Richard Rogers Fellowship. Projects that the six inaugural fellows will bring to the house this year include examinations of public and affordable housing; how food and cooking transform cities; and citizen-driven urban regeneration initiatives, particularly in London and Berlin.
Rem Koolhaas, professor of architecture and urban design, leads students participating in the Spring 2017 studio abroadprogram in Rotterdam on a tour of the city center.
Artist Jeff Koons speaks as part of Rouse Visiting Artist Program. “The object, when you confront it, is only a transponder,” said Koons. “It’s only something to excite you about your own human potential. At the end, that’s what I care about.”
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima, founders of the design firm Atelier Bow-Wow and the GSD’s 2016 Dunlop Visiting Professors, discuss the spring 2017 exhibition Architectural Ethnography, which they curated. The pair also hosted a drawing workshop for students.
Atelier Bow-Wow’s interests range broadly from the relationship between house typologies and urban fabric to the relationship between public space and unlocked common resources. This approach has enabled Atelier Bow-Wow to rediscover architecture as a central means of practicing livelihood and to develop the concept of “architectural ethnography.”
John Collins, a.k.a. the Paper Airplane Guy, sends his world-record breaking plane through the Gund Hall trays. Collins led a workshop and delivered a lecture as part of the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program jointly offered by the GSD and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The Harvard Gazette produces a series of videos on the visit.
March 2017
The GSD celebrates the centennial birthday of I. M. Pei MArch ’46 with a special eventfeaturing Henry Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49, Bart Voorsanger MArch ’64, and Calvin Tsao MArch ’79, among others. An exhibition on Pei’s time at the GSD as a student and teacher opens at the Frances Loeb Library.
Henry Cobb (AB ’47, MArch ’49) speaks about his friend and colleague, I. M. Pei.
The Department of Landscape Architecture announces the 2017 Penny White Project Fund recipients. The regions of research for the selected student projects span the planet and address a range of critical conditions, technologies, and processes relevant to the advancement of the discipline of landscape architecture and contemporary urbanization today.
Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum speaks as part of the Aga Khan Program Lecture Series. “When I went into practice, and was looking for a language of architecture…that’s when a sort of crisis hit me. What would be my language? And that is when I started looking to the land and the landscape, the history,” she told the audience.
Still Life: A Harvard GSD Exhibition 2015–2016opens in the main gallery of Gund Hall. (The annual Platform exhibition runs thematically parallel to the corresponding Platform publication). Challenging conventional ways of viewing the work of the School, projects from academic programs including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, and design studies are arranged together into a single still life.
“Still Life: A Harvard GSD Exhibition 2015–2016” in the main gallery of Gund Hall.
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh presents the 17th annual John T. Dunlop Lecture in Housing and Urbanization. “The challenge is to embrace our success as a city while retaining the core values that got us here,” Walsh says. “Those values center on inclusiveness, on opportunity, on social and economic diversity. We are a community that welcomes all and leaves no one behind. These aren’t just ideals. They are pragmatic needs.”
The participatory exhibition We the Publics, located on the Gund Hall Experiments Wall, invites the GSD community, practitioners in the built environment, and other members of the general “Publics” to help craft a “shared Declaration.”
A design by three Master in Design Studies students wins the Allston/Grove design-build competition launched in November. The project, WE ALL, is set to open this summer.
Student editors from 20 different design schools around the world gather at the GSD to talk about the possibilities and consequences of student publications in design. Organized by the GSD publication/ student group Open Letters, the event includes a display of student publications in the library accompanied by a set of historical student publications from the Special Collections.
Student editors from design schools around the world gather at the GSD.
The GSD hosts an architecture film soirée on the work of architect Diébédo Francis Kéré. It includes the film Sensing Spaces: Architecture Re-Imagined by British filmmaker Candida Richardson, among others.
The Mayor of Mexico City, Miguel A. Mancera, talks urban planning and climate change during a lecture. The talk is part of a two-day event on the challenges facing 21st-century cities.
The Doctor of Design program celebrates its 30th anniversary with a two-day event. Peter Rowe, Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, delivers the keynote address.
The GSD receives a Best Websitenomination in the 21st annual Webby Awards following the redesign and launch of the School’s new website.
Author Jonathan Franzenreflects on the environment, free speech, and current political climate during a lecture, part of the Rouse Visiting Artist Program.
Results of the 2017-2018 Student Forum elections are announced. Taylor Halamka MArch ’19 will serve as the GSD’s next Student Forum President, succeeding Lane Raffaldini Rubin MArch ’19, MLA ’19.
GSD students and alumni contribute to Harvard’s ARTS FIRST festival with the installations What’s Hanging Over Your Head? by GSD’s African American Student Union; Art of Residue by Yaqing Cai MArch ’17 and Haoxiang Yang MArch ’17; and IMPULSE by Lateral Office, co-founded by Lola Sheppard MArch ’01 and Mason White MArch ’01, and DS Design.
May 2017
The 2017 Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize winners are announced. The annual competition recognizes two viable real estate projects completed by an individual or team as part of the GSD curriculum. This year’s winning designs feature mixed-use developments located in Miami Beach and the North End of Boston.
The 2017 Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize student winners and runner ups with GSD faculty and Dean Mostafavi.
Katherine Farley MArch ’76 is named 2017 Class Day speaker. Farley recently retired as Senior Managing Director of Tishman Speyer, responsible for their Brazil and China businesses and Global Corporate Marketing, after a 32-year career at the company.
In April, Colonel Chris Castle DDes ’99 returned to the GSD for the 30th Anniversary of the Doctor of Design (DDes) program. During the event, he participated in the panel “Government: Strategies, Tactics, and Design,” where he spoke about his work overseeing the acquisition and delivery of health care services for the U.S. military. The event brought together Castle and his fellow DDes graduates to celebrate the accomplishments of the alumni community in advancing multi-scalar and trans-disciplinary design knowledge while addressing crucial societal issues in our increasingly complex and challenging world.
For nearly three decades, Castle has planned and led operations of military healthcare environments that sustain and care for members of the U.S. Armed Forces on and off the battlefield. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service in a combat zone and currently serves as Deputy Director of the TRICARE Regional Offices for the Defense Health Agency.
In this Q&A, Castle reflects on his mission to protect the health of the troops and the inspiring experience of connecting with the global DDes alumni community as part of the 30th Anniversary event.
1. Tell us about your background.
I was born in Lafayette, Indiana as my father was completing a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Purdue University and was raised at Purdue until age 7. The remainder of my formative years was spent in Pittsburgh, PA.
2. What previous degrees do you have?
A Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture and a Master of Science degree in Architecture, from the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and a Master of Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College.
3. You have nearly 30 years of service in the US military in planning, construction, operations, and health care. How did you begin your career in the military?
I started in Heidelberg, Germany as a regional planner for military medical facilities traveling to Northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the U.K. to assess medical facility needs at US military posts and programming construction facilities repair, renovation, and construction projects—a rough assignment. It afforded me the opportunity to travel extensively in Europe and experience its architectural wonders first hand—Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Bruges, Brussels, Heidelberg, Köln, Berlin, Munich, Wurzburg, Dresden, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Saltsburg, Strasburg, Venice, Sienna, Vicenza, Florence, Rome, Barcelona, and many towns and hamlets between, with a sketchbook in hand. Imagine.
4. Why did you choose to pursue a doctoral degree in design at the GSD? What makes the DDes program special?
Easy… the GSD’s faculty, students, and vibe were head and shoulders above every other doctoral program I visited (and I visited them all).
5. Who or what inspires you and your work?
The breathtaking courage and commitment of the young men and women who serve our nation in uniform. It’s indescribable. They deserve the best medical care we can give them and healthcare environments that are equal to their service.
6. What is the most significant thing you learned while at the GSD?
That we have no limitations.
7. Daniel Schodek (Former Director of the Master in Design Studies Program) and Spiro Pollalis (Professor of Design, Technology, and Management) were your advisors when you were at the GSD. Did they offer any advice or guidance that has made a lasting impression since your time as a student?
I don’t recall a particular quotable bit of advice, but rather a continuous challenge of my thinking and intellectual rigor, accompanied by equal parts of enthusiasm, encouragement, and freedom to explore. I am greatly indebted to both of them.
8. What is your favorite memory of the GSD?
My favorite memory was a general feeling of becoming part of the Harvard community and taking on the challenge written on the gate to “Enter To Grow in Wisdom” and “Depart To Serve better Thy Country and Mankind.” There was another plaque that I passed daily on the way to and from the T, on the right wall of the gate facing the Science Center (from Emmerson). I used to know it by heart but confess I Googled it to be reminded… “I went to the College Jubilee on the 8th instant. A noble and well-thought of anniversary. The pathos of the occasion was extreme and not much noted by the speakers. Cambridge at any time is full of ghosts. But on that day, the anointed eye saw the crowd of spirits that mingled with the procession in the vacant spaces, year by year, as the classes proceeded, and then the far longer train of ghosts that followed the Company, of the men that wore before us the College honors and the laurels of the state–the long winding train reaching back into eternity.”
I felt those ghosts ever present. One hopes to join the procession and endeavor to be worthy of it.
9. In April, you spoke at the DDes 30th Anniversary (video below starting at 23:09) to about a quarter of the 190 DDes alumni who returned to campus for this very memorable milestone for the program. What is your impression of the range and quality of work by your fellow DDes alumni?
Stunning. Fascinating. Challenging. Global. Inspiring. Humbling. I was grateful to be a part of it.
10. You deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom as a medical advisor in Kabul, Afghanistan. What challenges did you encounter in planning health care operations for 130,000 collation forces?
The challenges were many that you might imagine in a combat environment. It is a year-long separation from civilization and family that is physically and mentally taxing in a way that one only finds in combat. In my case, it was not as dangerous as can be imagined. We were on a protected military base, but there were periodic rocket attacks and a couple of tragic “insider attacks” in which people were killed or injured. Movement off-base was dangerous with the ever-present prospect of roadside bombs or direct attacks on the convoy, but it was nothing like being an infantryman on patrol. It was physically demanding. Again, nothing compared to infantry life, but the facilities were austere, the food dreadful, the showers cold, the sleeping accommodations noisy, there was a higher prevalence of foodborne and other strange illnesses, and the work was non-stop 24/7. One was always armed and weighed down with body armor. There were 43 nations in the coalition including the Afghans, so language was often a barrier. The planning and execution were as complex and urgent as anything I have ever been involved in—a life and death competition with a real enemy. Nevertheless, the coalition was professional grade military, the camaraderie was everything you’ve heard, and we carried our part of the mission protecting the health of the troops and saving life and limb.
Colonel Chris Castle DDes ’99 speaking on the DDes 30th Anniversary panel “Government: Strategies, Tactics, and Design.”
11. You designed the military health design system from bottom to top, including overseeing planning, implementation, and management. Tell us about this undertaking. How did you approach creating a patient-centered environment that empowers troops and families?
Deep question. The short answer is that one must be devoted to understanding the patient as a whole person and what helps him/her to be well, stay well, survive, and develop resilience. One must be devoted to understanding science—the totality of medical science, managerial science, and building science. And one must be devoted to the idea that there can be something in our architecture that is above all of that, giving expression, meaning, and nourishment to all who inhabit it.
12. You mentioned during your DDes remarks that you will be retiring this summer and moving onto your next design problem. About what design problems are you passionate?
My passion is unchanged. I care for the noble men and women who choose to serve. I am likely to work with the Veterans Administration for a while. After that, I am not sure what will speak to me, but to borrow a phrase, I will continue to “seek to serve better my country and mankind.”
13. Have there been any significant life experiences that influence your work?
Yes—but it isn’t any one thing. It’s the accumulation of great and small deeds that I have witnessed that demonstrate how ordinary people can become extraordinary together when they give themselves to a higher cause.
14. Tell us about your work/life balance? What occupies you when you are not working?
The balance is often hard to see. It has been “pedal to the metal” for 30 years, but not without purpose. I have always risen before and gone to bed after my family, but I have tried to be home in time for dinner, soccer games, recitals, and everything else a father should. When I have failed to do so, I have asked my children to understand that nothing worth doing comes without sacrifice. I think they understand and take some pride in their contribution and in providing a model for their own pursuits.
15. What advice do you have for GSD students and/or alumni?
It cannot be “just design” that stirs you. Design is not an end in itself. There must be something above design that inspires you. Find out what that is for you.
16. Looking back, what experiences at the GSD were the most helpful in shaping your career (these can be seen broadly as courses, student activities, lectures, conferences, etc.)?
It’s “all of the above.” It was a combination of the faculty, fellow students, friends, Cambridge, the dot-com boom, my thesis, where I was in my life, family, and career. It came together in a way that changed my trajectory. I returned to the Army (30 hours of connecting flights to my next assignment in Korea) a changed man with a different perspective that has made all the difference.
17. What would surprise us about you?
My favorite album of all time is the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. I can recite it front to back. Maybe that isn’t surprising?
Insu Kim MArch ’17 wore his thesis on his Commencement cap
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) awarded 353 degrees to its Class of 2017 during Harvard’s 366th Commencement on Thursday, May 25. In addition to presenting degrees in the School’s Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning & Design, Design Studies, and Doctoral Programs, the GSD announced winners of a series of awards and prizes and awarded certificates to the 2016–2017 Loeb Fellows.
The GSD was pleased to welcome Katherine Farley MArch ’76 as its 2017 Class Day speaker on Wednesday, May 24. After an illustrious 32-year career at Tishman Speyer, Farley enthusiastically shared some advice to the newest GSD graduates. She currently serves as Chairman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and has been involved at Lincoln Center since 1999, having served on the New York Philharmonic Orchestra Board from 1999 to 2005 and on the Lincoln Center Theater Board from 2002 to 2005. She was Chairman of the Lincoln Center Redevelopment Project from 2006 to 2010, a $1.2-billion comprehensive renovation of the campus.
Another highlight of Commencement was the presentation of the Harvard Medal by Harvard President Drew Faust to Henry N. Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49 for his extraordinary service to the University. Cobb is the first GSD alumnus to receive this high honor at commencement. The Gazetteincluded the following words about Cobb in its article on the three medal winners:
Henry N. Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49
“Henry N. Cobb has demonstrated a strong commitment to Harvard as an alumnus, teacher, administrator, and architect. During his term as president of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) Association from 1969 to 1971, he also served as an appointed director for the HAA, representing the GSD, and as a member of the GSD visiting committee. From 1980 to 1985, he was studio professor of architecture and urban design and chair of the Department of Architecture, where he continues to teach occasionally as a visiting lecturer and design critic. Currently, he serves as an honorary member of the GSD Campaign Committee.
Cobb designed the Harvard Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS), completed in 2005 and comprising two buildings flanking Cambridge Street; the renovation of several houses on Sumner Road; and the rehabilitation of an important mid-block open space shared by the University and the adjoining residential community. Dean Mohsen Mostafavi described the CGIS project as ‘representative of Harry’s contributions to the University and the Harvard community, and of his vision as an architect.’ ”
To take a look at Commencement activities across the University, visit the Gazette’s coverage.
Support Our Future Design Leaders with a Gift to the GSD Fund
The global challenges we face are more pressing than ever. Whether it is social equity or sustainability, public health or transportation, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design shapes the future design leaders who will address these complex issues. With a legacy of preparing critical thinkers and practitioners, the GSD has remained focused on a transformative, project-based, and solution-oriented model of teaching.
You can help the GSD attract the most talented students to the Harvard community. Replete with diverse backgrounds and experiences, they are broad-thinking, intellectually rigorous, innovative students who will be the next generation of design leaders. Your donation to the GSD Fund provides immediate support to these students to participate in the activities and experiences that are hallmarks of a GSD education.
Financial aid is a prerequisite for design education. The GSD allocates 25 percent of its operating budget to subsidize students’ tuition, yet this is not nearly enough to cover the cost of an unparalleled educational experience. We invite you to invest in GSD students to give them the opportunity to freely create and apply design solutions for the challenges our society faces today and in the future.
Double Your Impact
June Matching Gift Challenge: In the final month of this fiscal year, all gifts that are from new donors or increased from last year’s contributions will be matched by GSD Campaign co-chair John K. F. Irving AB ’83, MBA ’89. Please consider a gift by June 30 to help unlock this generous donation.
Presidential Match Challenge: Harvard University recognizes the importance of graduate school financial aid support and will match every dollar raised up to $550K to the GSD Fund. Make your gift to the GSD Fund today and your contribution will be matched by this Harvard University presidential match.
We asked current faculty members, who are also GSD alumni, to speak about why it is important to support our students as they prepare to create a more beautiful, just, and coherent world. Read what they had to say:
MEGAN PANZANO MARCH ’10 Design Critic in Architecture “The intense commitment that characterizes the GSD is what made me most honored and excited to return as a faculty member. This includes the dedication of the School to student growth, as well as the diligence and creativity of the students. From seminars to option studios to research funding, the offerings to students at the GSD stay current and relevant with an incredible array of in-depth possible contexts through which to interrogate contemporary global issues.”
MARTIN BECHTHOLD DDES ’01 Kumagai Professor of Architectural Technology and Director of the Doctor of Design Program “Our students come from a diversity of backgrounds and a range of design disciplines. They become leaders beyond the world of design, taking design thinking and methods into different domains to advance ideas of innovation for society. They acquire the ability to understand the architecture of a problem and reframe it to develop innovative solutions.”
FELIPE CORREA MAUD ’03 Associate Professor of Urban Design and Director of the Master of Architecture in Urban Design Program “As the world becomes inherently more urban, it is essential to train architects, landscape architects, and urban planners who can engage, analyze, and project for the diverse scales and constituencies of cities and regions. The GSD’s strong legacy in design education makes it an ideal academic setting in which to investigate the role of design across a wide variety of scenarios.”
GARY HILDERBRAND MLA ’85 Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture “My commitment to the School stems from my rich experience as a student. I had great teachers and amazing classmates, many of whom are still my friends. It was eye-opening and affirming. I hope I’m able to give our students comparable opportunities for socially relevant work in the field.”
HOLLY SAMUELSON MDES ’09, DDES ’13 Assistant Professor of Architecture “GSD students have the capacity to institute real change in our industry. They have a knack for questioning the questions, thinking broadly about problems, and seeking solutions from multiple disciplines.”
As the spring semester culminates in an exciting range of studios and thesis reviews, and as the next class of graduates prepares to embark on new careers, launch new ventures, and drive new lines of research, I write to share highlights of the important work produced at the GSD over the past year.I am also pleased to report that in the most recent DesignIntelligence ranking of America’s best architecture and landscape architecture programs, the GSD maintained its position at the top. As you know, the results of these rankings are referenced by prospective students and potential employers of our graduates, and as a result, they have a material effect on the School and its community. The surveys for the next rankings in architectureand landscape architecture are now open, so if you are in a leadership or hiring position in a design-related field, I encourage you to submit a response and share your experience by the deadline, which is May 26th.
Our current ranking, I am proud to say, continues to be reflected in the outstanding quality of the School’s output. Its excellence and integrity are grounded in the School’s values and its direct engagement with the ethical dimension of what we do. As a School, we are committed to the transformative power of design and its capacity to create just and equitable cities. It is my pleasure to share with you a summary of what we have accomplished this year toward that end, and what we look forward to achieving in the semesters and years ahead.
A Leader on the Future of the City
Across departments, the GSD extended its deep analysis of global urbanization and the multitude of its effects. Indeed, we aspire to be the world’s intellectual leader on the future of the city, and we continue to develop and refine new studios, public programs, and a host of other research initiatives to make progress on this ambition.
In studio work completed over the past year, students and faculty investigated a series of specific urban contexts and produced substantive proposals aimed at bettering the lives of their residents. Our studios included site visits to 37 cities in the U.S. and around the world. In conjunction with AECOM, we organized a series of option studios themed geographically around Southeast Asia. In spring 2016, the series studied Jakarta, and this spring we turned our focus to Kuala Lumpur. The third installment, scheduled for next fall, will focus on Manila. In the Department of Landscape Architecture, faculty and students designed innovative renewal solutions for a section of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. Option studios in the Department of Urban Planning and Design covered specific sites from Savannah, Georgia, to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Palava City in Mumbai, India, and topics ranging from urban ecology to affordable housing and questions of shelter and displacement.
Working side-by-side with city leaders and local communities is an important part of equipping students with the skill and insight to make an immediate and positive impact on the world. This year, we hosted an impressive roster of policy makers and city leaders, who contributed to the School’s pedagogy as review panelists, speakers, and design critics. Among them, we welcomed the mayors of three major cities to address students and faculty: Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh. In addition, Stephen Ross and Richard Rogers, among others, spoke as part of our public program, and we organized conferences and exhibitions on Tokyo and Barcelona, examining these cities as case studies in designing the future city. Taken together, all of this activity provided a rich combination of formats, each of which connected to the School’s core pedagogy in a unique way, supplementing our studios and seminars with exposure to decision-making in urban policy at the highest levels.
Following the talk by Richard Rogers at the GSD, we launched a new fellowship program based in London at Rogers’ Wimbledon House, a home he designed in 1968 and that he and his wife, the celebrated chef Ruthie Rogers, donated to the GSD for this purpose. The fellowship serves as an international platform to convene experts and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines whose work is focused on the built environment and its capacity to advance the quality of human life. In March, we welcomed the inaugural fellows at the house. Located near some of the world’s finest resources for research in urbanism, the program represents both an international extension of the GSD’s physical footprint and a symbol of the School’s commitment to engaging issues faced by cities globally.
While the purview of the School’s work is global, it is important, however, to emphasize that our focus on the future of the city is buttressed by a clear framework for engagement with local communities, starting with our own here in Cambridge and neighboring Allston and Boston. Toward that end, a series of studios proposed solutions for Cambridge’s Central Square neighborhood and Boston’s Harbor Islands. In partnership with Harvard’s central administration, the GSD also led a design-build competition for a public commons in neighboring Allston, offering our students an opportunity to undertake a built project while considering its impact on the neighborhood. Throughout our work in Allston and other communities around Boston and Cambridge, close communication with residents remains an essential part of the design process.
Amid this constellation of new and developing projects, the Office for Urbanization extended its research on Miami Beach, and together with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health we are excited to enroll the first class in a new joint degree in health and urbanization. As the work we produce through our portfolio of city-focused initiatives continues to grow, we also look forward to formalizing a broad, institutional platform—Future of the American City—which will give institutional structure and support to the School’s energies focused on the future of urban America. I look forward to sharing further developments as we make progress.
Design Research for a Better World
As many of you know, the GSD’s commitment to design research has grown substantially in recent years. We aim to be deliberate and constructive with this growth, asking questions about which issues lend themselves best to our interdisciplinary approach, and how we can maximize opportunities for students and faculty alike.
Alongside the tradition of individual faculty research, our option studios have emerged as domains of collaborative investigation around specific themes, geographies, and strategies. We have been able to offer option studios that vary in scale, from the streetscape to the territorial; that engage with industry, technique, and social justice; and that examine sites located in the far reaches of the globe as well as our own local communities. Examples of this include the AECOM studios and a three-part studio series in collaboration with Knoll, examining professional work environments. The comprehensive approach of the option studio model is unmatched by any other school, and it is key in preparing our students as leaders and shapers of the built environment.
Innovation remains a cornerstone of our research agenda as well, and some of our most deeply interdisciplinary research has been focused on creating entirely new forms of knowledge. Soon, the Center for Green Buildings and Cities will break ground on its “House Zero,” an experiment in transforming existing buildings into energy-efficient, energy-producing structures. Our partnership with Peking University through the Ecological Urbanism Collaboration has continued with a series of research and summer study projects. Our Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program, offered in collaboration with Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, concluded its inaugural year with a series of design-driven innovations in global food systems. We also named the first two recipients of the John E. (Jack) Irving Innovation Fellowship, a new program intended to support outstanding, cutting-edge research conducted by select recent graduates.
Dynamic Public Programming
The GSD’s public programs and exhibitions continue to offer opportunities to bring new ideas from a wide variety of disciplines into the life of the School, and they also offered valuable community-building moments. Talks by artists Christo and Jeff Koons and writer Jonathan Franzen—all made possible by the Rouse Visiting Artist Program—brought excitement and creative energy to Gund. They reaffirmed the GSD as a destination for rich conversations at the intersection of the humanities and design, both for the GSD community and for students and faculty across Harvard. This March, we held a special celebration for I.M. PeiMArch ’46, marking his centennial birthday with personal reflections given by Henry Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49, Bart Voorsanger MArch ’64, and others. This fall, we will host a conference intended to produce some of the first critical engagements with Pei’s prodigious career.
Our roster of talks and lectures made room for serious pedagogical discourse as well. Rem Koolhaas presented in October, touching on architecture’s role in the global political climate. This spring, we convened an exciting panel of experts, including Harvard Business School’s Rajiv Lal, Warby Parker CEO Neil Blumenthal, and DACRA CEO and President Craig Robins, for a discussion on the relationship between the physical and digital retail space. While much of our learning takes place in the classroom and in the studio, opportunities to hear from such leaders visiting from outside the School create unique learning moments that supplement our core pedagogy.
Our exhibition program extends this scope of interdisciplinarity. Exhibitions on contemporary Chinese architecture, Barcelona’s urban development, and the work of Atelier Bow-Wow reflect the GSD’s global focus. We were especially honored to mount an exhibition in collaboration with Harold Koda MLA ’00, former Curator in Chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and landscape architect Ken Smith MLA ’86. The exhibition, “Designing Planes and Seams,” explored the shared concerns of landscape architecture and clothing design, how surface materials and process engage with time, space, structure, and the environment. The exhibition serves as a poignant example of how much we stand to gain from thinking across fields and representing our work in dynamic and immersive ways. It represents a commitment to design, creativity, and imagination shared by our students as well, a commitment that was on full display in the ninth edition of our Platform exhibition. In organizing the show, the student-faculty curatorial team invoked the concept of the “still life” as a device to arrange compositional groupings of student work from across the School. Establishing spatial juxtapositions between projects from across disciplines, the exhibition made visible a multiplicity of contexts and perspectives. Through such relational techniques and exercises of the imagination, new ideas emerge.
Looking Forward
In closing, I want to share a few more exciting programs and initiatives coming up next year and beyond. In the fall, many GSD faculty and alumni will be participating in the second iteration of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which will be curated by GSD alumni Sharon Johnston MArch ’95 and Mark Lee MArch ’95. As we look to the future of online education, we are also considering how design pedagogy might be reshaped in the digital era, calling on the expertise of our faculty who teach in both the degree and executive education programs. This year we took a bold step in this direction with Michael Hays’s online course, “The Architectural Imagination,” which immediately became one of the most sought after courses at HarvardX, and which I encourage you to check out.
We are exploring possibilities for expanding our physical footprint to better respond to the School’s commitment to innovative teaching and research. Expansion will also enable us to address the spatial demands of our increased scope of activity and growing community.
Our faculty hiring has kept pace with our expanding student body. While the work of several search committees is still in progress, we have finalized appointments or promotions of 11 faculty. A number of exciting appointments are in the pipeline, about which we will send out a separate announcement this fall.
A few months from now, we will welcome another promising new class of students to Cambridge. Our most recent admissions cycle marks another successful round of recruitment with an exceptionally high yield rate. Our international yield rate remains very high despite widespread anxiety about U.S. immigration, a testament to the quality of our work and the impact our faculty, students, and alumni are making in the world.
As always, I look forward to visiting with many of you in the next year at a reunion on October 13-14 for classes ending in 2’s and 7’s, or at one of our many alumni events. It was a pleasure to see over 100 alumni visit Gund Hall last fall to celebrate their 5th to 50th reunions. In April, Martin Bechthold DDes ’01 and the DDes program welcomed over a quarter of the 180 DDes alumni for the program’s 30th anniversary. With one year remaining for the Grounded Visionaries campaign, fundraising for student financial aid and fellowships remains a high priority for the School. Such support is crucial to the GSD’s ability to continue attracting the most talented students from around the world.
If you are in the Boston area next fall, I encourage you to visit Gund Hall and join the conversation at one of our public lectures. I am grateful for your committed support of the School and wish you an enjoyable and productive summer.
Best regards,
Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Vast expanses of unpopulated landscapes along an Amtrak train route. Source: Author
Established in 1986 by Ronald M. Druker LF ’76, and by the Trustees of the Bertram A. Druker Charitable Foundation, the Druker Traveling Fellowship is open to all students at the GSD who demonstrate excellence in the design of urban environments. The fellowship offers students the opportunity to travel in the United States or abroad to pursue study that advances understanding of urban design. Melissa Alexander MAUD ’13 is the 2013 Druker Traveling Fellowship recipient. What follows are excerpts from her research.
From the Prologue:
Unlike the United States, riding a train in most other countries is liberating. Travel is brisk, stations are attractive and clean, and trains are well attended and comfortable. Japan introduced the first high-speed train from Tokyo to Osaka in 1964, and since then speeds have increased and high-speed rail (HSR) technology has been adopted by industrialized countries throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Train travel there is more environmentally friendly, more convenient, and more comfortable than budget air travel. Trains are the preferred mode of transit for distances between 75-500 miles in countries where it is available, because, at nearly 200mph, it is quicker than cars and more convenient than planes. Technology aside, trains shape the social space of cities. Whether historic, renovated, or brand new, train stations are the nexus of urban culture and commerce, the heartbeat generating and regenerating a vibrant urban community.
Melissa Alexander MAUD ’13 presenting her work at the GSD on April 3, 2017.
Despite the broken condition of Amtrak, train travel could make a comeback in the US. American highways are congested and crumbling, daily commute times are inhumane, and many airports are at maximum capacity. Citizens are ever more aware of the environmental damage caused by carbon emissions from cars and planes. And, in a migratory ‘about face,’ Americans are now moving into cities instead of out of them. As such, there is renewed interest in all forms of transit. In 2009, as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama administration designated over $8 billion towards high-speed rail initiatives, and unveiled a ‘Vision for High-Speed Rail in America.’ Following the announcement, forty states and the District of Columbia requested over $100 billion for high-speed train projects. The demand, at least for studying high-speed rail, is there. In January of 2015, California broke ground on its own high-speed route, largely along the San Joaquin corridor through the valley, to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Florida, a high-speed rail project connecting Tampa and Orlando started but was disappointingly shelved in 2014. And in Texas, a group of investors is making progress towards a privately funded route between Dallas and Houston. If, after fifty years of stalling, Americans are finally ready to address the problem of mobility in the US, we must look outside of our own the traditional transportation planning processes that are still dominated by the tools, methods and assumptions, political biases, procedural failures, and instilled human behaviors of our past and current planning processes.
Two models of TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) pull into a station in France. Source: Author
In order to accomplish this, designers need to reconnect with the rich spatial legacy of the train in nineteenth century America and understand the physical implications of 21st century high-speed trains. Using travel as a lens of inquiry, Riding the Rails explores the physical implications of the railroad in the past, present and future at several scales of intervention and in a variety of cultural contexts. Drawing from first-hand train passage throughout Europe and Asia, the resulting body of research establishes a platform from which to speculate on new models of American urbanization in the age of high-speed rail.
Part 1: The Birth of Restlessness explores the implications of the railroad on the physical development of a young and expansive United States from the early nineteenth century to World War II.
Part 2: Waiting on a Train focuses on the contemporary physical implications of high-speed Rail from World War II to the present day, using case studies from Europe and Asia to identify the new and exciting ways in which HSR invents new architectural and urban typologies, compresses space, and opens up new operative scales that supersede traditional scales of design and planning.
Part 3: I Hear that Train A-comin’ speculates on the future of passenger rail in America, which, due to the dominance of the car, is a challenging environment for high-speed rail.
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) celebrated the newly created Thomas Payette Financial Aid Fund and the power of the fellowships and financial aid during its second annual fellowship reception on Wednesday, April 12, 2017. The event joined GSD donors with students who have benefited from their financial aid gifts, along with faculty and staff, to share a deep appreciation for the support of next generation of leaders who will mold the strategies and structures to confront global challenges.
Enabling Talent and Ideas to Prevail—The Thomas Payette Financial Aid Fund
In the spirit of giving back, Campaign Co-Chair Phil Harrison AB ’86, MArch ’93 set the stage for an exciting announcement of the Thomas Payette Financial Aid Fund. Established by three GSD alumni at Payette Associates, Inc., President and CEO Kevin Sullivan MArch ’94, and two Partners, David Feth MArch ’85, and Leon Drachman MAUD ’93, the fund honors the legacy of Payette Associates, Inc. Founder, Thomas Payette MArch ’60. Payette Associates, Inc. is latest in a list of several firms, including Perkins+Will, Elkus Manfredi Architects, and Hickok Cole, who recognize the value of investing in the future of design education through a gift of the GSD.
In their remarks, Sullivan, Feth, and Drachman said they were inspired to start this fund from Payette’s passion for the GSD and because “Harvard and GSD have been particularly important for all three of us acting as a continuous catalyst to provide critical thinking and deeper logic surrounding our architecture.” Sullivan shared how as a student, Payette stood out in Robinson Hall as the only student in a suit. The reason for this sartorial attire was that Payette was coming from his full-time job working for a structural engineer while adeptly balancing being a full-time student, a situation necessitated by financial circumstances. Sullivan’s hope is that “the Fund will help assure that many talented students….will have the ability to study at the GSD if they need financial assistance; and hopefully, they will not have to work full-time like time like Tom if they choose to go, or far worse, decide not to attend.” This new Fund is an important part of the Grounded Visionaries campaign goal to make a GSD education more accessible and provide graduating students with the freedom to make career choices based on their passions, rather than their financial obligations to pay back student loans.
(Left to right) Alexandra Mei MLA ’17, Alberto de Salvatierra MLA ’17, MDesS ’17, Krystyna Breger, and Beth Kramer, associate dean for development & alumni relations.
Extending the Knowledge Base of Students through Fabrication – The Irving Innovation Fellowship
Serving as the inaugural Irving Innovation Fellow has granted Alex Timmer MArch ’16 the opportunity to establish a trajectory for his practice during a post-graduation fellowship. As a designer, maker, and educator, Timmer has spent his time in the Fabrication Laboratory (FabLab) extending the knowledge base of the GSD. By working with students, staff, and faculty, he has contributed to building deep and constructive integration between design studio pedagogy, materiality, fabrication, and assembly technologies including the integration of Japanese carpentry tools from the Takenaka Corporation.
In his remarks at the fellowship reception, Timmer expressed how gifts of support reverberate within the GSD— gifts often have a meaningful impact on others beyond the direct recipient(s). His gratitude to the John E. Irving Family was evident in his remarks. He thanked the Irving Family for the “time and resources to coalesce all of my opportunities into my own design and research practice” and for the opportunity to “help students develop a methodology of making through integration into the studios and being ever-present in FabLab.” The Family’s gift in honor of their father John E. (Jack) Irving kick-started the Grounded Visionaries campaign in 2013, and John K. F. Irving AB ’83, MBA ’89 serves as Campaign Co-Chair along with Harrison. One component of the Irving gift was the establishment of the John E. Irving Dean’s Innovation Fund, out of which the Irving Innovation Fellowship originated.
Through its innovative, collaborative design curriculum, award-winning faculty and critics, and cutting-edge research, the GSD provides unmatched opportunities for learning to its students. However, this level of design education is costly. Financial aid support is crucial to the School’s ability to enroll the most talented students from around the world. With a year remaining in the Grounded Visionaries campaign, the GSD is continuing to raise awareness for the importance of financial aid in empowering top design students. For more information on how you can make a commitment to future generations of talented design leaders through supporting fellowships and financial aid at the GSD, please contact [email protected].
The opening of the Sarah and Rolando Uziel AB ’57 Exhibition Wall in the Frances Loeb Library.
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce the opening of the Sarah and Rolando Uziel AB ’57 Exhibition Wall in the Frances Loeb Library. The space is supported by a $1 million gift from two of the most generous supporters to the GSD’s $110-million Grounded Visionaries campaign—Sarah and Roland “Rolando” Uziel AB ’57— and will fuel the global discourse on design as part of the GSD’s world-renowned exhibition program.
“Sarah and Rolando’s gift has increased the GSD’s ability to showcase the impact of the School’s work,” said Mohsen Mostafavi, dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. “The Sarah and Rolando Uziel AB ’57 Exhibition Wall will enrich our campus for decades to come, and we thank them for their generous support.”
The exhibition wall will play a crucial role in the Loeb Library. As the traditional boundaries around classroom and studio spaces are becoming increasingly permeable, the Library is a place of overlapping, collaborative learning, including the display of exhibitions on the 450 sq. foot wall, with the option of additional volume based on exhibition vision. The current exhibition, running through May 12, features undergraduate and graduate work by legendary architect Ieoh Ming (I. M.) Pei MArch ’46 and his wife Eileen Pei GSD ’44, as well as designs by students whom Pei taught while on the faculty in the 1940s. This winter, the exhibition “Designing Planes and Seams” co-curated by Harold Koda MLA ’00, fashion scholar, curator, and the former curator-in-chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, focused on the relationship of flat or planar materials and the seaming and construction necessary for creating expressive form.
(L -R) Rolando Uziel AB ’57, Sarah Uziel, and Diane E. Davis, the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design.
The GSD exhibitions team stages five major exhibitions and sixteen smaller ones throughout Gund Hall each year with around 1,000 people passing through these exhibitions daily. Dan Borelli MDesS ’12, director of exhibitions, views the role of the Sarah and Rolando Uziel AB ’57 Exhibition Wall as “Spatializing knowledge by exploring the contrast between the contemporary and the historical. Through a focus on learning, research, and design, library exhibitions disseminate cultural production and create new ideas,” said Borelli.
Rolando Uziel studied architecture at Harvard College and returned to Mexico to work in his family’s business—a jewelry business that later expanded to precious metals and construction/property development. Currently, Mr. Uziel is the owner of Grupo Constructor Rouz. Established in 1997, Grupo Constructor Rouz is dedicated to building quality residential spaces in Mexico.
This gift is the most recent from the Uziels, who are longtime supporters of design education at the GSD. Their backing of experimental ideas and actionable knowledge help guide the transformation of Mexico’s complex urban landscapes over the next decades through the Mexican Cities Initiative (MCI) at the GSD. Under the faculty guidance of Diane Davis, chair of the department of urban planning and design and the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, the MCI supports a public archive of Mexico-based research conducted at the GSD and elsewhere, a network of partnerships in and beyond Mexico, and an annual summer fellowship for innovative student research. Additionally, the Uziels have provided financial support for Mexican students studying at the GSD.
Leif L. Selkregg LF ’89 with John Peterson LF ’06.
After almost two decades of working with Harvard University to support transformational capital expansions, Leif L. Selkregg LF ’89 is increasing his philanthropic support of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the Loeb Fellowship with one of the largest gifts to the Fellowship in its 46-year history. The Selkregg Loeb Fellowship Innovation Fund will allow the Loeb Fellowship Curator, John Peterson LF ’06, to explore ways to innovate and expand, building above and beyond the already efficacious program.
Raised in a community-minded family in Alaska, Selkregg began his career during the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and trained as an architect at the University of Oregon. He moved to Cambridge in 1988 to study at the GSD as a Loeb Fellow. The Loeb Fellowship represents a broad spectrum of accomplished mid-career practitioners from around the nation and countries around the world—it has re-directed the trajectory of countless careers and forged life-long bonds between professional collaborators. Embracing the year of freedom to step away from his professional schedule, he engaged in a stimulating study of master planning within the structured and supportive environment of the GSD and Harvard. “Being a Loeb Fellow was a special life experience—a gift of exposure to opportunities and connections to people,” Selkregg said.
Through his Loeb Fellowship experience and connections, he began his first international endeavor to develop and lead a program management division for an international construction company in flourishing London, focused on a large-scale master plan for Canary Wharf. Through his work in both Alaska and London, Leif was inspired by the scale and intensity of master planning and urban development. It gave him a big picture view of the role of design and opened his mind up to the range of possibility and reach of great design and design professionals, “I was influenced by the fact that Alaska had this huge boom…and we basically built [whole] cities.” Out of his Loeb Fellowship experience, Selkregg’s passion for program and project management was born.
Selkregg’s work rendered him more interested in the impact design could have than on design itself. “The design that I was engaged with was fantastic…but I was and still am, more attuned to the [overall] human ambition to build,” he said. “A bigger picture, programmatic approach becomes a catalyst for an even larger impact great design can make. Program management then becomes a vehicle that enables that design to come to fruition,” said Selkregg.
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Photos courtesy of Nick Merrick/Hedrich Blessing.
This global experience catapulted Selkregg into working for leading companies across the world providing program management on large-scale projects. Driven by relationship and entrepreneurship, Selkregg has built program management companies including Rise, a firm repeatedly ranked by Engineering News-Record as one of the top U.S. program management companies, and his latest company Ascent that serves clients from offices in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Anchorage. With Ascent, Selkregg is collaboration-focused—he deftly assembles teams to empower great design. Some of Ascent’s current projects include: A major transportation infrastructure expansion program in Boston; Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago’s facilities master plan development and implementation; the recently installed Sky Landing in Chicago, the first permanent work of art by Yoko Ono in the Americas; as well as a presidential library for Harvard College graduate Theodore Roosevelt AB 1880.
Selkregg has a long-standing commitment to the Harvard community and the City of Boston. “My experience as a Loeb Fellow anchored me here. I’ve built a capacity around my work at Harvard that allowed me to participate in and engage on campus, and I embrace continuing to do this,” he said. Selkregg and his team managed all aspects of the Harvard Art Museums project completed in 2013, which consolidated Harvard’s three museums and four research centers into a single, state-of-the-art facility. These components constitute a unique institution dedicated to acquisition, preservation, research, interpretation, and education. Ascent is currently leading the team providing project management services for Harvard’s Smith Campus Center. The project, to be complete in 2018, is transforming the Josep Lluís Sert-designed building in the heart of Harvard Square into a 24-hour Campus Center, which will include new formal and informal gathering space, food options, fireplaces, landscaped gardens, and a roof terrace.
Rendering of the renovated Smith Campus Center at Harvard University.
The Loeb Fellowship’s four decades of success have followed a well-chartered, stable path. What innovations are in its future based on this gift? Selkregg is embracing risk and uncertainty for “John [Curator Peterson] to have the capacity and autonomy to engage in new forms of research and discovery.” According to Peterson, “It seems only natural for the Loeb Fellowship, which has been on a clear and successful path, to ask questions, pursue new ideas, and reflect on opportunities that look to further its mission while maintaining its core practices and values. Selkregg’s philanthropic vision is rare. The majority of philanthropy seeks certainty and planned outcomes. Selkregg is investing in possibilities and exploration, without any guarantee of conventional success. Investments like this come with a responsibility to do something worthy of the faith in which it’s given.” As the Founder of Peterson Architects in 1993 and the nonprofit Public Architecture in 2002, Peterson began in January 2016 as Curator of the Loeb Fellowship. After earning degrees in both fine arts and architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, he centered his career around public interest design.
According to Selkregg, his parents instilled his spirit of philanthropy. “At one level, philanthropy is an obligation to society, and on the personal level, I see it as a stretch—I take a purposeful approach and feel that it is my obligation to give back to the productive development of humanity,” he remarked. He contributes to individuals and institutions he trusts will execute on that vision.
As Loeb Fellows, Selkregg and Peterson are connected as members of the Loeb worldwide network of practitioners supporting equity and justice through the built and natural environments. Through Selkregg’s gift and Peterson’s vision and efforts, the collaboration will elevate the future work of the Loeb Fellows and broaden the GSD’s social impact.
For the past 17 years, DesignIntelligence has conducted and published the results of the America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools survey, which asks hiring professionals, academics, and students to provide their perspective on the strengths of programs throughout in the United States.
The GSD is proud of the School’s leading position in the 2017 DesignIntelligence “America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools” rankings; our architecture program was named first in the nation, reinforcing the GSD’s exceptional ability to prepare our graduates for professional practice. Our architecture program has ranked first for 15 of the past 16 years, and our landscape architecture program has led its field for the last 12 years, solidifying the GSD’s reputation as a model for design innovation and leadership.
The 2017-2018 Hiring Professional and Student/Recent Graduate Surveys are now open for architecture & landscape architecture until Friday, May 26. If you are in a leadership or hiring position at your firm, we encourage you to complete the Hiring Professional Survey. If you have graduated within the past 24 months, you are invited to complete the Student Survey as well. Your participation is critical in influencing the results, which are used widely as a resource throughout the industry and by prospective students. The survey should only take approximately twenty minutes of your time.
Recent Graduate (within last 24 months) and Student Survey The student survey takes approximately 15 minutes to complete and be must be completed within one sitting.
Results will be published in the third quarter edition of DesignIntelligence Quarterly which will be released towards the end of September 2017. You can access more information about the methodology and results of last year’s research at the DesignIntelligence website: www.di.net
Thank you for your participation and for your support as a member of the GSD community.
The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) has announced its 2017 roster of participants, selected by 2017 Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston MArch ’95 and Mark Lee MArch ’95 of the Los Angeles–based firm Johnston Marklee and including a range of Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty and alumni.
Following 2015’s inaugural CAB, entitled The State of the Art of Architecture, this year’s Biennial is entitled Make New History. It opens to the public on September 16, 2017, and remains on view through January 7, 2018. Its nexus will be the Chicago Cultural Center, with additional exhibition sites throughout the city.
2017 Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston MArch ’95 and Mark Lee MArch ’95 speak at the March 6 announcement of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Photo by Zachary Johnson, courtesy of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
“Our goal for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial is to continue to build on the themes and ideas presented in the first edition,” said Lee. “We also hope to examine, through the work of the chosen participants, the fields of both art and architecture as these participants’ practices continue to evolve around the changing nature of public space,” added Johnston.
Make New History will employ a historical perspective on architecture, with a focus on the effort of contemporary architects to align their work with versions of history.
“From the vantage of the discipline, the Biennial aims to examine the interplay of design and the broadening access to, as well as recall of, historical source material,” reads the official description. “In the realm of building practice—from new construction to adaptive reuse to conservation—it will investigate the ways that the architect’s encounter with a site is, in fact, a prior accumulation of state and government regulations, social conventions, and markers of personhood to be interpreted and responded to. … Now, more than ever, the assumptions embedded in cultural exempla and civic imaginaries require examination and discussion.”
In collaboration with Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee around the Biennial, the GSD is looking forward to celebrating and convening alumni, faculty, and friends at event and reception on Thursday, September 14 at the Chicago Cultural Center. Additional information will be posted on GroundedVisionaries.org/events and will be shared with alumni via email.
Among the GSD faculty and alumni selected to participate are:
Iñaki Ábalos, Professor in Residence of Architecture, with firm Ábalos+Sentkiewicz
Kunlé Adeyemi, Aga Khan Design Critic in Architecture, with firm NLÉ
Amale Andraos MArch ’99, with firm Work Architecture Company
Andrew Atwood MArch ’06 and Anna Neimark MArch ’07, with firm First Office
Arno Brandlhuber and Frank Barkow MArch ’90, who as visiting professors led the Spring 2016 option studio “Poor but Sexy: Berlin, the New Communal.” Barkow joins Regine Leibinger MArch ’91, co-principal at their firm Barkow Leibinger.
Marshall Brown MArch ’00, MAUD ’00
Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, design critics in architecture, with firm Christ Gantenbein
Frida Escobedo MDesS ’12
Kersten Geers and David van Severen, design critics in architecture, with firm OFFICE KGDVS
Go Hasegawa, Dunlop Design Critic in Architecture
Andrew Holder, assistant professor of architecture, with firm the Los Angeles Design Group
Florian Idenburg, associate professor in practice of architecture, and Ilias Papageorgiou MArch ’08, with firm SO-IL
Wonne Ickx, design critic in architecture, with firm PRODUCTORA
Zhang Ke, Aga Khan Design Critic in Architecture
Francis Kéré, design critic in architecture
Bernard Khoury MArch ’93 and Robert Levit MArch ’87 with firm Khoury Levit Fong
Jeannette Kuo MArch ’04, assistant professor of architecture, and Uenal Karamuk MArch ’03, with firm Karamuk + Kuo
Christopher C.M. Lee, associate professor in practice of urban design, with firm Serie
Michael Meredith MArch ’00, with firm MOS
Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture, with firm Toshiko Mori Architect
Camilo Restrepo Ochoa, design critic in architecture
Jesus Vassallo MArch ’07
Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture
Andrew Zago MArch ’86, with firm Zago Architecture
On April 26, legendary architect Ieoh Ming (I. M.) Pei MArch ’46 celebrated his centennial birthday. The 1983 Pritzker laureate lays claim to a renowned body of work that includes some of the world’s most celebrated buildings, such as the Louvre pyramid and the Bank of China Tower. With a professional career spanning six decades, Pei possesses a passion for architecture matched only by the enduring influence of his iconic designs.
On March 30, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) honored Pei’s milestone birthday with a celebration in Gund Hall (available for view on the GSD’s YouTube channel), gathering a cast of Pei’s collaborators and friends that included Henry Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49,Bartholomew Voorsanger MArch ’64, and Calvin Tsao MArch ’79. Architectural Record nodded to the event in a recent feature celebrating Pei’s birthday.
Threading the range of conversations and reflections was a sense of Pei’s connection to the GSD. Pei studied at the GSD, as did his late wife Eileen Pei GSD ’44 and their sons Chien Chung (Didi) Pei AB ’68, MArch ’72 and Li Chung (Sandi) Pei AB ’72, MArch ’76. I. M. Pei was also an assistant professor of architecture at the School.
Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the GSD and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, began the event by calling for a “true reassessment of the work of I. M. Pei.” He outlined some of the themes of Pei’s design aesthetic that were echoed throughout the event, including the relationship between modernity, monumentality, and tradition. (The GSD, together with M+ Museum in Hong Kong, is planning a pair of symposia on Pei’s work for October 12-13 and December 15-16, 2017, with further details available in the coming weeks.)
Henry Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49 Looks Back
Following Mostafavi’s opening remarks, Cobb, who founded his architectural practice with Pei in 1955, gave a presentation on Pei’s time at the GSD. He offered personal anecdotes about interacting with his future business partner while he was a graduate student and Pei a young faculty member.
Cobb also spoke about the “mood of the School” in the late 1940s, calling it an “exciting place” marked by epic costume parties, or “fête charrettes”—a term derived from the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. (Read more about “fête charrettes” at Harvard in the Harvard Crimson’s archives.) While acknowledging tensions between the leadership and faculty at the time over the School’s evolving pedagogy, Cobb noted that many students regarded Pei as “the best critic in the School during those years.”
Cobb also highlighted Pei’s GSD master’s thesis (1946), A Museum of Chinese Art for Shanghai, calling it “a very mature piece of work for a student.” Cobb’s presentation drew parallels between Pei’s thesis and his later professional projects, including a few of the fourteen museums Pei later designed, noting “clearly the same sensibility is at work, the same intuitive sense of balance, of lively composition in place.” Towards the end of his presentation, Cobb returned to Pei’s thesis: “I doubt if there has ever been a piece of student work that that was more predictive of a professional life to come than this project,” he noted.
Panel of Collaborators Reflect on Pei’s Career and Practice
Following Cobb’s presentation was a panel discussion moderated by Voorsanger, who worked in Pei’s practice for ten years, and Preston Scott Cohen MArch ’85, the Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture at the GSD.
Other panelists included structural engineer Leslie Robertson, who worked with Pei on many projects including the Miho Museum Bridge; Tsao, who began his professional career at Pei’s firm, I. M. Pei and Partners; Karen Van Lengen, the first female Design Associate at I. M. Pei and Partners; and Didi Pei, son and collaborator of I. M. Pei. A number of other partners from Pei’s practice were in attendance, including Yvonne Szeto MArch ’79. (Read Szeto’s Alumni Q&A in which she discusses some of her work with I. M. Pei).
During the discussion, panelists offered personal stories about and lessons from working with Pei. His gift for subtly guiding people—whether a client, consultant, or fellow architect—toward an idea was mentioned in different contexts throughout the conversation, and termed “ventriloquistic” by his son.
“We all left that office with some of [Pei’s] DNA,” said Voorsanger.
The idea of the Pei office as a kind of school was also illustrated by the group. Voorsanger attributed it to Pei’s ability to design “in front of you,” which allowed those around him to learn from his process. For Szeto, who joined the firm in 1977 and currently serves as a partner, the “schooling” that happens in the office comes from an atmosphere that encourages questions. Tsao added to Szeto’s observation, noting, “over and above the craft is the discipline of inquiry…I learned how to inquire and investigate through my experience [at the Pei office].”
The evening ended with a special performance by a group of GSD students who sang “Happy Birthday” to I. M. Pei in both English and Chinese.
I.M. Pei at the GSD: An Exhibition
In conjunction with the centennial-celebration event, the GSD curated an exhibition on Pei’s years at the GSD. Now on view in the GSD’s Frances Loeb Library through May 12, the show includes undergraduate and graduate work by Pei and his wife Eileen, as well as designs by students whom Pei taught while on the GSD faculty in the 1940s.
Among the exhibition materials is Pei’s master’s thesis (1946), the same one to which Cobb alluded in his presentation. Set in Pei’s native China, the museum design offered therein both embraces and challenges the Modernist pedagogy then espoused by Walter Gropius and other GSD faculty. Its combination of traditional Chinese motifs, including the bare wall and garden patio, with a distinctly modernist structure produces a sense of timelessness that Pei would return to throughout his career.
Gropius praised Pei’s thesis design in the magazine Progressive Architecture (February 1948) writing, “it clearly illustrates that an able designer can very well hold on to basic traditional features—which he has found are still alive—without sacrificing a progressive conception of design.” A model of Pei’s thesis design, created by current GSD student Marianna Gonzalez (MArch ’19), is on display in the Library show.
A series of photographs from a 1940s-era Harvard “fête charrette” that I. M. and Eileen Pei attended is also on display. It shows GSD students talking and dancing in Robinson Hall, the GSD’s home before Gund Hall opened in 1972.
The Celebration Continues
The birthday celebration and Library exhibition are part of a series of events the GSD is hosting in 2017 to honor I. M. Pei. Later this year, two symposia on the work of Pei will be held in collaboration with the museum M+: one at the GSD and the other in Hong Kong. Further details will be available in the coming weeks.
Sara Myerson’s MUP ’11 experience bridges the public and private spheres, which she touched on as a speaker in the March GSD Alumni Insights Panel “The New Allure of the American City,” alongside fellow U.S. city planners. She began her career at Goldman Sachs and HR&A Advisors. After graduating from the GSD in 2011 with a Master’s in Urban Planning degree, she took on a role back on Wall Street and then as a consultant before joining the city of Boston as the Executive Director of the Office of Olympic Planning. A transition to serving as the Executive Director of Imagine Boston 2030 focused her work on the creation of the first citywide master plan since 1965, which encompasses arts and culture, transportation, development, and the environment. Now as the Director of Planning at Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), Myerson partners with communities to shape a more prosperous and resilient city.
In this Q&A, Myerson surveys her career path and offers insights into how the GSD and fellow alumni can be a resource for cities that are grappling with challenges around infrastructure, transportation, climate change, and more.
1. Tell us about your background.
I grew up outside of Boston and developed a love for cities from an early age. Whether it be a weekend father-daughter trip into Boston or a family trip to London, I always found myself captivated by the energy, ingenuity, and intricacies of layered urban landscapes and the people who inhabit them.
My family has been instrumental – often quietly behind the scenes – in many of my academic and professional choices. My dad has a background in accounting, and my mom is an artist. I’ve found that my career path – while not always linear – has consistently been shaped by my attempt to blend the analytical with the creative.
2. Why did you decide to pursue planning as a career?
In 2008, while working on Wall Street, I became interested in the idea that I could blend my passion for cities with my background in finance through place-based impact investing. I decided to pursue planning in an effort to complement my financial skill-set with an understanding of the dynamics shaping the built environment and the power of physical and design solutions for complex urban challenges.
I wanted a school with pedagogy and curriculum that reflect my interdisciplinary interests. At the GSD, I was fortunate to find a place where I could seamlessly move from the studio setting working alongside designers to real estate finance courses alongside business school students.
3. Why did you choose the GSD?
I wanted a school with pedagogy and curriculum that reflect my interdisciplinary interests. At the GSD, I was fortunate to find a place where I could seamlessly move from the studio setting working alongside designers to real estate finance courses alongside business school students. It provided me with a perfect canvas to explore my interest in linking design thinking to a multiple-bottom-line investment thesis.
4. Tell us about your professional career. You have a background in affordable housing and real estate finance. What drove your decision to transition to the public sector to work for city government?
While it has been an incredible experience, I have to admit that my recent transition to the public sector wasn’t entirely planned. After the GSD, I returned to Wall Street to the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group where I had an opportunity to work directly in impact investing in real estate development projects and innovative community development initiatives. Wanting to get closer to the projects at an earlier stage, I transitioned to consulting and then to the development side where I worked for a Boston-based non-profit affordable housing developer. I have long believed that it’s important to embrace a non-linear career and in a field with a number of different stakeholders, like real estate, it’s valuable to have experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. When the opportunity presented itself to join Mayor [Martin] Walsh’s team and lead the Office of Olympic Planning, I jumped at the chance to have a seat at the table alongside a full array of public, private, and community stakeholders to explore the catalytic potential of planning for a mega-event like the Olympics.
My time working on the Olympic bid was short lived, but I was extremely fortunate to have the chance to stay on with the City and transition into the role of Director of Planning at the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA, formerly BRA). In this role, I have the opportunity to work alongside the community as a steward of our city and built environment. It’s an exciting and challenging time for growing cities like Boston and, as the Director of Planning, I feel lucky to be able to work with the community and administration in shaping our city and laying the foundations for its physical evolution for generations to come.
I think the GSD can be an incredible resource as cities grapple with these challenges – both through academic leadership and by demonstrating the importance of cross-departmental partnership to develop innovative solutions and real-world implementation strategies.
Sara Myerson MUP ’11 with Eric Shaw MUP ’00, director of the DC Office of Planning during “The New Allure of the American City.”
5. Boston is growing at its fastest rate in decades. The BPDA is working on a variety of urban challenges such as outdated and deteriorating infrastructure, transportation concerns, continued waterfront development, and threats posed by climate change and sea-level rise. How would you like to see the GSD engage with the BPDA around this important work? How would you like to see fellow alumni get involved?
In most respects, cities like Boston are incredibly lucky to be experiencing a period of growth and investment, but this growth is certainly not without its strains and challenges. I participated on an alumni panel at the GSD in March, “The New Allure of the American City” where fellow alumni in the New York and DC planning departments shared similar challenges facing their growing cities. I think the GSD can be an incredible resource as cities grapple with these challenges – both through academic leadership and by demonstrating the importance of cross-departmental partnership to develop innovative solutions and real-world implementation strategies. At a time when many communities in growing cities are increasingly hesitant about the pace of change, there is an opportunity for both the GSD and fellow alumni to get involved. One way is to help to lead public discourse about the opportunity of growth and how embracing evolution and change in our cities can be a positive force in positioning us for both short and long term success.
6. What is the most significant thing you learned while at the GSD?
I learned to be a true collaborator and that the strongest teams work together to draw on their diverse areas of expertise.
7. What is your favorite memory of the GSD?
While painful at the time, late nights working together in studio are a favorite – or at least most lasting – memory of the GSD.
8. Tell us about your work/life balance? What occupies you when you are not working?
Much of my time outside of work is spent with my growing family – my husband and I currently live in Charlestown and love spending time around Boston with our two-year-old daughter and miniature Goldendoodle. And we have another baby Myerson on the way! A typical day away from the office usually starts with a morning trip to the Boston Children’s Museum, followed by a stop by the Boston Public Market, lunch on the greenway, a trip to the playground, and cooking dinner back at home.
9. What advice do you have for GSD students and/or alumni?
One of the most valuable aspects of graduate school is the friendships you make and the networks you build. I encourage GSD students and alumni to remember to make the time to continue to nurture these relationships.
10. Looking back, what experiences at Harvard were the most helpful in shaping your career?
My second-year option studio was probably the single most influential experience in my time at Harvard. Having no prior design background, I really stretched myself by opting into an architecture studio focused on London (London: A Particular Proposition.) I had an idea about unlocking property value through a redesign of a social housing site, which could ultimately allow for a financeable renovation of the aging housing stock and long-term cross-subsidization of the affordable housing component. The architecture and urban design students in my studio helped me build a toolkit to explore this concept and blend an examination of a site redesign with real estate finance analysis for my final project. This approach focused on bringing together design solutions with implementation strategies is something I try to incorporate into my work every day.
By now you have most likely seen the perked ears of a pink “pussyhat” adorning the head of a friend, neighbor, or celebrity. Perhaps you have even knit one of your own. While this quiet form of protest was initially designed as a clever way to keep warm at the January 21, 2017 Women’s March on Washington, the pussyhat has taken on a symbolic significance, sparking a global movement of its own.
Composed of a simple knit rectangle, the pussyhat can be traced to two California women, one of whom, Jayna Zweiman, attended the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The GSD recently spoke to Zweiman MArch ’08—architect, feminist, and co-founder of the Pussyhat Project—about how her time at Harvard inspired her current activism and the role of design as a tool for change.
Graduate School of Design: How did you get involved in the Pussyhat Project? Are you a long-time knitter?
Photo courtesy of Jayna Zweiman.
Jayna Zweiman: I learned to knit because of the GSD! I was a recipient of the Edward Larrabee Barnes Grant to study sculptural knitting at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. I explored knitting as material research: I was interested in how lines become surfaces and then forms, as well as the potential of encoding information. Knitting is the clearest diagram of surface composition. It’s the manifestation of textured trace.
After entering the professional world, my exploration of knitting as material research was put on hold until I faced a dilemma of how to recover from a concussion. I got back into knitting as a way of exercising my fine motor skills and a route back into making. Using knitting as a mode of therapy brought to front of mind the research I had begun into the physical and conceptual potential of knitting.
Then, in 2016, the political environment changed radically. I realized that I could not participate in traditional forms of political resistance and activism while in recovery, but I desperately wanted to be part of the movement. As I relearned to knit at The Little Knittery, I got to know Krista Suh, my friend and co-creator/founder of the Pussyhat Project. We talked about things she could do to have an impact beyond one person. Krista wanted to make herself a hat to protect herself from DC’s cold January weather, and then thought to have other people send in hats, too. I took it one step further and envisioned hat-wearing as a large-scale active-art installation. I thought the process of making, gifting, sharing, and getting the hats to DC marchers could be an opportunity for visibility and empowerment. I saw that this could be more than a moment—it could be a movement. It had the potential to go beyond even the millions of people who showed up in person to march to the millions of people creating hats, too.
We teamed up and made the Pussyhat Project. I am currently unable to be in large crowds, a limitation that inspired the project’s framework allowing everyone to take part and be visible. There are so many reasons why a person may not be able to be on the frontlines—it could be because of health, finances, or scheduling. Through Pussyhat Project, a person could be a knitter, marcher, both, or neither and find a way to be part of the project. The pussyhat harkens back to my initial research of knitting: it is a stripped-down diagram of a hat or pixel—a pattern that is created to be accessible.
The pussyhat is an artifact we could share to create a network and linkage between people who could materially be present at the march and those who create and give materiality through the act of making. It is an intimate manifestation of support. When a marcher wears a hat, she is not just representing herself, but also the maker of her hat. When a knitter shares a hat, she also shares a note about what women’s rights issue is important to her. When we see one million people wearing pussyhats, we are seeing the representation and connections of far more people.
GSD: You’ve spoken about how an option studio on architecture and social inclusion helped prepare you for your work with the Pussyhat Project. Could you elaborate?
JZ: When I was at the GSD, I had the opportunity to take a studio with David Adjaye. I have always admired his ideas around social inclusion as an unapologetic part of his principles and politics. He is one of a few influential architects who have taken on this attitude and it is incredibly inspiring. Adjaye has also expanded the disciplinary practice of architecture to include collaborations within the arts, which is an approach I have been developing in my own work over the years.
It’s an axiom that architecture is where people meet. As architects, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to make it more than that, as well: a place where they mix in the truest sense of the word. Pussyhat Project is about deep social encounters; it is contextual and it is multiplicitous. The space of resistance is the context of this project. The new datum are pink pixels, each a different hue.
In the past few decades participatory design has been used as a trope where an expert asks community members what they want to see. Pussyhat Project is a different version of participatory design—we proposed a process that people can take part in, or not. It leaves room for agency, individualization, and conjecture in each element. When all the elements of pink pixels come together, we see a communion of empowered individuals. The process of making pussyhats is also participatory and creates space to talk about political issues as a part of the process of craft. It lays the groundwork for future political participation.
Ken Smith MLA ’86, design critic in landscape architecture, dons a pussyhat during the Exhibition Opening for “Designing Planes and Seams” at the GSD.
GSD: Could you comment on the semiotics of the January 21, 2017 Women’s March–specifically the return to the handmade (knitting, magic markers, poster board) in our smooth, high-tech world?
JZ: The pussyhat strips a hat down to its essential diagram. It provides an iconography to the individual within the collective. It is playful, has the audacity to call out sexism of those in power while focusing attention on the power of the gender. Everyone can take charge of the signifier—an idea that is incredibly feminist.
The project is rooted in feminist practices of women knitting together to support political action that has spanned centuries. In the United States, women were knitting Liberty Caps during the Revolutionary War and hosted knitting circles as opportunities for political discourse. What is quite different is that the scale is contemporary. Pussyhat Project operates on a scale we have never witnessed and harnesses those knitting circles.
We see a multiplication of the signifier through contemporary channels: the pattern and framework for creating the pussyhat depended on social networks. Communication for this project was based on both physical and virtual connections—a physical network of local ally yarn stores and knitting circles that brought women together to learn, teach, discuss, and join together, and social media and the dance between the two. The interplay of local participation within a national network helped the project to succeed.
GSD: What do you think it will take for the Pussyhat Project to endure past the discrete occasion of the Women’s March?
JZ: It already has. Because of the success of the sea of pink, we continue to see the pussyhat used as a symbol of solidarity and support for women’s rights and political resistance.
We have seen images of a person wearing a pussyhat in Russia protesting the legalization of domestic violence. We have seen many people give newborns their first pussyhat to show how important women’s rights are from the very beginning. We have heard of an elderly woman choosing to die and be cremated in a pussyhat as a final stand for women’s rights.
Pussyhat Project is about both the hats and the process. Women’s rights supporters have been coming together in knitting circles and are discussing politics and political activism. Participants are continuing to make them, and–post-march–new participants are learning to knit to be able to make pussyhats, and demand for the pussyhats remains very high.
We recently launched Pussyhat Global Virtual March in honor of International Women’s Day/ A Day Without a Woman (March 8, 2017). The idea is that any women’s rights supporter anywhere, whether she is marching, striking, both or neither can join in our virtual march. We ask she/he put on her pussyhat, make a sign about where she is from and what she is for, hold it up, take a picture and share on social media. The idea is that we will all be able to see each other together. There are pussyhat gatherings happening right now around the world.
Members of the GSD group Women in Design (WiD) travelled to Washington for the January 2017 Women’s March. Photo courtesy of WiD.
GSD: More broadly, how do you see design playing a role in protest movements against the current administration?
JZ: Design should be leading the way on how we organize, maneuver, and participate politically. Protest movements require creativity, clarity, meaning, and mass, all skills that designers have. We also live in an incredible visual time, and being able to create powerful images can help effect change.
GSD: Do you have any advice for GSD students or alumni that want to use design to engage in movements for social change?
JZ: Go for it! Collaborate with people who have different skills and be open to possibilities. Pussyhat Project took form because of collaborations with Krista Suh, Kat Coyle, Aurora Lady, our knitting circle at the Little Knittery, volunteers who shared their particular skills, as well of the hundreds of thousands of people who participated and joined together.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Members of the Harvard community gathered in Miami on Thursday, February 16, to hear from Drew Gilpin Faust, President and Lincoln Professor of History, Harvard University, as she shared her vision for the University’s future and its global impact. Attendees included GSD students in the option studio “Sea Rise and Sun Set: Modeling Urban Morphologies for Resilience in Miami Beach,” led by Charles Waldheim, the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture, who were in Florida studying the effects of sea level rise on Miami Beach.
The evening featured an intriguing faculty conversation that examines what the power of observation and reconstructing the past can tell us about our future, from making sense of matter and seeing things before unseen to genomics research with Hopi Hoekstra, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology; Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology; Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Jennifer Roberts, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities.
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Charles Waldheim, the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture, with GSD students in the option studio "Sea Rise and Sun Set: Modeling Urban Morphologies for Resilience in Miami Beach," with Drew Gilpin Faust, President and Lincoln Professor of History, Harvard University,.
This spring, alumni can vote for a new group of Harvard Overseers and Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) elected directors. This is the time to get informed on the candidates and important issues.
Ballots will be mailed no later than April 1. Completed ballots must be received, at the indicated address, by 5:00 pm EDT on Tuesday, May 16, to be counted. All holders of Harvard degrees, except Corporation members and officers of instruction and government, are entitled to vote for Overseer candidates. The election for HAA directors is open to all Harvard degree holders.
FOR OVERSEER:
Paul L. Choi AB ’86 magna cum laude, JD ’89 magna cum laude
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Chicago, Illinois
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar AB ’93 magna cum laude
Justice, Supreme Court of California
San Francisco, California
Darienne B. Driver EdM ’06, EdD ’14
Superintendent of Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Carla Harris AB ’84 magna cum laude, MBA ’87
Vice Chair of Wealth Management and Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
New York, New York
Lane MacDonald AB ’88 cum laude
President, FMR Diversified Investments
Boston, Massachusetts
Elizabeth D. Samet AB ’91 magna cum laude
Professor of English, U.S. Military Academy
West Point, New York
Craig R. Stapleton AB ’67 magna cum laude, MBA ’70
Senior Advisor, Stone Point Capital
Greenwich, Connecticut
Leslie P. Tolbert AB ’73 cum laude, PhD ’78
Regents’ Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
FOR ELECTED DIRECTOR
Nathaniel Q. Belcher MArch ’92
Nathaniel Q. Belcher MArch ’92 Professor of Architecture, Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
Belcher is Professor of Architecture at the Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and an emeritus of the GSD Alumni Council. He is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and other notable foundations and research entities. He was educated at Virginia Tech and Harvard University and holds both bachelors and masters degrees in architecture. Mr. Belcher’s research and teaching specialization includes Brazilian architecture and modernism; avant-garde practices in diverse cultures; and African American architecture, urbanism, artifacts, and culture. He has done field research and presented lectures throughout the United States and in Cuba, Brazil, Lisbon, London, Panama, France and other international locations.
Martha Abbruzzese Genieser AB ’91
Director of Philanthropy, Alan Howard Family Office
London, United Kingdom
Sangu Julius Delle AB ’10 cum laude, JD ’17, MBA ’17
Chairman and CEO, Golden Palm Investments Corporation; Founder and President, cleanacwa
Accra, Ghana
Drew Engles AB ’87 cum laude
Hand and Microvascular Surgeon, Akron Children’s Hospital
Akron, Ohio
Sachin H. Jain AB ’02 magna cum laude, MD ’06, MBA ’07
President and Chief Executive Officer, CareMore Health System
Cerritos, California
Elena Hahn Kiam AB ’85 cum laude
Co-Owner and Creative Director, K-FIVE LLC d/b/a lia sophia; Co-Owner and non-executive Marketing Director, Cirrus Healthcare Products
New York, New York
Ronald P. Mitchell AB ’92 cum laude, MBA ’97
Chief Executive Officer, Virgil Inc.
New York, New York
Paola A. Peacock Friedrich SM ’06, EdLD ’14
Human Capital Management Consultant, AchieveMission
Marblehead, Massachusetts
Leslie Miller Saiontz AB ’81
Founder and President, Achieve Miami
Miami, Florida
Since joining Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1979, Alumni Council member Yvonne Szeto MArch ’79 has spent her career advancing the firm’s tradition of well-crafted public works. As a lead designer for 7 Bryant Park, a recently completed office tower that was named Project of the Year 2016 by Engineering News Record New York, Szeto embraced the opportunity to show how a building can both engage the public realm and fulfill an exacting corporate program. In November 2016, she hosted a reception and tour for GSD alumni and students at this memorable building along with the Real Estate Development (RED) Club at the GSD.
A member of the first succeeding generation of design partners at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Szeto has gained national recognition as a designer of academic and cultural institutions while extending the firm’s global reach with major corporate projects in Asia and Australia. Early in her career, she collaborated on some of the firm’s most important works, including the Grand Louvre in Paris. additional professional highlights include the ABN AMRO Bank in Amsterdam and the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina. Currently, she is completing headquarters for Minmetals in Shenzhen, China, and SXSW in Austin, Texas, among other projects.
On March 30, the GSD is proud to celebrate the centennial of founding partner Ieoh Ming (I. M.) Pei MArch ’46. This event—with guests including Harry Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49 – will be moderated by Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of Harvard GSD and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. The program will focus on the formative years of I. M. Pei’s career as well as some of his special friendships, influences, and projects. The GSD, together with M+ Museum in Hong Kong, is also planning symposia on the work of I. M. Pei for Fall 2017.
In this Q & A, Szeto reflects on her time at the GSD, what inspires her work, her upcoming projects, and more.
1. Tell us about your background. When did you realize you wanted to be an architect?
I was born and raised in Hong Kong. My father had a significant impact on my career choice, as he was an architect and engineer with a successful practice in Hong Kong. He was University Architect for the Chinese University of Hong Kong and was responsible for the master plan and the design of many of the first buildings on its campus. I learned about architecture from the many trips our family made abroad – traveling the world from Casablanca to Angkor Wat. Both my brothers and I have fond memories of spending Saturday afternoons at our father’s office, and we were fascinated by his drawings and models. We followed in his footsteps and became architects.
My father was also an accomplished painter, and I, like him, found great satisfaction in drawing. I credit him with developing my awareness of the visual arts. My decision to attend the University of Minnesota architectural program was no doubt influenced by the exceptional drawing skill and reputation of Ralph Rapson, who was head of the school at that time.
2. Why did you choose the GSD?
After graduating with an architecture degree from the University of Minnesota and working briefly, it became clear to me that I had more to learn and that the East Coast schools offered a theoretically rigorous curriculum that appealed to me. I applied to the GSD and was fortunate to be accepted.
3. Tell us about your professional career. How has it evolved with so much experience at one firm?
I started at PCF&P in the ’80s as a young architect and soon became interested in curtain wall design, an area in which the firm offers unique in-house expertise. I worked on two significant curtain wall projects: one involved working with Harry Cobb on the prismatic 3D wrapping skin of Allied Bank Tower in Dallas, the other with I. M. Pei on the Grand Pyramid of the Louvre, integrating the low-iron structurally glazed glass panels with a structure of bow-string trusses and cables. These projects gave me not only specific knowledge and skills but also the confidence to undertake the same rigorous exploration in the design of all building enclosures. For a young designer, this early technical training was transformative, and I would recommend it to all architects.
In the ’90s, I was part of our winning effort in a competition for a headquarters for ABN AMRO Bank in Amsterdam. It gave me the opportunity to lead a design team, represent the office in a comprehensive work of architecture and interiors, and learn about sustainable design, including the first climate wall as well as geothermal cold storage, daylight sensors, automated shades, cool ceilings, and radiant floors. This has proven useful in my work designing office towers now, using LEED in the US, the Green Building Label 3-star system in China, and the NABERS 5-star system in Australia.
I was named partner after ABN AMRO was completed, and the experience led to opportunities to design a number of other headquarters buildings, such as IMF HQ2 in Washington, OECD in Paris, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Compared with these institutional projects, my current work on the new home for SXSW offers the refreshing challenge of designing a new co-working environment for a cutting-edge client.
I have also been involved with many other building types, including museums and educational facilities. We say in our office that practicing with different building types and in different regions strengthens your skill as an architect, that things you learn on one type of project in one part of the world can be applied to challenges on a different project in another locale. Looking back, my long tenure at Pei Cobb Freed has given me a great breadth of experience; it has been not limiting but liberating, offering opportunities I could not have imagined back when I was studying at the GSD.
4. Can you describe your design philosophy? How has it evolved over time?
I believe in the stated philosophy of our firm, “to approach each project on its own terms, drawing inspiration less from formal or theoretical preconceptions than from particularities of place and program.” To me, that is a starting point for my design approach, which is a search for an expressive form, grounded in an underlying geometry that provides a functional solution to architectural opportunities rooted in a particular context. I am always concerned about the posture of a building and how it is understood by those who engage it. This approach has been a constant for me, but it is continually evolving. I think it is vital for an architect to be constantly growing and incorporating into their work new ideas and innovations, from both within the profession and outside it.
5. How has your engagement with the GSD, including your role on the Alumni Council, benefitted you and shaped your vision for design education?
It has helped me keep perspective and maintain focus. Outside the academic world, there are countless problems and distractions in architectural practice that interfere with the design process. Staying engaged with the GSD, and in particular working on the Alumni Council, brings me back to the School and reminds me of the idealism of our profession and the perfect world we hoped for when we were students. However, the contrast between academics and practice also highlights that creating real-world architectural solutions, with the many challenges that entails, is an essential part of our art, and this lesson should be available to students while they are in school. That’s why it was so rewarding for me to present our 7 Bryant Park project, a building that has high aspirations for design, as well as commercial success, to the student real estate group from the GSD who visited New York last November.
6. At that event for alumni and students, attendees had a tour of the building and heard from Tommy Craig, senior managing director of Hines, about the development field and trends and from you about the design process. What was it like to connect with this group around the challenges, opportunities, and innovations of the project?
After working on 7 Bryant Park for over five years, it was wonderful to be able to share the completed project with the GSD community. I was particularly happy that we were able to have Tommy tell the development side of what was very much a collaboration of developer and architect. As a commercial office tower, this building has its own significance in the larger Manhattan real estate market and, urbanistically, a unique position as a neighbor of Bryant Park. A lot of thought went into both the development and the design. Succeeding in both contexts was the challenge that we faced together, and I hope that collaboration came through to the alumni and students.
7. You served as design partner for the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was awarded the McGraw-Hill Best of 2010 Award of Excellence in Architectural Design. What research was done to prepare for this project?
The research was the best part! Our kickoff for the design was a trip to Talladega to see the Aaron’s 499 spring race. I had never seen a NASCAR race and knew nothing about the sport or the culture of NASCAR. Tailgating and eating barbecue within a sea of RVs in the infield is something I had never done before! But I was struck right away by the beauty of the sport, the color, the speed, the spectacle, the engineering, the physics. The visceral feeling of 43 cars traveling within inches of one another, roaring by at 200 miles per hour, is truly amazing. The undulating, curving form of the track that contains all that power ultimately became the inspiration for our final design. But along the way, I went to countless races, toured team shops, met owners, drivers and NASCAR legends, and visited car and sports museums all over the world. And I got to meet Richard Petty! I don’t think I’ll see a project like that one again.
8. Tell us about your work/life balance? What occupies you when you are not working?
That balance cuts a few ways. One of the most difficult parts is the travel. Projects in Asia and Australia or Europe necessarily keep you away from home for days at a time. That has been hard, while also being a mother to my daughter, Sara. I am fortunate to have a spouse who is an architect (David B. Everson, Jr. MArch ’79, whom I met at the GSD in a studio taught by Michael McKinnell). The demands of project charrettes are a known entity, so sharing responsibilities and time management is an important part of our lives. However, I have made it a practice to guard my weekend time, so I can spend it with family, and while I enjoy traveling to different parts of the world, when work is done, I am on the first plane home! Although it is challenging, the travel part is one of the things that keeps work interesting, because you meet fascinating people from different cultures whom you wind up working closely with for many years. Sharing a biertje with the Dutch, Baijiu toasts with the Chinese at dinner, or a Coopers after a long day in Darwin are things I will always remember.
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has engaged with the city of St. Louis from various approaches over the past few years—an illustration of the School’s broader commitment to tackling the challenges facing America’s cities.
Jonathan Franzen will present the Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture on April 18.
American cities provide a complex backdrop to our twenty-first-century lives. When award-winning novelist Jonathan Franzen comes to campus to present as part of the Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture series on April 18, he will likely reflect upon the context of St. Louis, his native home, and the city that serves as the setting for his first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City (1988). (“It’s all there,” wrote Newsweek, “in Jonathan Franzen’s first novel: racial unease, suburban malaise, a St. Louis hopeful and weary…”) As a native of Webster Groves, a cocooned suburb about fifteen miles south of Ferguson, Franzen has reached beyond his protective enclave to examine the social and political forces at work in the 100 separate municipalities that define this urban metropolis. For GSD students who have been working in St. Louis, his insights on the city will likely be especially poignant.
St. Louis has provided a vibrant laboratory for multiyear, multi-disciplinary urban research. By collaborating with local experts through options studios and multi-year design research projects, the School hopes to inspire projective thinking that promotes productive change.
Last March, the GSD and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, with support from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, jointly mounted the GSD conference Voices and Visions of St. Louis: Past, Present, Future, organized by Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design.
In some ways, the story of St. Louis is the story of America, and the city offers a lens for unpacking dynamics at play in many American cities
~ Diane E. Davis
Voices and Visions of St. Louis: Past, Present, Future, organized by Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design.“
“In some ways, the story of St. Louis is the story of America, and the city offers a lens for unpacking dynamics at play in many American cities,” notes Davis, a St. Louis native, who is hosting the Franzen lecture. “Issues of injustice, inequality, and racial exclusion, while certainly not unique to St. Louis, have played a highly legible and powerful role in shaping the city we see today. This offers students and faculty the opportunity to develop a rich understanding of these issues, and to deploy that sensibility through their work in St. Louis.”
The School’s work in St. Louis has served as inspiration for Dean Mohsen Mostafavi’s vision for the Future of the American City, a new initiative with targeted projects in Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Miami. Building on the strong body of groundbreaking work already underway in cities like St. Louis, the initiative is extending the discourse on issues affecting urban environments in the United States with the objective of creating actionable proposals. Dean Mostafavi asserts, “The unprecedented scale of challenges facing our cities around the globe requires design leadership, innovation, and societal engagement like never before. As the GSD gleans experience and insights from studying urban regions around the globe, we are committed to re-establishing our influence on cities in the U.S., in all their forms, through our Future of the American City initiative.”
Associate Professor of Practice in Urban Planning Daniel D’Oca MUP ’02 during the studio Affirmatively Further: Fair Housing After Ferguson.
Voices and Visions was just one piece of a broader web of St. Louis-based research projects underway. Associate Professor of Practice in Urban Planning Daniel D’Oca MUP ’02 has led two consecutive, interdisciplinary options studios on social justice in St. Louis–The MLK Way: Building on Black America’s Main Street and Affirmatively Further: Fair Housing After Ferguson (Fall 2015 and 2016). D’Oca sees the benefits of prolonged engagement, “When working on complicated, contentious urban issues from afar, it is understandably difficult to build trust and working in the same city for multiple years offers an opportunity to foster it. Harvard is a great brand, obviously, and while I have found that community-based groups that we worked with are typically happy to be working with Harvard students, forming trust–and subsequently leveraging it to built relationships–takes time.”
Working with local communities groups, including Forward Through Ferguson and Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing, these option studios challenged students to think boldly about how architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design can help affirmatively further fair housing. To conduct their research, students traveled to St. Louis to analyze and map housing patterns in the St. Louis region and created speculative proposals that are both site specific and scalable.
The experience was revelatory for Mexico native Ruben Segovia MArch ’17. “I was quite shocked by the poverty–it is different than what you see in Latin America. In St. Louis, there is infrastructure, but it is decaying and the conditions are harsher than I anticipated. The studio experience, including collaborating with local NGO’s and community groups, was profound, inspiring me to develop a website and book to educate the local youth about the complex and dynamic historical context–including redlining–that underlie their current condition.” While student proposals ranged dramatically, the School’s ambition is to convene experts in discourse and to inspire local housing advocates, activists and the community with an influx of fresh ideas that resonate.
GSD students and faculty are also building upon the momentum from these events, through individual research projects that expand on the critical conversations and partnerships they initiated. Several student-led research projects focused on St. Louis are underway: Map the Gap is a speculative student research project that considers St. Louis through a comparative lens; and Designing Justice, which held a symposium in conjunction with Voices and Visions, highlights and promotes cross-disciplinary design research about justice and equality—and, injustice and inequality—around the world.
Adjunct Professor of the History and Theory of Urban Form and Design Eve Blau partnered with Heather Woofter and Michael Allen for a seminar entitled Citizen Space: The Political Underpinnings of Cities and Social Spaces Affected by Government Infrastructures, which explored the role of government influence on public space in St. Louis through history, considering the topic of government investment (and disinvestment) through the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency project and the adjacent Pruitt-Igoe housing project site.
Professor in Practice of Urban Planning Toni L. Griffin LF ’98.
Professor in Practice of Urban Planning Toni L. Griffin LF ’98 led There Goes the Neighborhood: Perceptions and Realities of Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Change, a seminar about neighborhood change in American cities. Though not specifically tied to the St. Louis context, this seminar pushed forward critical conversations about the role and goals of designers in shaping the future of justice and equity in American cities like St. Louis.
While Davis does not want to overstate the School’s immediate impact in St. Louis, she is confident that this work makes a difference to the community. “We hope that we can serve as allies for St. Louisians working to build a more just, more inclusive city, and to help build momentum behind their efforts. By offering outside-of-the-box thinking and by asking questions in new ways, where possible, we hope to help people think about issues they confront every day from a fresh perspective.” As the Future of the American City takes seed, the GSD anticipates that Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Miami will provide equally compelling case studies that result in actionable proposals.
As students respond to the ever-evolving dynamics at play in American cities to champion the role of design in building more equitable and just cities, they will no doubt find inspiration in the depth, creativity, and fluidity that a writer as skilled as Franzen brings to his framing of the urban condition. While he has spent the better part of his career exploring the urban context, his focus has recently shifted to include broader themes quite familiar to GSD students–the role of nature and the impact of climate change. The relationship between man and his environment–the human condition–is the constant that informs our two creative endeavors.
For many Harvard University Graduate School of Design students, taking a course with K. Michael Hays is a rite of passage. For the first time, starting February 28, GSD alumni and architecture enthusiasts around the world will be able to experience this GSD tradition through a new HarvardX course orchestrated by Hays, the GSD’s Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, as well as Interim Chair for the Department of Architecture.
“The Architectural Imagination” is the GSD’s first foray into the realm of massive open online courses (MOOC). The 10-module course is free and open to all, with an option to pursue a verified certificate for a fee. A faculty-driven and university-wide effort, HarvardX is a catalyst for improving teaching and learning online. Since its founding in 2012, it has published over 82 open courses, with The Architectural Imagination being the first in architecture.
K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, associate dean for Academic Affairs, and interim chair of the Department of Architecture
In the course, analysis of buildings from a wide range of historical contexts is coupled with hands-on exercises in drawing and modeling. Hays is teaching the course in conjunction with Erika Naginski, professor of architectural history and director of graduate studies, and Antoine Picon, the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and director of research at the GSD.
Each module places students in an individual lecture with a theoretical argument. Shot around Harvard and the GSD, iconic Harvard locations being studied and discussed in the course, including the Trays in Gund Hall and the Le Corbusier-designed Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, will be recognizable to alumni. The topic has captured the interest of learners from around the world with tens of thousands of particpaints and is a powerful platform to potentially to reach thousands more.
Hays designed this course over a three-year period, based on an existing introductory GSD course for Master in Architecture I students. The content is rooted in the study of history’s important buildings because according to Hays, “Architecture is one of the most complexly negotiated and globally recognized cultural practices, both as an academic subject and a professional career. Its production involves all of the technical, aesthetic, political, and economic issues at play within a given society. Over the course of ten modules, we’ll examine some of some of history’s most important examples that show how architecture engages, mediates, and expresses a culture’s complex aspirations.”
For alumni, the course will offer a study of the interplay of issues that are fundamental to thinking about architecture. One of the greatest challenges of this course was adapting the material to be a stimulating learning experience for those both with and without a background in architecture. For alumni who have studied architectural history, this is an opportunity to bring a different perspective to the material from viewing through the lens of professional practice and experiencing how a traditional GSD course translates to an online platform. Additionally, GSD alumni have the unique opportunity to join a GSD alumni cohort, which can facilitate rich discussions, enable an exchange of ideas around the course material, and potentially create networking opportunities. (Once alumni enroll in the free course, navigate to this page to register for the alumni cohort discussion forum.)
Critical to the production of this course are two GSD alumnae: Lisa Haber-Thomson MArch ’09, PhD ’17 served as producer, while animations by Helen Han MArch ’08 brought buildings and concepts to life. Haber-Thomson, who is a Ph.D. candidate in Architectural History and Theory, embraced the challenge to translate content taught in a classroom setting to an online platform. “The exercises were originally developed with GSD students in mind,” she says, “and were carefully modified to maintain rigor and teach the same core competencies.” Her prior experience as a video and sound editor for the Science Media Group and as a freelance animator and sound designer was highly beneficial for this project. For Han, this course was also a natural fit for her talents. After the GSD, she founded an architectural video and animation company—Helen Han Creative. According to Haber-Thomson, “Han’s experience was ideal for this medium; her work skillfully brings to life the principles that are being illustrated by Hays, Naginski, and Picon.” Additionally, dozens of GSD students were engaged in testing and optimizing content. For students to be able to gauge their level of comprehension, comprehensive self-evaluation criteria were developed for each module.
Create an edX account, if you don’t have one already. (If you already have an edX account, sign in to complete the enrollment process.)
Verify your new edX account’s email address. Email verification is required.
Once you’ve verified your account, you will be asked if you want to audit the course for free (via the “Audit This Course” option) or earn a verified certificate (via the “Pursue a Verified Certificate” option). Note: You do NOT need to upgrade to the verified track in order to join the cohort.
Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory, has recently published three books that focus on the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of urban questions. These include Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays (Basel: Bauwelt Fundamente Series, Birkhäuser Verlag, 2016), Teoría urbana crítica y políticas de escala (edited and translated by Alvaro Sevilla-Buitrago; Barcelona: Icaria, colección Espacios Críticos, 2016), and The Explosion of the Urban / La Explosion de lo Urbano (Santiago de Chile: ARQ ediciones, 2016).
Michael Hooper, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, recently published two articles on the politics of urban densification in the developing world. The articles focus on Ulaaanbaatar, Mongolia, and were written together with two recent graduates, Aldarsaikhan Tuvshinbat MUP ’15 and Raven Anderson MUP ’14. They examine the way internationally-driven plans for densification interact with local, Mongolian needs and perspectives regarding housing and land use. The articles appear in Journal of Urbanism and International Development Planning Review. Hooper also completed an article on the role of international shelter standards in post disaster reconstruction, a study coauthored with MUP graduate Martha Pym MUP ’15. In recent months he has begun two new research projects, both focusing on aspects of displacement. The first is based in Montserrat, in the Eastern Caribbean, and the second looks at Canadian Indian reserve housing.
Andres Sevtsuk, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, and Principal Investigator for the City Form Lab held an Urban Network Analysis workshop at the Architecture Association (AA) School of Architecture in London in July. In addition, the City Form Lab opened an exhibit curated and designed by Sevtsuk on the topic of Indonesia’s urban story this fall. The show was first displayed at the Indonesian Stock Exchange in Jakarta, and later travelled to Harvard University and World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC.
Bing Wang MAUD ’99, DDes ’04, Associate Professor in Practice of Real Estate and the Built Environment, was awarded 2016 Best Paper of the Year by the American Real Estate Society (ARES) in the Apartments category for her research manuscript entitled “Micro-Housing as Urban Development Model in a Shared Economy.” The Award ceremony will take place in April 2017 at the annual conference of ARES. Wang’s research dissects development patterns of micro-housing in the United States through the examination of pricing structure of micro‐housing developments, comparing it to conventional market‐rate apartments, and establishes a set of analytical metrics to evaluate the potential of micro‐units and their development as a potential future residential development model. Through empirical data, statistics, and a series of spatial analyses, including GIS mapping and regression modeling, this research intends to shed light on how micro‐unit and micro‐housing residential developments are emerging as social and economic catalysts to foster a unique phase of urban revitalization that is grounded in the synergetic fusion of place, community, and innovation in a shared economy.
Faculty Research
Below are links to some of the research initiatives and studies led by planning core faculty and those teaching planners:
Members of the GSD alumni community in South Korea celebrated architectural, design, political, cultural, and societal interests in Korea with four GSD Korea year-end events for 2016. The December events served as a platform for engagement in cultural, professional, and academic practices of contemporary Korea and furthering relationships with the larger academic community, including the 500-member Harvard Korea Society.
Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and director of research at the GSD, traveled to Korea to give the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism Guest Lecture titled: “Smart Cities: From Technology to Design.” The lecture argued that the rise of the smart city approach represents a true revolution in the relations between cities, technology, and society and was based on his newest book, Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence (2015), which discusses the impact of digital culture on cities. Another highlight of his visit was his talk and dinner at SKM Architects hosted by Ken Sungjin Min MAUD ’93, principal at SKM Architects. Additionally, members of GSD Korea enjoyed two year-end dinners: the Harvard University and All Graduate Schools Year-end dinner (Dec. 4) and the GSD Korea Annual Year-end Dinner (Dec. 10).
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GSD Alumni Talk and Dinner with Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and director of research at the GSD, at SKM Architects with Ken Sungjin Min MAUD ’93 (Dec. 7.)
During the fall semester, students investigated pressing global, regional, and local issues through studio work. Courses tackled a range of complex topics, from perceived notions of materials and their use in architecture, to how design can address racism, segregation, and poverty in our inner cities.
Final studio reviews took place December 5-9, 2016, and brought alumni and design experts to campus to serve as studio review critics. Here are final review snapshots from a few of the Fall 2016 studio courses instructed by fellow GSD alumni: Affirmatively Further: Fair Housing After Ferguson, an interdisciplinary studio instructed by Daniel D’Oca MUP ’02, associate professor in practice of urban planning, encouraged students to think openly and creatively about fair housing in America. Working with local housing advocacy groups in St. Louis, students analyzed and mapped housing patterns in the region. Their work culminated in a playbook of individual speculative proposals, both site-specific and scalable, meant for housing advocates, activists, and the broader public.
The architecture studio Brick: Thick/Thin, taught by Design Critic Frano Violich MArch ’84, challenged perceived notions of brick and its use in architecture, and suggested viable proof-of-concept alternatives that raise questions about surface, structure, and material character. In collaboration with the International Masonry Institute, students produced a full-scale prototype of a building detail of their choice. The Rogelio Salmona Foundation hosted the studio in Bogota, Colombia, a city recognized as “the city of brick.” Through an iterative process of digital form-making and hands-on prototyping, students discovered the potential of innovating with brick.
In the studio INTERFACE: Constructing the Edge for Malaysia Vision Valley taught by Stephen Gray MAUD ’08, assistant professor of urban design, and Zaneta Hong MLA ’07, lecturer in landscape architecture, students studied the masterplan for the Malaysia Vision Valley project, a new economic growth area announced by the Malaysian Government in 2015 and comprised of 108,000 hectares of land. Their work led to an interdisciplinary exploration of the interface between urban development, transportation infrastructure, and socioeconomic networks in the context of 22nd-century urban growth and economic expansion.
The landscape architecture studio Inherent Vice focused on the art of transforming and creating new landscapes within an urban site conditioned by existing infrastructure and complex contextual circumstances. Under the direction of Design Critic Ken Smith MLA ’86, students tested and developed design interventions addressing access and occupancy of two abandoned “off-limits” sites in New York City—the Ridgeword Reservoir on the Brooklyn-Queens border and Bushwick Inlet in Brooklyn. A parallel investigation of clothing design served as a background for exploring the art and medium of contemporary landscape form making, materiality, and fabrication.
View photo highlights from studio reviews.
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The landscape architecture studio Inherent Vice focused on the art of transforming and creating new landscapes within an urban site conditioned by existing infrastructure and complex contextual circumstances. Under the direction of Design Critic Ken Smith MLA ’86, students tested and developed design interventions addressing access and occupancy of two abandoned “off-limits” sites in New York City—the Ridgeword reservoir on the Brooklyn-Queens border and Bushwick Inlet in Brooklyn.
Earlier this year, Michael Murphy MArch ’11 joined visionaries like climate change advocate and former vice president Al Gore and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson on stage for TED2016.
Murphy’s story may be known to many in the GSD community; Inspired and challenged by a Harvard lecture from Partners In Health’s founder Dr. Paul Farmer, Murphy and his GSD classmate Alan Ricks MArch ’10 traveled to Rwanda to design a “healthier” hospital. With this project, the pair launched MASS Design Group, a nonprofit design firm based in Boston.
First celebrated for its Butaro District Hospital (2011)—completed in collaboration with the Rwanda Ministry of Health and Partners In Health—MASS Design is known for public health projects in the developing world, with built work in places including Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Haiti. The firm, which studiously involves local constituents in the entire design process, from planning and programming to construction, continues to works globally, but has turned its sites closer to home for a transformative project in Montgomery, Alabama. When Murphy learned Bryan Stevenson’s plan to create a national memorial to the more than 4,000 African American victims of lynching, he reached out to inquire who was designing the project. With Stevenson’s invitation, Murphy traveled to Montgomery to discuss his vision. This project represents a new chapter for Murphy and MASS Design—rather than creating a place to heal disease, this new design hopes to help heal America’s national psyche.
“Countries like Germany and South Africa, and, of course, Rwanda, have found it necessary to build memorials to reflect on the atrocities of their past,” Murphy says. “We have yet to do this in the United States.”
During his TED Talk, which runs just over 15 minutes, Murphy reflects on his early motivation to veer from the typical career path. He questions the role of architecture and design in society—“What more can architecture do?” “How [can we] invest in the dignity of the communities in which we serve?”—and shares his design philosophy and professional journey. His talk is full of optimism for the future of architecture as a transformative force to better the lives of people around the world.
In closing, Murphy reinforces a lesson he learned from his father: “Great architecture can give us hope. Great architecture can heal.”
Watch Murphy’s full TED Talk, “Architecture that’s built to heal,” here.
Read about Murphy’s work in Haiti, following that country’s 2011 cholera outbreak, in Harvard Design Magazine’s recent health-themed issue, “Well, Well, Well.”
K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, associate dean for Academic Affairs, and interim chair of the Department of Architecture
Architecture engages a culture’s deepest social values and expresses them in material, aesthetic form. In this Graduate School of Design (GSD) HarvardX free massive open online course (MOOC) offered via the edX platform, you will have exclusive access to a GSD alumni cohort to continue your design studies. The ten module course will start February 28, 2017 and is taught by K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, associate dean for Academic Affairs, and interim chair of the Department of Architecture; Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Director of Research; and Erika Naginski, professor of Architectural History.
As an academic subject and a professional career, architecture is one of the most complexly negotiated and globally recognized cultural practices. Its production involves all of the technical, aesthetic, political, and economic issues at play within a given society. While this course can be taken by those without a background in architecture, GSD alumni may find especial interest in the examination of some of history’s most important examples that show how architecture engages, mediates, and expresses a culture’s complex aspirations. Vivid analyses of exemplary buildings from a wide range of historical contexts, coupled with hands-on exercises in drawing and modeling.
The first part of the course introduces the idea of the architectural imagination as a faculty that mediates sensuous experience and conceptual understanding. Two examples of the architectural imagination—perspective drawing and architectural typology—are explored through video presentations and hands-on exercises. You will be introduced to some of the challenges involved in writing architectural history, revealing that architecture does not always have a straightforward relationship to its own history.
In the second set of modules, the course will address technology as a component of architecture’s realization and understanding. Architecture is embedded in contexts where technologies and materials of construction—glass and steel, reinforced concrete—are crucial agents of change. But a society’s technology does not determine its architectural forms. You will discover ways that innovative technology can enable and promote new aesthetic experiences, or disrupt age-old traditions. You will witness architecture’s ways of converting brute technical means into meaningful perceptions and textures of daily life. The interactions of architecture and modern technologies changed not only what could be built, but also what kinds of constructions could even be thought of as architecture.
The final set of modules confronts architecture’s complex relationship to its social and historical contexts and its audiences, achievements and aspirations. As a professional practice deeply embedded in society, architecture has social obligations and the aesthetic power to negotiate social change; to carry collective memories; even to express society’s utopian ideals. architecture’s power of representation, and see how architecture has a particular capacity to produce collective meaning and memories.
This on-line course is free and open to anyone. For more information, and to sign up for the course, see the course page.
Instructions on How to Enroll and Join the GSD Cohort
In order to participate in the alumni cohort for the Architectural Imagination, you must:
Enroll in the course through edX.
Join the cohort by contacting the GSD using the online form provided.
Create an edX account, if you don’t have one already. (If you already have an edX account, sign in to complete the enrollment process.)
Verify your new edX account’s email address. Email verification is required.
Once you’ve verified your account, you will be asked if you want to audit the course for free (via the “Audit This Course” option) or earn a verified certificate (via the “Pursue a Verified Certificate” option). Note: You do NOT need to upgrade to the verified track in order to join the cohort.
A: Prior to the official launch date (2/28/2017), the course record will appear in the learner’s edX dashboard with the start date listed. Once the course launches, a link to access the course will appear in the dashboard.
Q: How long is the course?
A: The course includes ten modules, and we plan to pace the cohort at one module per week (for ten weeks). However, the course is, officially, self-paced, so a learner can work with the cohort or at his or her own pace (or a mix of both).
Q: How long do I have to complete the course?
A: The cohort will run for ten weeks, but the course is self-paced and will remain open for 9-12 months.
Q: Are there any course prerequisites?
A: No, there are no prerequisites for the course.
Q: How much does it cost to enroll in the course?
A: The audit track is free. The optional certificate track is $99.
Q: What is a verified certificate?
A: See the edX summary page for a detailed description.
Nov. 2, 2016 — Stephen Ross, chairman of Related Companies, speaks about the Hudson Yards development project in Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, on Wednesday, November 2, 2016. The renewal of the Hudson Yards district, a project jointly planned, funded, and constructed by the New York City and State governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, concerns a section of Manhattan between Penn Station and the Hudson River.
The largest private real estate development in the history of the United States, Hudson Yards aims to transform Midtown Manhattan’s far West Side—one of the last undeveloped areas in New York City. Construction is already underway on the megaproject, which will include offices, retail space, luxury and affordable residences, a public school, a cultural center, and 14 acres of open space. Related Companies, which is developing the site with Oxford Properties Group, estimates that Hudson Yards will serve 125,000 people a day when all elements are completed in 2025.
This November, the Harvard Graduate School of Design welcomed Stephen M. Ross, chairman of Related and one of New York’s most prominent real estate developers, to speak about the project. Watch the full lecture here.
“We really saw this as the perfect storm,” Ross told a packed Piper Auditorium of Related’s decision to invest in the neighborhood. “If New York was going to grow…this was a place that we really thought it had the potential to do something major, impactful. And it just wasn’t one building.”
Invited to speak at Harvard by GSD alum Roger Ferris LF ’92, MDesS ’93, Ross gave an overview of the two-phase project to an audience of students, faculty, and the public. His presentation included some of the development’s staggering statistics: one million square feet of retail and mixed-use space, 4,000 residences, 100 shops, and three public parks. While the scale alone makes Hudson Yards one of the most ambitious New York real estate projects in a generation, the site comes with its own unique challenges. Most notably, the Hudson Yards skyscrapers will rest not on Manhattan schist, but on two man-made platforms that sit over one of the busiest rail yards in the country. (The eastern portion of the platform, which weighs more than 35,000 tons, was completed in 2015.)
Stephen Ross and Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, discuss the Hudson Yards development project.
Ross focused his lecture on the first phase of the project, Eastern Yards, which includes mixed-use, residential, and office buildings, as well as a performing arts center—the Culture Shed—designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. “We are really creating today what is a live, work, play environment,” said Ross, “which I think is the future of how development will take place in cities throughout the world.”
Ross cited significant government investment in the area as an impetus for his firm’s decision to develop. This included the extension of the No. 7 subway line, a $2.4 billion project that brought the train’s western terminus from Times Square-42nd Street to a new station at West 34th Street and 11th Avenue. Thanks to the new station, an area that was once virtually inaccessible by mass transit (a deal breaker for any major New York real estate project) is now just 10 minutes away from Grand Central Terminal and 15 minutes from Queens. “That was probably the one major component that really led to this development,” said Ross of the extension.
In his presentation, Ross emphasized his desire for architecture that was unique not only in design, but in material as well. “Today when people look at new major developments where you see a number of high-rises they [think they are] just going to be these glass, monolithic buildings,” said Ross. “I thought it was very important here to have different architects, but also to use different materials.” As one example, he showed slides of a skyscraper designed by David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for 35 Hudson Yards that features a limestone facade.
Ross and his partners have been involved in every step of the business development and design process, from bringing in high-profile tenants like HBO and Neiman Marcus to determining what species of trees should be planted in the site’s parks. Ross selected British designer Thomas Heatherwick to design a 150-foot interactive sculpture known as “Vessel” to anchor one of the site’s parks. “We were looking for what we called a 365-day Christmas tree,” said Ross, referencing Rockefeller Plaza’s iconic holiday display that attracts millions of visitors each year. After a series of talks between Ross and Heatherwick, the design was ready. “I saw it. I fell in love with it,” said Ross, “because it was something totally participatory, totally iconic, and something, I thought, would be to New York what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.”
Audience members participate in a Q & A with Stephen Ross.
After his presentation, Ross participated in a Q&A with the audience, answering a range of questions on topics from Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills to the recent economic recession. Asked about concerns that affordable housing in New York is disappearing, Ross spoke about Related’s early days in the development of affordable housing. He also discussed the 80/20 residences that are included in Hudson Yards. “You have to look out and see how you can make a city a greater place, because you have a responsibility and you leave a legacy,” said Ross.
As the only school at Harvard to offer degree programs with a concentration in real estate, the GSD was an ideal place for Ross to discuss his visionary project. “It is an incredible opportunity for us to find a collaborator of such significance and such imagination for us to engage,” said Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, when introducing Ross. “Architects and planners can learn from real estate professionals just as real estate people can learn from architects,” said Larry Curtis MAUD ’83, president and managing partner of Boston-based WinnDevelopment, after the lecture. “Ross is a visionary in the affordable housing and luxury commercial real estate field, and students need interaction with these types of professionals.”
In addition to Ross’s lecture, the GSD hosted a number of real estate-focused events this fall. Highlights include the Harvard Real Estate Conference 2016, which brought leaders from the field to the GSD for a series of lectures on the future of the industry, and the GSD alumni reception in Dallas during the Urban Land Institute’s Fall Meeting, which was hosted by GSD Alumni Council member Reggie Graham MArch ’78 of Maharger Development Company. The New Towns Initiative at Harvard University hosted a conference in September that convened preeminent new town scholars, new town development managers, and other key figures from major new towns around the world. In November, students from the Real Estate Development (RED) Club, an organization that provides students with the resources to further their knowledge and careers in the real estate industry, traveled to New York to join GSD alums for a tour of 7 Bryant Park. Tommy Craig, Senior Managing Director of Hines, and Yvonne Szeto MArch ’79, partner at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, spoke to the group about the relationship between design and development.
Stephen M. Ross’s lecture was part of the GSD’s Fall 2016 events calendar. You can watch the full lecture, and browse other GSD event recordings, on the GSD’s YouTube channel here. For more information on real estate programs at the GSD and upcoming real estate events, please visit GroundedVisionaries.org/engage/real-estate/
The 2017 Wheelwright Prize is now accepting applications and alumni are encouraged to apply for this annual prize dedicated to fostering new forms of architectural research informed by cross-cultural engagement. Deadline for submissions is January 31, 2017.
The Wheelwright Prize is open to emerging architects practicing anywhere in the world. The primary eligibility requirement is that applicants must have received a degree from a professionally accredited architecture program in the past 15 years (after 2002). Applicants are asked to submit a portfolio, a research proposal, and a travel itinerary that takes them outside their country of residence. Applicants will be judged on the quality of their design work, scholarly accomplishments, originality and persuasiveness of their research proposal, and evidence of ability to fulfill the proposed project.
In 2013 Harvard GSD revamped the Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, which was established in 1935 in memory of Wheelwright, Class of 1887. The original fellowship was intended to encourage the study of architecture outside the United States, giving outstanding GSD alumni a classic Grand Tour experience at a time when international travel was rare. In the 81-year history of the prize, fellows have included Paul Rudolph, Eliot Noyes, William Wurster, Christopher Tunnard, I. M. Pei, Klaus Herdeg, Farès el-Dahdah, Adele Santos, and Linda Pollak. The new Wheelwright Prize invites architects to imagine a Grand Tour for the 21st century, to propose travel itineraries propelled by compelling research agenda.
The overwhelming response to the prize reflects the strong desire of an emerging generation of architects to push the boundaries of the profession. Having reviewed hundreds of applications from around the world, it’s clear that young architects everywhere are interested in alternative practices tied to a global spectrum of political, social, cultural, and environmental concerns.
-Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design
An international jury will be announced in January 2017. Standing members of the Wheelwright Prize Organizing Committee include Dean Mostafavi and Professors K. Michael Hays. Applications are accepted online only at wheelwrightprize.org. Finalists for the 2017 prize will be invited to present at Harvard GSD in April 2017, and a winner will named shortly thereafter.
In addition to the cash purse of $100,000, Wheelwright Prize winners are invited to participate in the GSD’s renowned lecture series. On Thursday, November 17, the 2014 winner Jose Ahedo presented his research project, Domesticated Grounds: Design and Domesticity Within Animal Farming Systems. Ahedo, founder of Studio Ahedo in Barcelona, has spent the past two years, logging 8,300 miles on visits to eight countries on four continents, meeting over 200 farmers, scholars, policymakers, and others involved in animal farming. Link to view the lecture.
Previous Wheelwright Prize winners:
2016, Anna Puigjaner, Barcelona (BArch 2004, MArch 2008 and PhD 2014, Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona-Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), for her proposal to study collective housing models in Russia, Brazil, Sweden, China, Korea, and India, and their varied approaches to organizing domestic spaces; click here to view the presentations of 2016 finalists including Samuel Bravo (Santiago, Chile), Matilde Cassani (Milan), and Pierpaolo Tamburelli (Milan).
2015, Erik L’Heureux, Singapore (BArch 1996, Washington University in St. Louis, and MArch 2000, Princeton University), for his proposal to study architecture in five dense cities in the equatorial zone; click here to view the presentations of 2015 finalists including Malkit Shoshan (Amsterdam) and Quynh Vantu (London).
2014, Jose M. Ahedo, Barcelona (BArch 2005, Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de la Universitat de Catalunya), for his research on the architecture and organization of structures related to animal farming;
2013, Gia Wolff, Brooklyn (MArch 2008, Harvard GSD), for her study of the spectacular, temporary, urban-scale float structures that transform Rio de Janeiro during carnival. Click here for the link to her GSD lecture.
Harvard GSD has supported generations of architects through a wide array of fellowships, grants, awards, scholarships, and internship programs. In recent years, the school has expanded its offerings to an international community of outstanding architects, designers, and scholars. In addition to the Wheelwright Prize, the GSD recently closed applications for the Richard Rogers Fellowship, a research residency at the Wimbledon House, a modern masterpiece Rogers designed for his parents in the 1960s. The prize is available to professionals and scholars who are advanced in their careers, working in any field related to the built environment. The prize includes a three-month residency in London, travel expenses, and cash prize of $10,000 USD to cover living expenses. For more information, please visit RichardRogersFellowship.org
The Wheelwright Prize and the Richard Rogers Fellowship are consistent with Harvard GSD’s global outlook and emphasis on diverse forms of investigation that broaden the potential of the design fields.
Leading global design firms recognize the value in investing in the future of design education. As the premier design school, regularly leading rankings in our core disciplines, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design has a history of leadership and innovation that sets the standard for design education. Our alumni become principals at some the most respected firms, directing innovative work around the globe.
Philip L. Harrison AB ’86, MArch ’93, Grounded Visionaries Campaign Co-Chair and Perkins+Will CEO on left with GSD students.
Perkins+Will pledged a multi-year gift that will total $300,000 over the course of the Grounded Visionaries Campaign to advance the design professions through innovative design education and encourage a culture of giving to the School among other firms, large and small. According to Philip L. Harrison AB ’86, MArch ’93, Grounded Visionaries Campaign Co-Chair and Perkins+Will CEO, “Industry philanthropy at the GSD is an impactful mechanism to engage both organizations and individuals who share a passion for the global discourse on design while providing essential resources necessary to push the boundaries of what is possible in the built environment.”
The GSD is actively seeking the commitment of industry leaders to invest in design education by providing funding for the School’s growing research agenda and need for student financial aid. Design firms understand the value of championing the next generation of leaders through philanthropic support of the GSD. Following the lead of Perkins+Will, Elkus Manfredi Architects and Hickok Cole have contributed annual gifts of $25,000 and $10,000 respectively, to provide unrestricted support to the School. Additional recent multi-year investments in the School’s pedagogy and research by AECOM and Knoll of $900,000 and $300,000, respectively, will bolster access to unique opportunities in our multi-year studio research model. The AECOM studios are focusing on emerging cities in Southeast Asia, while the Knoll studios are considering the impact of the shifting nature of exploration on work spaces. GSD and LG Hausys America, Inc. gift agreement ceremony at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities
Recognizing the impact the GSD is making on the future of our built environment transcends architecture and design firms, industry leaders, like Autodesk, Beijing Capital Land, LG Hausys America, Inc., and Merck KGaA, are buoying the GSD’s capacity for research through generous philanthropy. A $50,000 gift from the Autodesk BUILD Grant has sustained two research projects this year, exploring robotics applications and researching dynamic prismatic structures, both for the AEC industry. Similarly, LG Hausys America, Inc. has invested in the GSD’s Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities with $300,000 over three years for research related to energy-saving and ecofriendly products, materials, and construction, specifically targeted towards the Center’s net-zero headquarters research project.
Further underscoring industry’s belief in the value of innovation through design, Merck KGaA, underwrote for the first of a two-part symposium on smart materials at Harvard Design: Chicago, Smart Materials and Adaptive Architectures. Reinforcing the School’s commitment to real estate studies, Beijing Capital Land has pledged $300,000 over five years to advance the MDes Real Estate and the Built Environment concentration—this gift will provide financial aid funding to students and further expand the program.
Honoring the School’s remarkable legacy, we are committed to enhancing innovative thinking and creative excellence. With support from our friends at firms, companies, and foundations, we can actively guide our ambitious research inquiries to advance the global discourse on design.
The Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellowship is awarded annually to an emerging designer whose work articulates the potential for landscape as a medium of design in the public realm. The Kiley Fellow will be appointed Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for the 2017-18 academic year. While the Kiley Fellowship is awarded competitively on an annual basis, successful Fellows are eligible to have their academic appointments renewed for a second year at the rank of Lecturer, dependent upon review of their teaching, research, and creative practice.
This initiative is intended to recognize and foster emerging design educators whose work embodies the potential for landscape as a medium of design in the public realm. The Daniel Urban Kiley Fellowship builds upon the history of pedagogic innovation at the GSD as well as the century of leadership in landscape education within the Department of Landscape Architecture.
Deadline for receipt of applications: February 10, 2017
On Friday, December 18, 2015, Congress passed the IRA charitable rollover provision of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, which included permanent reinstatement of the IRA charitable rollover opportunity.
Under this legislation, qualified donors may make outright gifts of up to $100,000 per year to Harvard from their IRA and avoid taxation on the distribution. For gifts to be counted toward the required minimum distribution (RMD) for 2016, transfers must be made by December 31, 2016.
To benefit from this gift opportunity, the following qualifications must be met:
Donor must be age 70 ½ or older at the time of transfer.
The maximum amount a donor may transfer is $100,000.
The gift must be outright. Gifts to donor advised funds or to life income vehicles do not qualify.
The gift must be transferred directly from the IRA account by the IRA administrator to Harvard. Donors with check-writing ability for their IRAs may use this feature to complete their gift.
To assist donors interested in making a charitable gift from their IRA, we have provided the following sample letters:
The first letter contains specific transfer instructions from the donor to the IRA custody agent.
The second letter is from the donor to Harvard to inform Harvard as to how the gift should be used. This letter is particularly important for donors interested in splitting their gift between multiple Schools or Harvard affiliates. It also ensures Harvard’s ability to provide appropriate class credit to alumni donors.
If you have any questions regarding the charitable IRA rollover or how to make a planned gift to Harvard, please contact [email protected].
President Barack Obama has announced his intent to appoint two Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty members to the United States Commission of Fine Arts: Toni L. Griffin LF ’98, professor in practice of urban planning, and Alex Krieger MCP ’77, professor in practice of urban design.
Other current members and staff of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts have strong ties to the GSD. Liza Gilbert AB ’59, MLA ’90 is a board member of the Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy in Washington, D.C. and is also Chair of its Signature Project Committee. Mia Lehrer, FASLA, MLA ’79 is the Founder and President of Mia Lehrer + Associates, an urban design and landscape architecture firm in Los Angeles. Elizabeth K. Meyer FASLA previously taught landscape architecture at the GSD. Additionally, two GSD alumni serve as staff members: Thomas Luebke, FAIA, MArch ’91, who is a member of the GSD Alumni Council, has served as Secretary since 2005 and Tony Simon MArch ’89 serves as Architect and Planner.
The seven-member Commission of Fine Arts is an independent federal agency tasked with advising the President, Congress, and both federal and District of Columbia governments on select matters of design and aesthetics. It was established by Congress in 1910 as a permanent body to advise the federal government on matters pertaining to the arts and national symbols, and to guide the architectural development of Washington, D.C.
Among other interests, the Commission reviews design proposed for memorials, coins, medals, and new or renovated government buildings. It also supports arts institutions in Washington, D.C. through the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs (NCACA) program. Each member is appointed in service terms of four years apiece. Krieger was first appointed to the CFA in Sept. 2012 and is up for reappointment of a second term. “These fine public servants bring a depth of experience and tremendous dedication to their important roles. I look forward to working with them,” Obama remarked in a White House press release.
Ivan Harbour from Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners at the Lineage of an Architectural Practice Symposium in London
The impact of the GSD alumni community spans the globe with expanding opportunities for thought-provoking discourse and building rewarding connections with fellow alumni and the School. This past year, over 1,600 alumni and friends assembled at 28 GSD-hosted events covering 15 cities and six countries. Highlights include design lectures from Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, department chairs, and faculty at iconic cultural institutions, receptions at professional conventions offering valuable networking opportunities, inspiring ambassador events hosted by Alumni Council members, and exclusive tours of provocative structures and landscapes designed by GSD alumni. Through this expanded footprint and heightened interconnectivity, GSD alumni are amplifying their creativity and innovation to transform the built environment.
Last September, alumni from the Classes of 1965, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2005 reconnected with each other and the GSD during a festive reunion weekend in Cambridge. A dynamic program provided alumni opportunities to experience current studios and courses, engage in discussion with academic department chairs and Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, as well as experience the range of resources available to current students from the Loeb Library and the Fabrication Lab, to research projects and Centers at the GSD. Two weeks later, alumni and friends joined the GSD in Chicago for the Alumni + Friends Weekend. Harvard Design: Chicago began with the Adaptive Architectures and Smart Materials Conference, an inspiring series of panels and events exploring design innovations for architecture and industry. The conference featured over 20 thought leaders, academics, building scientists, and practitioners as presenters and discussion participants. The culmination of the weekend featured an inspiring tour of local projects designed by SD alumni.
In collaboration with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, the School hosted the symposium Collaboration: The Lineage of an Architectural Practice, at the Leadenhall Building in London. Alumni and friends attended this symposium to unravel a series of issues that have been central to the firm’s practice and vital to the practice of architecture. GSD participants included Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, K. Michael Hays, Hanif Kara, and Farshid Moussavi MArch ’91, who joined speakers Lord Richard Rogers, Graham Stirk, and Ivan Harbour. Also in March, recent graduates gathered at Interboro Partners in Brooklyn, NY for a lively discussion and networking event hosted by Tobias Armborst MUD ’02, Dan D’Oca MUP ’02, and Georgeen Theodore MAUD ’02.
To honor the meaningful contributions of alumni and friends in support of fellowships and financial aid for students, the GSD hosted our Inaugural Fellowship Reception in April. Alumni and students shared mutually inspirational stories of impact during festive presentations and networking. The student recipients conveyed their tremendous gratitude for the generosity of alumni and donors that enabled them to attend the world’s premier design school.
The GSD’s exceptional scholarship and commitment to transformative research were spotlighted during Your Harvard: Canada in Toronto which featured faculty speaker Rahul Mehrotra MAUD ’87, Professor of Urban Design and Planning. Your Harvard events in Atlanta and Boston rounded out the trio of celebrations for global Harvard alumni community during the academic year. Marking the tenth anniversary of the annual GSD Alumni Council Unsung Hero Book Prize—an award which has been embraced by the GSD to honor students who make a difference in the GSD community without recognition from others—the contributions of current and past award recipients were celebrated with a book exhibition in the Loeb Library.
Plans are well underway for a robust event calendar for 2016–2017 as the GSD looks forward to engaging alumni and friends, near and far, to celebrate the achievement of our community of collaborative alumni as they work to address global challenges across practices and disciplines.
For the 80 years since the Harvard University Graduate School of Design was founded in 1936, it has shaped the imaginations of the men and women who have defined the built and natural environment through practice, research, and teaching. Each generation of GSD alumni has changed the course of their respective professions and inspired others to do the same.
With your help, the GSD can continue to bring the most talented students to Harvard to explore, analyze, and confront the global challenges facing society today and in the future. Your donation to the GSD Fund provides immediate support to the activities and experiences that are hallmarks of a GSD education.
Climate Change MIAMI RISE AND SINK: DESIGN FOR URBAN ADAPTATION
As Miami’s coastal barrier islands form one of the most recognizable and singularly valuable cultural landscapes in the world, the conditions in Miami Beach reveal the potential for ecological and infrastructural strategies to act as alternatives to large single purpose engineering solutions. This studio developed urban proposals for the city’s ongoing transformation, with the premise that urban adaption to ambiguous sea levels is creating a new form of public space, and the application of resilience as a measure of success must respond to and address these public parameters.
Urbanism GSD STUDIO ABROAD: SMART COUNTRYSIDES
The 2016 Spring Study Abroad Studio in Rotterdam, Netherlands, focused on new forms of research and engagement with the countryside. The studio aimed to develop a new speculative research toolkit rooted in anthropology, humanities, data sciences, and design, which included observational fieldwork, data-mining, archive research, and conceptual design and master planning.
Housing ALPINE SHELTER, SKUTA, SLOVENIA
Peak House is a modular mountaineering shelter constructed for a remote site in the Slovenian Alps. Designed for a site on Skuta Mountain, the shelter offers an intimate refuge for eight visitors nestled in the scenic Alps. It was designed to withstand harsh weather, radical temperature shifts, rugged terrain, wind, snow, and landslides. The built design was installed on site by helicopter in August 2015.
Materials BRICK: THICK/THIN
Brick: Thick/Thin aimed to challenge perceived notions of brick, its use in architecture, and suggest viable proof-of-concept alternatives that raise questions about surface, structure, and material character. Students received training in Dorchester, MA, working side-by-side with apprenticed masonry bricklayers. Student mock-ups reflected their research into the applicability of computer-aided design techniques that were tested using dry-stack techniques and then later fully executed with brick and mortar.
Social Justice THE MARTIN LUTHER KING WAY: BUILDING ON BLACK AMERICA’S MAIN STREET
Martin Luther King, Jr. has a street named for him in 893 communities in the US. Despite their ubiquity, MLK streets are not revered in the same way as King himself segregated, unsafe, and plagued by disinvestment. But while data tells one story, experience tells another. MLK streets are also vibrant, thriving centers of African-American identity and community. This interdisciplinary studio invited students to help shape the future of MLK streets and the neighborhoods that flank them in a way that neither ignores the structural racism that has led to segregation, poverty, and the socioeconomic decay of African American neighborhoods, nor overlooks the positive characteristics that led one author to call MLK streets King’s “greatest living memorial.”
Financial aid is a pre-requisite for a design education. The GSD allocates 25% of its operating budget to subsidize student’s tuition, yet this is not nearly enough to cover the cost of an unparalleled educational experience. We invite you to support the rigor and discipline of today’s GSD students— giving them the opportunity to freely imagine and create in a community that encourages excellence.
The GSD’s deep and ongoing relationship with the Tange family reinforces Kenzo Tange’s legacy at the School. When Paul Tange AB ’81, MArch ’85 came to Harvard in the fall of 1977, he explored courses in statistics and economics, but ultimately decided to focus on architecture. Paul credits Harvard with giving him the opportunity to choose architecture. After joining, and eventually taking over the reins of his father’s practice, Paul founded his own firm, Tange Associates, in 2002. Kenzo Tange, whose relationship to Harvard began when he received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1971, is among the most celebrated architects of the modern era. Through his work, which spanned five continents and six decades, Tange left a remarkable legacy of innovation, and a vivid sense of Japanese architectural traditions. Recipient of both the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1987 and the AIA Gold Medal in 1966, Tange has influenced students of architecture from around the globe.
In the fall of 2009, the GSD hosted the first comprehensive exhibition on Kenzo Tange anywhere in the world in more than twenty years. Curated by Seng Kuan AB ’98, AM ’04, MUP ’04, PhD ’11, Utopia Across Scales: Highlights from the Kenzo Tange Archive exhibited original models and dozens of original drawings of Tange’s bestknown works, which re-examine the role of housing, monumentality, communication, and scale in architectural and urban thinking. Soon after the exhibition, in 2011, the Tange family generously gifted the Kenzo Tange Archive to the GSD’s Frances Loeb Library. The archive, which physically arrived on campus in 2013, is currently being conserved, cataloged, and digitized for global access online.
Earlier this year, in recognition of Paul’s 35th year reunion at Harvard College, and on the eve of their daughter’s graduation from the College, Paul and Denise Tange generously donated $100,000 toward Friends of the Kenzo Tange Archive Fund. Kick-started in 2012 with combined gifts totaling $125,000 from Thierry Porté AB ’79, MBA ’82 and an anonymous donor, the Fund has allowed the library to develop a preservation and digitization strategy, and to begin processing the archive. Paul and Denise’s generous gift, which has been recognized by the College as a reunion gift, will ensure that work on the archive continues and that this invaluable resource is made available to a broader audience through digitization.
According to Professor of Architecture Mark Mulligan MArch ’90, the archive has transformed his teaching: “The Kenzo Tange Archive includes dozens of projects of national and international significance, each incredibly comprehensive in its documentation. Bringing groups of students to the Archive to examine sets of original hand drawings on vellum can generate wide-ranging discussions on architectural history, techniques of representation, construction technology, and issues of professional practice. It’s a rich and diverse resource that has greatly enhanced my research and teaching at the GSD.”
Loeb Library Director Ann Whiteside aspires to expand access to the archive. “The ambition to extend access to these primary documents to a global audience through digitization will ensure that Tange’s visionary thinking informs future generations around the globe.”
The Tange family’s munificence has not been limited to these recent gifts to the GSD. In 1984, Kenzo and Takako Tange established the Kenzo Tange Visiting Professorship at Harvard, which brings luminaries to campus each year to teach and lecture. With their gift, Paul and Denise Tange have embraced the legacy of design leadership that has long been associated with the Tange name.
This Fall, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) received three significant gifts supporting key priorities for the GSD’s $110-million-plus Grounded Visionaries campaign—student fellowships and endowed professorships. This support will enable the GSD to continue to attract, enroll, and support the brightest and most talented scholars who will be the leaders in transforming the social and built environment and endow the intellectual underpinnings of the School’s world-class faculty. The gifts include:
The Phil Freelon Fellowship Fund will provide financial aid to students attending the GSD with the intent to expand academic opportunities for African American and other under-represented architecture and design students.
The Zaha Hadid / Omniyat Fellowship Fund will provide financial aid to qualifying students who are enrolled in the Master in Architecture program at the GSD and who are citizens or residents of the Middle East and North Africa region.
The Phil Freelon Fellowship Fund, supported by global architecture and design firm Perkins+Will and Phil Freelon LF ’90, Managing and Design Director of the firm’s North Carolina practice, will provide financial aid to students attending the GSD with the intent to expand academic opportunities for African American and other under-represented architecture and design students.
“Phil Freelon is a passionate advocate for equity and diversity in the design sphere. These values are deeply supported and ingrained at the GSD,” says Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. “I thank Perkins+Will and Phil Freelon for their generosity in establishing this Fellowship as the creativity, dynamism, and success of our GSD community are enriched by and even contingent on an increasingly diverse student body.”
“I am honored to have this fellowship established in my name,” says Freelon, whose portfolio includes the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Historic Emancipation Park in Houston, and the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “As the design profession continues to attract a more diverse talent base, this gift will provide students of color with financial assistance that could make pursuing an advanced degree at the GSD possible. It’s an important step in broadening the GSD’s reach.”
From left: Lorraine Smith; Phil Harrison, AB ’86, MArch ’93, Perkins+Will Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the GSD’s Grounded Visionaries campaign; Nnenna Freelon; Phil Freelon, Managing and Design Director at Perkins+Will; John K. F. Irving AB ’83, MBA ’89, Co-Chair of the GSD’s Grounded Visionaries campaign; and Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design.
Freelon has long-standing ties with the GSD, including a year as a Loeb Fellow in 1989 and 1990. He is still actively involved at the School, presenting lectures, contributing research, assisting with student and faculty recruitment, and serving as a role model for aspiring young minority architects.
This year, the global design community mourned the passing of Dame Zaha Hadid (1950-2016), the first female recipient of both the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2004) and the RIBA Gold Medal (2016). As her untimely passing saddened friends, clients, and admirers, her legacy inspired the GSD to find a way to celebrate her extraordinary contributions to the field of design.
The Hadid / Omniyat Fellowship Fund is a tribute to Hadid’s work, her life, and her legacy. The fellowship fund will provide financial aid to qualifying students who are enrolled in the Master in Architecture program at the GSD and who are citizens or residents of the Middle East and North Africa region.
“I am delighted that we are able to celebrate the achievements of Zaha Hadid as one of our generation’s most creative architects,” says Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, “Her legacy will inspire a new cohort of talented designers who will hopefully aspire to change the world as much as she did.”
Mahdi Amjad, a friend of the GSD and the Executive Chairman and Founder of Omniyat, one of the Middle East’s leading real estate development firms, established the fellowship fund. The announcement of the Fellowship was made following the October 25th GSD public lecture “Zaha Hadid: A Celebration,” which focused on the extraordinary contributions of Zaha Hadid as an architect. Elia Zenghelis, one of Hadid’s early teachers, shared his reflections on Zaha both as a student and as an internationally recognized architect. Schumacher discussed their collaboration and the shifts over the years in the direction of the practice’s design approach. Zenghelis and Schumacher also shared a conversation with Xin Zhang, Hadid’s close friend and client, whose company SOHO China commissioned several of her significant projects.
From left: Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, Mahdi Amjad, Patrik Schumacher, Xin Zhang, and Elia Zenghelis at “Zaha Hadid: A Celebration.” Photo credit: Zara Tzanev.
Robert P. Hubbard, a long-time resident of Walpole, New Hampshire, nobly dedicated his life to teaching and philanthropy after attending Harvard College. His passion for art, culture, and the environment will live in perpetuity through his support of design thinking at the GSD with The Robert P. Hubbard AB ’51 Trust of 1980 endowing two prestigious professorships and a student fellowship. The Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Practice of Architecture, which was generously established during Mr. Hubbard’s lifetime, will be fully endowed, and this recent gift from his trust will create a second Hubbard Professorship. Additionally, the Robert P. Hubbard AB ’51 Fellowship will provide financial aid for top design students.
Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture.
The esteemed Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Practice of Architecture at the GSD currently supports Professor Toshiko Mori. Mori, Principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, served as Chair of the Department of Architecture from 2002 to 2008 “I am grateful for the immense generosity of Robert P. Hubbard whose name I carry in my professorship, which provides me with prestige and privilege,” said Professor Mori. “In turn, I teach with awareness and responsibility for teaching the future leaders of the world who will transmit their thoughts to next generations. It is a gift of spirit that keeps giving to ensure continuity for the discipline of architecture for the future generations with the intellectual rigor that marks GSD education.”
The second Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Practice of Architecture will be awarded at a later date. To support talented, ambitious students, the Robert P. Hubbard AB ’51 Fellowship will provide financial aid for designers of tomorrow at the GSD, which will support four students at this time. This gift will enable them in making career choices based on their passions, rather than their financial obligations and broaden the range of diversity within the GSD.
Launched in 2014 as part of Harvard University’s $6.5-billion capital campaign, the GSD Grounded Visionaries campaign aims to boost access to innovative learning at the GSD while offering unrivaled experiences; broaden the reach of design knowledge through transformative pedagogy, research, and discourse; and build the GSD’s future through leading-edge faculty and facilities for the next century.
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has received a consequential, multi-tier, multi-million dollar gift from the Robert P. Hubbard AB ’51 Trust of 1980 to endow the intellectual underpinnings of the School’s world-class faculty and to boost student access to a design education through an endowed fellowship.
Robert P. Hubbard, a long-time resident of Walpole, New Hampshire, nobly dedicated his life to teaching and philanthropy after attending Harvard College. His passion for art, culture, and the environment will live in perpetuity through his support of design thinking at the GSD with endowing two prestigious professorships. The Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Practice of Architecture, which was generously established during Mr. Hubbard’s lifetime, will be fully endowed, and this recent gift from his trust will create a second Hubbard Professorship. Additionally, the Robert P. Hubbard AB ’51 Fellowship will provide financial aid for top design students.
“The GSD is grateful for the extraordinary generosity of Robert P. Hubbard and his recognition of the GSD as the vanguard of design education and research in addressing society’s toughest challenges,” said Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. “Our students seek excellence in teaching and opportunities to advance their impact through design—they are driven to transform lives and places. Mr. Hubbard’s gift will support two central areas of our Grounded Visionaries Campaign—bolstering our transdisciplinary, collaborative pedagogy through endowing two world-class faculty members and enabling access for top design students through established of an endowed fellowship.
The esteemed Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Practice of Architecture at the GSD currently supports Professor Toshiko Mori. Mori, Principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, served as Chair of the Department of Architecture from 2002 to 2008. Her recent work with students includes Eco Village, an analysis of the future of rural communities that face challenges of climate change, energy independence, and retention of youths and revitalization of its community, and a master plan for a large parcel of land in Fukuoka, Japan with urban innovation strategies. The second Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Practice of Architecture will be awarded at a later date.
“I am grateful for the immense generosity of Robert P. Hubbard whose name I carry in my professorship, which provides me with prestige and privilege,” said Professor Mori. “In turn, I teach with awareness and responsibility for teaching the future leaders of the world who will transmit their thoughts to next generations. It is a gift of spirit that keeps giving to ensure continuity for the discipline of architecture for the future generations with the intellectual rigor that marks GSD education.”
To support talented, ambitious students, the Robert P. Hubbard AB ’51 Fellowship will provide financial aid for designers of tomorrow at the GSD, which will support four students at this time. This gift will enable them in making career choices based on their passions, rather than their financial obligations and broaden the range of diversity within the GSD.
Design is an inherently optimistic pursuit. With the $110-million-plus Grounded Visionaries Campaign, the GSD is not only imagining a better world, it is also constructing it. Launched in 2014 as part of Harvard University’s $6.5-billion capital campaign, the Grounded Visionaries Campaign is increasing impact for the strategies, structures, and students to reshape our world. With its three aspirations, the Campaign aims to: boost access to innovative learning at the GSD while offering unrivaled experiences; broaden the reach of design knowledge through transformative pedagogy, research, and discourse; and build the GSD’s future through leading-edge faculty and facilities for the next century.
From left: Lorraine Smith; Phil Harrison, AB ’86, MArch ’93, Perkins+Will Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the GSD’s Grounded Visionaries campaign; Nnenna Freelon; Phil Freelon, Managing and Design Director at Perkins+Will; John K. F. Irving AB ’83, MBA ’89, Co-Chair of the GSD’s Grounded Visionaries campaign; and Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the GSD and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design.
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), along with global architecture and design firm Perkins+Will and Phil Freelon LF ’90, Managing and Design Director of the firm’s North Carolina practice, announces the establishment of the Phil Freelon Fellowship Fund at the GSD. The Phil Freelon Fellowship Fund will provide financial aid to students attending the GSD with the intent to expand academic opportunities for African American and other under-represented architecture and design students.
“Phil Freelon is a passionate advocate for equity and diversity in the design sphere. These values are deeply supported and ingrained at the GSD,” says Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. “I thank Perkins+Will and Phil Freelon for their generosity in establishing this Fellowship as the creativity, dynamism, and success of our GSD community are enriched by and even contingent on an increasingly diverse student body.”
The Fellowship Fund supports a key priority for the GSD’s $110-million-plus Grounded Visionaries campaign—enhancing student access to innovative learning. This fellowship will also enable the GSD to continue to attract, enroll, and support the brightest and most talented scholars who will be the leaders in transforming the social and built environment.
“I am honored to have this fellowship established in my name,” says Freelon, whose portfolio includes the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Historic Emancipation Park in Houston, and the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “As the design profession continues to attract a more diverse talent base, this gift will provide students of color with financial assistance that could make pursuing an advanced degree at the GSD possible. It’s an important step in broadening the GSD’s reach.”
In 2003, Freelon was elevated to Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He won a Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture from the AIA in 2009, an honor bestowed on a private-sector architect with a record of designing architecturally distinguished public facilities. In 2012, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. His firm, The Freelon Group, joined Perkins+Will in 2014.
“Phil Freelon is one of the leading American architects practicing today,” says Perkins+Will Chief Executive Officer Phil Harrison, AB ’86, MArch ’93, and co-chair of the GSD’s Grounded Visionaries campaign. “His combination of design talent, entrepreneurship, social commitment, and broad involvement in the profession and academy make him a role model for us all. Since Phil founded his firm after a formative experience as a Loeb Fellow, the GSD is the perfect place to establish a fellowship in his name that will enable future design visionaries to be inspired by him.”
Freelon has long-standing ties with the GSD, including a year as a Loeb Fellow in 1989 and 1990. He is still actively involved at the School, presenting lectures, contributing research, assisting with student and faculty recruitment, and serving as a role model for aspiring young minority architects. “Phil Freelon is an inspirational leader including his leadership in groups such as the AIA, NOMA, and our own Loeb Fellowship Alumni/ae Council,” said James G. Stockard, Jr. MCP ’68, LF ’78, former curator of the Loeb Fellowship. “He is the kind of leader — strong, clear, selfless, and principled — who helps the rest of us find the courage to join him in striving for the best we and our society can be. He asks us to be the best designers, the best colleagues, and the best citizens we can imagine.”
The GSD welcomed a host of alumni and guests to campus in September and October for an exceptional roster of alumni events, exhibitions, and public lectures. Highlights included a tour for recent graduates of the Michael Van Valkenburgh-designed Brooklyn Bridge Park with Nate Trevethan MLA ’01 while Jeanne Gang MArch ’93 and Thom Mayne MArch ’78 spoke on “Heliomorphism” at the Office for Urbanization’s inaugural conference here in Cambridge. Members of the Josep Lluís Sert Council, the GSD’s leadership giving society, were invited to tour the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Building for the Future designed by NBBJ with Alex Krieger MCPUD ’77 and Tom Sieniewicz MArch ’85. This unique opportunity invited guests to learn about the innovative construction and state-of-the-art research spaces that aim to advance patient care and further research by placing the clinicians and scientists side by side. As alumni and friends convened on and off campus, GSD students explored vital, global issues during option-studio travel week, including fair housing in Ferguson, Missouri and the history of the brick in Bogota, Colombia.
Over 100 alumni descended on Gund Hall on September 30 and October 1 for a festive weekend marking their 5th to 50th reunions and years in between. Alumni celebrated the power of design in conversations with leadership from each of the program areas. Exploring the current student experience, Rachel Vroman MArch ’10 detailed the fabrication facilities available to GSD students, from hand tools to robotics, in the GSD’s Fabrication Lab, and Dan Borelli MDesS ’12 discussed the process of translating visual and text-based research and material into a three-dimensional exhibition. Ines Zalduendo MArch ’95 opened the Special Collections at the Frances Loeb Library to share how the collections are advancing the GSD’s disciplines by connecting interests of researchers to resources in the library. Meanwhile, Chris Herbert MPP ’88, PhD ’97 informed how the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University is analyzing housing policy and practices shaped by economic and demographic factors. Rounding out the weekend: An exploration of the Autodesk BUILD Space in the Seaport Innovation District led by Rick Rundell MArch ’86; an architectural tour of the Harvard Art Museums with Justin Lee MArch ’04; and look inside the ongoing renovations at Harvard’s Sert-designed Smith Campus Center (formerly known as Holyoke Center) and how this project will provide Harvard with a welcome front door in the heart of the campus; creating new public spaces for the Harvard community; and collaboration space for students, faculty, and staff.
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Alumni Insights and ChinaGSD lecture by Calvin Tsao MArch ’79. Tsao shared his over 30 years of professional experience with Zack McKown MArch ’79, and practice insights of working in historically/politically sensitive context in China, including the rebuilding of Jingfu Palace Museum in the heart of the Forbidden City, Beijing. The lecture was followed by discussion with Prof. Jorge Silvetti, Nelson Robinson Jr. Professor of Architecture at Harvard GSD, Guo Boya MDes ’17 and Emerald Wu MArch ’18.
For the October GSD Alumni Q+A, we asked four alumni to reflect on their experience attending their 50th, 30th, 10th, and 5th reunions during the 2016 Reunion weekend in Cambridge. Their responses reveal what they find most surprising about current student work, how the GSD’s innovative studio model and transdisciplinary approach are uniquely training students to tackle complex design challenges, and the value of connecting with your lifelong GSD community.
For those in classes ending with 2 and 7, please save the date for GSD Reunion Weekend 2017: Friday, October 13-Saturday, October 14.
“Having been at the Harvard GSD as MArch ’66 and MAUD ’67, I was working in the Cambridge/Harvard area for the early discussions of concepts and for the Gund Hall opening itself –– so it was interesting to return for reunion and to learn about the current student experience. It is always great to catch up with new and old friends and classmates and see Piper Hall converted beautifully to a tony restaurant!! What was most surprising was not seeing a single “scale figure” and very few North arrows on student work. In the Gropius and Corbusier days, failure to provide these two emblems of reality could have been fatal!”
–Sherrie Stephens Cutler, AIA, MArch ’66, MAUD ’67
President & Founder, ECODESIGN, Inc
“This was my first GSD reunion, although I frequently return for Harvard College events. I went with reservations, but it was really fun to see some old classmates and to catch up. The tour of the shops was fun as it shed light on how students are working digitally and in model today (very different from handcrafted wood models!). K. Michael Hays’s talk about current pedagogy at the GSD was very interesting. The biggest surprise was the ‘kindler and gentler’ teaching culture that Michael described. I was glad that I went.”
–Susan Israel, AIA, LEED AP, MArch ’86
President at Climate Creatives
“It was a pleasure to be back in the trays at Gund Hall to connect with a phenomenal group of friends and alumni, both from my own class of 2006 and others. The discussion with K. Michael Hays was particularly inspiring as we celebrated the past, but also considered the future, recognizing the School’s strengths in the context of a rapidly changing profession. Today’s complex, global societal challenges require new interdisciplinary and integrated modes of thinking, and it was satisfying to see the GSD taking this on in stride.”
–Farzana Gandhi, AIA, LEED AP, MArch ’06
Chair, Manhattan Architecture Department and Assistant Professor of Architecture at New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Design
Principal, Farzana Gandhi Design Studio
“My GSD fifth-year reunion was a rare opportunity to reconnect with my classmates during a weekend of thoughtful well-programmed events. Scheduled programming, such as the Autodesk BUILD Space tour and Harvard Art Museum Conservatory walk-through, were not only interesting but fruitful opportunities to connect to an older generation of GSD alums. Connecting to a broader group of alums was an unanticipated highlight of the weekend. I’ll certainly be returning for the 10th-year reunion.”
–David Buckley Borden MLA ’11
Charles Bullard Fellow, Harvard Forest, Harvard University
Mahdi Amjad announcing the Zaha Hadid / Omniyat Fellowship Fund at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Photo credit: Zara Tzanev
This year, the global design community mourned the passing of Dame Zaha Hadid (1950-2016), the first female recipient of both the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2004) and the RIBA Gold Medal (2016). As her untimely passing saddened friends, clients, and admirers, her legacy inspired the GSD to find a way to celebrate her extraordinary contributions to the field of design.
To this end, the GSD is delighted to announce the establishment of the Zaha Hadid / Omniyat Fellowship Fund at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a tribute to Hadid’s work, her life, and her legacy. The Zaha Hadid / Omniyat Fellowship Fund will provide financial aid to qualifying students who are enrolled in the Master in Architecture program at the GSD and who are citizens or residents of the Middle East and North Africa region.
“I am delighted that we are able to celebrate the achievements of Zaha Hadid as one of our generation’s most creative architects,” says Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, “Her legacy will inspire a new cohort of talented designers who will hopefully aspire to change the world as much as she did.”
Mahdi Amjad, a friend of the GSD and the Executive Chairman and Founder of Omniyat, one of the Middle East’s leading real estate development firms, established the fellowship fund. Amjad, who founded Omniyat in 2005 with the vision of shaping Dubai’s skyline through iconic design, hired Hadid in 2007 to design Omniyat’s flagship property, The Opus, in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa District.
It is through the Zaha Hadid/Omniyat Fellowship that I hope other great creative minds in the Middle East can develop to design and build the next generation of inspirational buildings that provide unique experiences for all that touch them.
-Mahdi Amjad, Executive Chairman and Founder of Omniyat
“When I established Omniyat in Dubai in 2005, I was motivated by my desire to develop uncompromising creative signature buildings,” said Amjad. “I was fortunate enough to have worked for over ten years with my dear friend and design mentor Dame Zaha Hadid on the creation of our flagship Opus Building in the heart of Dubai. It is through the Zaha Hadid/Omniyat Fellowship that I hope other great creative minds in the Middle East can develop to design and build the next generation of inspirational buildings that provide unique experiences for all that touch them.”
Mahdi Amjad shares his memories of working with Zaha Hadid. Photo credit: Zara Tzanev
Hadid was a design innovator whose pioneering work—including the Aquatic Center for the London Olympics, the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, Michigan, and the Guangzhou Opera House in China—defies convention. Hadid taught at the GSD in 1986 as a Design Critic in Architecture, and then again in 1994 as Kenzō Tange Visiting Professor of Architecture. Hadid last spoke at the School in 2013, when she shared projects from her 400-person London-based office and reminisced about her time teaching at the GSD.
Hadid’s professional partner Patrik Schumacher, who joined Zaha Hadid Architects in 1988 while still an architecture student, said: “For me, Zaha Hadid totally transformed the meaning of architectural design: she turned design into an adventure of discovery with previously unimaginable degrees of freedom. Yet, there is nothing arbitrary within her work. It was always principled and pursued to perfection. Her legacy will live on in us, as well as in so many of her inspired followers.”
From left: Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, Mahdi Amjad, Patrik Schumacher, Xin Zhang, and Elia Zenghelis at “Zaha Hadid: A Celebration.” Photo credit: Zara Tzanev
The announcement of the Fellowship was made following the October 25th GSD public lecture “Zaha Hadid: A Celebration,” which focused on the extraordinary contributions of Zaha Hadid as an architect. Elia Zenghelis, one of Hadid’s early teachers, shared his reflections on Zaha both as a student and as an internationally recognized architect. Schumacher discussed their collaboration and the shifts over the years in the direction of the practice’s design approach. Zenghelis and Schumacher also shared a conversation with Xin Zhang, Hadid’s close friend and client, whose company SOHO China commissioned several of her significant projects.
The Zaha Hadid / Omniyat Fellowship is anticipated to be awarded in the Spring 2017 semester and will be administered via the GSD’s admissions and financial aid process.
Watch Zaha Hadid’s lecture at Harvard GSD in 2013.
Watch “Zaha Hadid: A Celebration” with Patrik Schumacher, Elia Zenghelis, Xin Zhang.
One question around the Boston Harbor Islands—a constellation of islands in Boston Harbor, just offshore from downtown Boston—is finishing the narrative of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, the chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways across Boston. How to engage with an island chain that is simultaneously protected—of the roughly 35 islands and peninsulas in Boston Harbor, 16 islands were established in the 1970s as the Boston Harbor Islands State Park, and designated as a National Park unit in 1996—but also lying at the edge of a city under great stress for growth and development?
“Bostonians have seen the Harbor Islands as a national park, but the reality is that you get there and it’s a collection of crumbling infrastructure,” says Daniel Vasini, design critic in landscape architecture at the GSD.
These and other considerations formed the basis for Spring 2016 landscape architecture option studio Frontier City, co-taught by Vasini and West 8 founding partner Adriaan Geuze.
We took seriously how the landscape architecture department is looking to Boston to investigate real issues. -Daniel Vasini, Design Critic
“We knew that many other option studio sites were abroad, so we wondered what the student reaction to something local would be,” Vasini says, “but we took seriously how the landscape architecture department is looking to Boston to investigate real issues.”
“Frontier becomes a key word: What is the new frontier, especially in a city bound by water?” Vasini cpntinues. One proposal he considered: reinventing the area as a so-called “innovation district.” Noting other examples of innovation districts in other cities, as well as an uptick in RFPs for the planning and design of such districts, Vasini considered this framework as a valuable one for the reconsideration of Boston’s harbor frontier. From this, the foundation for a course on defining Boston’s “frontier city” was set.
“In their preserved state, the Boston Harbor Islands are only minimally accessible to people, which has created a disconnect between Boston and the islands,” says studio participant Anita Helfrich MArch ’17. “Not many people know that they exist, and even if they do, it is not easy to visit them. By designing new urban developments between downtown Boston and the Boston Harbor Islands, they can feel more connected.”
Vasini offers a desk crit in the Gund Hall Trays.
Geuze and Vasini researched and designed the studio’s mission for about two months before presenting it during the GSD’s Spring 2016 option studio lottery last January. They defined it as an investigation of the rise of the innovation district; the course description takes note of the cultural context facing today’s designers, characterized by a shift from traditional industries into a knowledge-based economy favoring such entities. This economy connects society to the global market and fuels high-tech incubators, creative environments, start-ups, flexible workspaces, the arts, R&D technologies, and mixed-used living environments. Nimble, innovation-minded enterprises are taking ownership of unoccupied, vacant, or inhospitable sites, the course description posits. For Boston, the coastline and the harbor become new frontiers, both physically and culturally.
Broadly, students were asked to consider the city as an adaptive, proactive urban infrastructure based on the dockland warehouse typology, complete with a reimagining of urban streetscapes and resilient landscapes. Integral to the question: interfacing with the landscape of the Boston Harbor, and defining the new space to accommodate future growth and stimulate an urban renaissance within the City of Boston—if not to create an opportunity to invent a “new nature.”
Geuze opened the course with an introduction about cities, waterfronts, sea level rise, and innovation, delineating the specific issues that students would investigate over the course of the semester. “Adriaan’s presentation seemed pedagogically aligned with what all design schools should be doing: focusing on local communities,” says studio participant Stephen Sun MArch ’16.
Vasini guided student teams through research for a month, and then each team presented its research to each other: one group researching the islands, one researching the bay, one focused on innovation districts, another examining the sociological and generational timeline of the people and communities who have lived on the bay and the implications therein.
A preliminary review, added before the traditional midterm review, encouraged students to draw conclusions based on their early research and present a scheme. For the midterm review, each student presented a proposal and plan drawing tied to their field of research, announcing what would be their field of development. The instructors, through both the pedagogical structure of the semester and the physical layout of pin-up and review space, encouraged cross-pollination between research agendas and outputs.
“The balance of historical, conceptual, and technical research was extraordinarily holistic,” says Sun. “The diversity of projects curated by Daniel and Adriaan furthered us to learn about the same topic from each other as students in addition from the experts and jury.”
Amid this were lectures from outside figures, including the organization Imagine Boston 2020 and Dr. Alan Blumberg, who discussed the ocean and tides.
“Having Dr. Blumberg as a ‘resident expert’ for our studio was definitely a surprise,” Sun adds. “It was the perfect marriage between designer and scientist/engineer.”
“Some students had never heard this before, the environmentalist’s view,” Vasini says. “They’d been accustomed to hearing from architects and designers, so the discourse from this was really rich.”
The mix of projects, discussions, and solutions generated throughout the course was in proportion to the blend of disciplinary perspectives that students and professors brought to it.
“One student understood that the Park Service thinks these islands are untouchable and no building will take place on them,” Vasini says, “so she said, ‘Okay, I won’t touch them, but know that Boston is under great pressure for urban development. If we don’t guide the development somewhere, it will sprawl and kill more landscape. If we are to stay within the city, we need to go to the islands, the post-industrial spaces.’” The resulting proposal landfilled the harbor surrounding the islands, created a new, peninsula-like island, and made the islands more accessible. (“It was like a little Venice,” Vasini says. “Low rise, high density.”)
Another student, Andrew Madl MLA ’17, looked more closely at sedimentation in the bay and appraised how much effort would be needed to dredge JFK Channel and then dump elsewhere. He conducted research into currents, flow, and aquadynamics, and modeled what Vasini calls a “new way of making land,” employing a “sand engine” concept.
Other students pursued completely different narratives. Sarah Winston MLA ’16 found inspiration in Olmsted’s writings on the Harbor Islands and envisioned a place that could become an enclave for future techies—an incubation and testing ground for tomorrow.
A second option studio focused on the Boston Harbor Islands will take place in Spring 2017.
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Boston is part of the four metropolis regions within the U.S. identified for the first phase of the Harvard GSD American Cities Initiative. The other three cities include Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, CA; and Miami, FL. While an overarching set of research themes — affordability, livability, mobility, resilience, densification, waterfront development, and sustainability — provide a consistent armature for the broader Initiative, the establishment of a unique research strategy for each city will ensure the development of actionable design proposals within the Initiative’s preliminary time horizon of 3-5 years.
This story was written by Travis Dagenais and originally published on the GSD website.
James G. Stockard, Jr. MCP ’68, LF ’78 with Susan Stockard.
The School’s generous donors are acknowledging the GSD’s leadership in topics related to urbanism and citymaking. Whether through the establishment of a fellowship honoring a former faculty member, or for a student to study affordable housing, or the generous gift of two friends in support of a new design prize in real estate, GSD donors are sustaining the School’s ongoing commitment to the essential challenges facing cities today.
Thanks to the generosity of nearly 200 friends, colleagues, and former students, the GSD and the Loeb Fellowship have partnered to establish and endow the James G. Stockard, Jr. Fellowship Fund. A visionary and an inspiration to generations of GSD students, James G. Stockard, Jr. MCP ’68, LF ’78 helped shape the Loeb Fellowship into a powerful force for positive change, while embedding a sense of social responsibility in countless GSD students. This Fund will celebrate his legacy by recognizing a meritorious student from any design discipline who shares Stockard’s commitment to advancing smart design concepts in affordable housing.
Similarly, long-term friends, business partners, and GSD advocates Samuel Plimpton MBA ’77, MArch ’80 and William J. Poorvu MBA ’58 joined forces to establish the Plimpton Poorvu Design Prize earlier this year. “This prize is intended to honor innovative thinking applied to realistic constraints,” Poorvu says. “Successful developments depend on far more than good design or a good location—the real estate game is complex. We hope to encourage collaborative work, bringing together a broad spectrum of experiences to create an informed plan.” Awarded for the first time this year to a pair of architecture students for their work on a conservation and redevelopment project that successfully integrates design, feasibility, and implementation strategies, the annual prize will recognize the top team or individual responsible for designing a commercially viable real estate project completed as part of the GSD curriculum.
Beyond prizes and fellowships, donors are providing philanthropic support for our pedagogy. In the past decade, the School has successfully pioneered and refined an innovative, three-year research studio model, including a series completed in fall 2014, which studied three Chinese cities over three years with support from AECOM. A second AECOM-sponsored series began this year with option studio Jakarta:Models of Collective Space for the Extended Metropolis, which examined the role of new mass transit infrastructure as a driver for new models of collective space.
Our collaboration during the China and Jakarta studios has allowed students and faculty the opportunity to build stronger knowledge about global trends, especially the growth of urbanization in the developing world, and forge community partnerships while working in concert with the local community. Throughout the process, AECOM has been inspired by the GSD students resulting in a rise in innovation during our day-to-day practice.
– Sean Chiao MAUD ’88, president of AECOM Asia Pacific
Sean Chiao MAUD ’88, president of AECOM Asia Pacific, during Spring 2016 option studio review for Jakarta: Models of Collective Space for the Extended Metropolis.
The multi-year research studio model is beneficial to students, faculty, and the local community, as well as design professionals. “There are mutual benefits for the professional community in having a close relationship with academia, especially for AECOM with the GSD,” says Sean Chiao MAUD ’88, president of AECOM Asia Pacific. “Our collaboration during the China and Jakarta studios has allowed students and faculty the opportunity to build stronger knowledge about global trends, especially the growth of urbanization in the developing world, and forge community partnerships while working in concert with the local community. Throughout the process, AECOM has been inspired by the GSD students resulting in a rise in innovation during our day-to-day practice.”
The design of our cities has a profound impact on our health and well-being. The GSD’s faculty, students, and alumni are leaders collaborating across disciplines and institutions to imagine better urban environments and to make them a reality.
Interdisciplinary, experimental design is integral to the work of Sheila Kennedy, FAIA, MArch ’84 and J. Frano Violich, FAIA, MArch ’84. Their firm, Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA MATx), located in Boston’s emerging Newmarket District, has established a new model for practice that integrates material research with the practice of architecture. KVA MATx engages design across scales exploring architecture, resilient urban design, and new forms of infrastructure for emerging public needs.
After first meeting as peers during orientation in Piper Auditorium at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), Kennedy and Violich came to realize mutual sensibilities during their design education. Interning at leading architectural practices in Switzerland and winning a jointly authored design competition (including stepping on the finished boards to leave material footprints) were among the experiences that revealed commonalities and led the duo to start their experimental practice in 1990. At the intersection of material fabrication and digital technology, KVA MATx “explores the paradox between the raw status of natural materials, like wood or clay brick,” Violich says, “and how technologies can begin to expand the uses of those materials—how a material culture in architecture can evolve and become part of our everyday lives.” Through use and expanded “mis-use,” materials and natural resources are deployed to expand the public life of buildings and cities
MATx, the interdisciplinary research unit at KVA that Kennedy, leads works in collaboration with artists, scientists, manufacturers, cultural institutions, and public agencies. MATx is exploring two design approaches for next generation infrastructure. The first is the form and program of clean energy. According to Kennedy, “Distributed energy operates at multiple scales and has the ability to expand the fields of architecture, urban design, and energy design. MATx questions what the agency and territory of the designer can be and seeks to use design as a vehicle to integrate a spatial and social dimension to clean energy.” Currently, MATx is working with major energy networks in Australia, India, and Brazil to create and develop a new culture of clean energy in urban residential developments. The second area of inquiry is the creation of new uses and design applications for bio-materials. In several parts of the globe, MATx is developing energy efficient ways to form biodegradable and abundant materials such as areca leaves and bamboo. By looking beyond disciplinary boundaries, Kennedy and Violich’s award-winning practice is continually innovating across disciplines, materials, and cultures.
Through designs that create new uses for carbon-zero materials, KVA MATx’s work invites connections that link people with activities and spaces. These connections have been formed both globally, with projects like the IBA Soft House, a live/work residential development for the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) in Hamburg, Germany, and locally, with the Tozzer Anthropology Building at Harvard University. To transform the Tozzer Library into a unified space for Harvard’s Anthropology Department, KVA MATx re-clad and reinvented the 1971 building in a high-performance brick and copper envelope while reusing the existing building’s infrastructure and foundation. The interior was transformed by a lightwell that unites and redefines classrooms and social spaces. Completed in 2014, this project recently won the 2016 Hobson Award, the single highest honor given to a building by the Boston Society of Architects, AIA. Additionally, KVA MATx has redefined social spaces for collaboration and engagement for Harvard College.
Kennedy and Violich are bridging innovation in practice and design education, which aligns with GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi’s vision for collaboration across disciplines and fields, and between the academy, industry, and the public sphere, to address global challenges. Kennedy and Violich are longtime mentors of aspiring architects at Harvard College, where their two children are juniors. Kennedy was an associate professor at the GSD while also serving as Director of the MArch II program from 1991 to 1995. Currently, as Professor of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, she views the collaboration of “faculty coming together to work across schools” as a key contributing factor to Boston’s development as a city for innovation. This fall, Violich is teaching the GSD option studio Brick: Thick/Thin, which aims to challenge perceived notions of brick in an increasingly digital and networked world. Reflecting his view of the GSD’s “strong direction of being inclusive of the allied disciplines of design” Violich’s architecture studio includes MAUD, architecture, and landscape architecture students. Through working with the International Masonry Institute and the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers locally and traveling to Bogota, Colombia—“the City of Brick”—Violich’s aim is for “students to innovate through understanding how archetypical details can be brought—and thought—together with computational design. While the discipline tends to still emphasize thinness and transparency, the goal of this studio is to explore how a new opacity, a new thickness, could be imagined in an architectural response to contemporary issues of labor, climate, social collectivity, and form.” The studio will migrate outdoors as students invent full-scale brick constructions on site at the GSD. In addition to educating design students, Kennedy and Violich recognize the value of hiring GSD alumni. Alex Shelly MArch ’13 is an associate in their practice, and many GSD students have contributed to the KVA MATx office as interns.
Architectural education is more important now than it ever has been. Design education is creating knowledge that allows students to imagine alternative futures and set up strategies for how to get there from the present. For these reasons, KVA MATx supports the GSD and other institutions that are continually pushing forward.
~Sheila Kennedy, FAIA, MArch ’84
As Sert Council members who engage with the GSD alumni community and support the School, Kennedy and Violich perceive great value in addressing design culture and education. “The GSD is in a powerful position to shape the design professions. Supporting the GSD means that we are investing in critical design research for diverse voices that ask questions and look to the future” said Violich. Kennedy emphasizes the societal value of innovative, forward-thinking design training. “Architectural education is more important now than it ever has been. Design education is creating knowledge that allows students to imagine alternative futures and set up strategies for how to get there from the present. For these reasons, KVA MATx supports the GSD and other institutions that are continually pushing forward.”
J. Frano Violich, FAIA, MArch ’84 leads GSD alumni tour of Golkin Hall at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
In addition to supporting the next generation of designers, the duo engages with the GSD’s robust alumni community. In May 2016 around the AIA Conference in Philadelphia, they hosted a tour of the recently completed, and KVA MATx-designed, Golkin Hall for the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Innovating with brick, their practice employed parametric software to study how to bring natural light down to the School’s lowest levels. For Violich, the tour was “a special experience to share our work with fellow alumni, to converse on pressing urban challenges, and to hear new ideas which alumni of all ages are bringing to the conversation.”
Kennedy and Violich offer a vision for the future of the design professions that is consistent with the GSD’s interdisciplinary platform. With their design research and practice at KVA MATx, their continued support of GSD design students, and their engagement with the GSD alumni community, Kennedy and Violich are demonstrating how the agency of design can operate on both disciplinary and professional terms.
As the GSD looks ahead to an ambitious academic year of groundbreaking initiatives, including our inaugural class of Design Engineering students and broadening research agenda, the topic of innovation is salient. Dean Mostafavi sat down with Blueprint magazine to talk innovation, invention, and collaboration.
I think a lot of the time when you talk about innovation, people make a distinction between innovation and invention. Innovation to me is not necessarily something that is brand new, but it’s really a certain set of ideas that push the discipline further forward. It can be based on organisational ideas or disciplinary knowledge, and it can work at a multiplicity of different levels. As you work within an academy, you want its work to have certain innovative dimensions, to drive the way in which you think through questions of pedagogy, research and practice. People use the internet more and more, and that means they don’t necessarily use the library in the same way that they used to. When many architectural schools were designed, the library was at the heart of the space and having access to knowledge was something that was critical to how people imagined and thought about things. Part of the challenge is how we can redefine the space of the library to make it a much more exciting, innovative space within our architectural schools. It’s also a question of how the studio structure is set up and the ethos of the student body.
Innovations happen when people look at things in a much more focused manner; it’s difficult to be innovative by trying to do lots and lots of things.
Innovations happen when people look at things in a much more focused manner; it’s difficult to be innovative by trying to do lots and lots of things. Part of the idea of innovation within the academy is you take a certain condition or body of knowledge and you delve into it much more deeply. I find there are actually an incredible number of students who are incredibly innovative with their projects due to the fact that they have a particular interest in what they are doing and then they push those ideas.
It’s also a situation where the nature of our discipline is changing and we actually arrive at new forms of innovation from the cross-fertilisation of different disciplines and interaction with others. We need to not just focus on innovation as something that the students do, but as a response to the conditions that we face. The role of the academy needs to change. The academy is not only a place where people go to learn, but they also come to use the academy as a centre in investigation and discourse, concerned with a whole set of societal issues. But in order for us to be able to respond to those conditions, we also need to transform, to innovate our own practices, because a lot of the time our historical practices are simply not good enough, they don’t have the capacity to respond to the new conditions that we find.
At the GSD, we talk about the idea of disciplinary knowledge and trans-disciplinary practices. Disciplinary knowledge means we’re interested in enhancing the knowledge of a certain discipline, trans-disciplinary practices means that people from a variety of different practices come together.
At the GSD, we talk about the idea of disciplinary knowledge and trans-disciplinary practices. Disciplinary knowledge means we’re interested in enhancing the knowledge of a certain discipline, trans-disciplinary practices means that people from a variety of different practices come together. I think that today’s disciplines don’t have the capacity to respond to societal conditions by themselves, therefore we need to innovate new forms of knowledge at the intersection of different disciplines.
This is nothing terribly new, but the academy doesn’t necessarily work like that because it’s more of a silo. How do you, given the kind of boundaries of departments, create some version of what happens in the real world as a kind of incubator or model for pedagogy, that is in itself something different and innovative? While I acknowledge the fact that collaboration happens within contemporary practice, the nature and form of that collaboration could be up for review, so part of what we need to do is also construct alternative forms of collaboration in order to enhance the outcome.
We are lucky at GSD, the intention of having multiple disciplines within one school has been there from the beginning. I think what we’re trying to do now is really break the idea of silos by getting people to work more closely together. For example we have what we call option studios for people who are further on in their postgraduate studies, open to students from different disciplines. We have structures in place that without forcing them provide the framework to be able to choose to participate in a studio with a focus on something other than their area of specialisation. But we also try to talk about it, invite people as part of our lecture programme, have exhibitions; you need multiple things at multiple scales to enable forms of collaboration.
In response to the idea that innovation doesn’t really occur within architecture but exists outside of the discipline, I think that is partly true, it’s no secret that the rate at which digital technologies and social media have evolved is so vast compared to the incredibly slow rate of progress for modes and methods of practice in a discipline like architecture. But I think precisely because of the fact that things are happening in society, we also have the responsibility to see what will be our reaction to those conditions, and it is our reaction that produces innovation.
Article courtesy of Blueprint magazine (July 2016 issue).
As the Chair of the GSD Alumni Council, Allyson Mendenhall AB ’90, MLA ’99, is passionate about the Council’s role as ambassadors to the greater alumni body and for current students who are “alumni-in-training.” She also serves as a GSD Appointed Director to the Harvard Alumni Association working to raise the School’s profile. In support of her aspiration for alumni to connect with each other and learn about the GSD’s impacts, Mendenhall shares valuable resources and insights in this Q&A to facilitate these links.
A Principal in the Denver office of Design Workshop, Mendenhall is the Director of Legacy Design. The firm-wide initiative emphasizes practice-based research and setting comprehensive sustainable agendas for design projects to understand how they will deliver measurable economic, environmental, community and aesthetic benefits. Additionally, she serves on the boards of the Landscape Architecture Foundation and the Denver Botanic Gardens.
Read about Mendenhall’s path to building a non-traditional role at her firm, her most memorable moment at the GSD, and about the many opportunities for alumni to become engaged with the School.
Tell us about your background.
Where were your born?
Indianapolis, IN, but we moved to Aspen, CO when I was three. This was in 1971, a year after Hunter S. Thompson ran for sheriff.
Where were you raised?
I was raised in Aspen, Colorado, a place most people visit as tourists. While I wasn’t thinking about it growing up, I now realize that resort towns are microcosms of larger urban design situations. There are so many complex design problems to solve: How does the base area meet the mountain? How does the town, and lodging and retail, integrate with the ski area? Where is workforce housing provided? How is the circulation of skiers, buses, and cars handled? How do skiers park or get dropped off with their gear? What do non-skiers do while waiting for their families? How are adjacent public lands and associated environmental regulations addressed? How are the ski runs themselves designed and connected to other parts of the mountain? What happens when there is no snow in a given year and occupancy rates plummet? As a kid growing up in such an unusual setting and having entrepreneur parents whose businesses depended on tourism, I was keenly aware of these complex considerations of mountain resort towns. Only now do I realize they are central to many design and planning projects.
What previous degrees do you have?
I graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English literature. This launched me toward my first job in New York City working at Random House. I worked in marketing and publicity to secure media coverage for the books and authors. My English major roots and publishing experience helped to build skills that I put to use daily in the design world—the ability to write, to analyze a text, to do research, and to articulate stories. When I arrived for the first year of my MLA I program, I was really concerned about my lack of prior design experience and worried about drawing and drafting. But I had classmates with more visual backgrounds who were equally fearful of the theory classes and the requisite research papers—assignments that were familiar to me. Of course, by the end of the three years, our deep dive into the GSD evened out everyone’s skills despite varied incoming backgrounds.
When did you realize you wanted to be a landscape architect?
After a year of sitting in Midtown Manhattan pocket parks and bonus plazas on my lunch breaks during my first year out of college, I wondered who designed these urban spaces. Why were some, like Paley Park and Greenacre Park, so vibrant and thronging with people, and why others were uncomfortable and devoid of activity? This was 1991 when plans were underway for a major redesign of Bryant Park. I read a New York Times article and learned about the need to address this needle park’s social issues through design, and the challenge of transforming the space for new generations in the context of a historic landmark. I became enchanted with the idea of designing urban public open spaces and decided to change careers.
While researching a landscape architecture career and taking art classes at night to build a portfolio, I worked in research and communications at Regional Plan Association— a think tank focused on solutions to the tri-state economic, environmental and social challenges. I then shifted to Thomas Balsley Associates (TBA), a landscape architecture firm in NYC. I started as a temp, figuring that I could offer administrative and marketing skills while peeking over the shoulders of the designers to make sure this was a career I wanted to pursue. Within a few weeks, I was made the Office Manager and Director of Marketing, serving in these leadership positions at age 25. I did this for two years, working on my portfolio by taking art classes at night, and eventually applying to schools. By the time I arrived at the GSD to pursue an MLA degree, I had full exposure to a spectrum of design office operations, including invoicing, contracts, utilization, cash flow, overhead rates, RFPs, proposals, etc. I’m pretty sure I was the only student in my class with this knowledge!
Why did you choose the GSD?
I chose the GSD for three reasons: One was personal in that my boyfriend (now husband) was planning to stay in NYC for the three years of my MLA program and the GSD was the closest school of those where I’d been accepted. The second was the feeling I had when I walked into Gund Hall and had a palpable sense of the compelling design conversations happening throughout the building—in the lobby exhibit, on the trays, at pinups. The third was the comment from a friend enrolled in the MArch program that the GSD was like a big buffet with so many offerings to either sample or partake in large portions. I didn’t get a sense the buffet was as rich or deep at the other schools I was considering.
We need to be more demonstrative as a school and alumni body in engaging in Harvard-wide events and inviting them to ours. We need to get involved in the Harvard Clubs and Shared Interest Groups (SIGs). We may even find a few clients in the process!
You serve as a GSD’s Appointed Director to the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) raising the School’s profile with the HAA, sharing its mission broadly to fellow alumni leaders across the University, and demonstrating the work of GSD alumni in the world. What value do you see for GSD alumni in engaging with the broader Harvard community?
So many Harvard alumni are only dimly aware of the GSD. Designers are a mystery to them, and they haven’t been exposed to the unique methods of a design education, namely the studio model. I have joined Ron Ostberg MArch ’68 and Jennifer Luce MDesS ’94 in representing the GSD at the HAA. We view ourselves as ambassadors to represent the School at the University level and to infiltrate the alumni leaders from the other schools. We are learning to articulate stories about the research, creation, and innovation that goes on in the GSD’s trays and labs. How can we communicate the impact of GSD alumni solving complex design problems across scales around the world? We need to be more demonstrative as a school and alumni body in engaging in Harvard-wide events and inviting them to ours. We need to get involved in the Harvard Clubs and Shared Interest Groups (SIGs). We may even find a few clients in the process! Several years ago, the GSD served as the venue for one of the HAA meetings, and I still hear stories of the sense of wonder the non-GSD alums felt upon walking into Gund Hall, viewing the exhibition and exploring the trays. We need to host this broad group of alumni leaders again. We also need to get more GSD alums on the ballot for the Harvard Overseers election to diversify this cohort.
Congratulations on becoming Chair of the GSD Alumni Council as of July 1! A focus area you defined for Alumni Council members is their role as ambassadors for the GSD. How can the larger alumni community support this important work? What resources are available to them?
Over the past few years, members of the Alumni Council have convened alumni at a variety of events in cities around the world. These gatherings typically combine content (lectures, hard hat tours, site visits, gallery openings, art exhibits, etc.) with time to socialize and network. Our intent is to create a groundswell of gatherings that are of intellectual and social interest. We have found that alumni are genuinely interested in connecting with each other and learning about the GSD’s current programs, impacts, and aspirations. In some cities, we have extended the invitations to alumni across all Harvard schools, and we are learning how interested they are in projects transforming the built environment in their cities and understanding the value designers bring to solving complex social and environmental problems. The Alumni Council operates by the slogan, “We are all ambassadors,” which extends to the greater alumni body. So I encourage alumni to attend these events to reconnect. If you are interested in hosting a gathering in your locale, the GSD Alumni Relations office can assist you in contacting fellow alumni in your area. Don’t be deterred by the word “event.” A coffee date for two, or a drinks gathering for a group—these count too!
Another focus of ambassadorship is the current students. We invite student groups to each of our meetings in Cambridge to learn about what they are trying to accomplish and the challenges they face. When we are in town, we host portfolio reviews that are fully subscribed, and students can sign up to join Alumni Council members for breakfast at local cafes. At the fall 2016 reunions, students will be invited to a breakfast to network with the alumni who have returned to campus to celebrate their reunions. We are looking for ways to take these programs “on the road” to tap into the larger alumni network as a resource for the students and fellow alumni.
The Alumni Council is very excited about the newly launched Harvard Alumni Directory and its ability to serve as a resource to connect our alums to each other and for students to connect with alumni. Don’t ignore the emails you have received from Harvard about claiming your HarvardKey! This is your access to the alumni directory where you can develop your own profile and view those of other alumni. Profiles can be personal, or business-oriented. You can describe your passions or your projects—or both. You can include a URL to your business website. You can also indicate that you are available to be contacted by students seeking career advice, or alumni from all schools looking to hire a design consultant. For privacy purposes, your email isn’t listed. But if you opt in to being contacted, a fellow alum or student can send you a message similar to LinkedIn.
Allyson Mendenhall AB ’90, MLA ’99 with former GSD Alumni Council Chairmen Ron Ostberg MArch ’68 (left) and Michael B. Lehrer, FAIA, MArch ’78 (right).
Tell us about your professional career.
After graduating from the GSD in 1999, I returned to the NYC office of Thomas Balsley Associates where I had served as the Office Manager and Marketing Director prior to pursuing my MLA. Joining TBA again meant that I was a known entity and placed in a leadership role on projects from day one. I worked on 10,000-square-foot bonus plaza projects (that inspired my passion for landscape architecture in the first place) and two of the six phases of the Riverside South Park on the Hudson River between 59th and 72nd Streets. After several years back in NYC, my husband and I were ready for a change and decided to move to Denver where I was hired by Design Workshop in 2003. I’ve been at DW ever since, starting as a Project Landscape Architect and a now Principal in a firm-wide role. I lead initiatives focused on firm culture, thought leadership and knowledge sharing across eight offices. I develop and teach standards related to project management, quality management, project-based research, and performance measurement. Several of these best practices have been captured as internal manuals, and I am in the process of transforming one of them into an externally published guide with APA Planners Press. I create the curriculum for internal learning and host several firm-wide learning sessions and symposia each year that are salient to the projects “on the boards.” I have had to learn a lot about the optimal way to engage staff in different time zones for collaborative learning. This is a design problem in and of itself!
Has your longtime engagement with the GSD shaped your career?
When I first joined the GSD Alumni Council, I hadn’t ever served on a board. Now I serve on the Landscape Architecture Foundation and Denver Botanic Gardens boards, but the Alumni Council was my introduction to guiding and advising an organization, to finding clarity of purpose within a volunteer group, to developing a voice in the context of 50 other experienced design professionals, and ultimately to being recognized as a leader of volunteer initiatives who can get things done. Also, the GSD is the alma mater of many of my colleagues at Design Workshop, so I serve with the support and pride of my firm.
Tell us about your work/life balance? What occupies you when you are not working?
I became a parent five years after graduating from the GSD so I wasn’t very far into my career before the challenges of unexpected client demands, crunch deadlines, and late nights became untenable for me. I realized that stepping into a project manager role enabled me to be in more control of the project schedule, and therefore my own schedule. Clients and bosses have always commented on my ability to manage complicated projects and see all the components that must be synthesized in anticipation of a deliverable. I do think some of this is a natural proclivity, but I laugh because I do it selfishly as a way to exercise control over my schedule, to eliminate surprise, and to be able to leave to pick up my kids on time. When you’re a working parent, every single day is a deadline day. My husband also works in design consulting so we both understand that work/life balance is a constant dance, requiring updated calendars and clear communications to make sure things are operating smoothly for our family which includes my son (14) and my daughter (11).
When not working, I drive my children. Their afternoon and evening sports and school activities consume most of my non-work time! But, we also ski, camp, hike, and explore Denver’s burgeoning neighborhoods that are rapidly transforming the city.
What is the most significant thing you learned while at the GSD?
I learned the value of perseverance and working at something over and over to make it better. I learned that it was necessary to open myself up to critique through pin-ups, desk crits, and final reviews. Before matriculating to the GSD and embarking on a design career, I thought that artists and designers just got brilliant ideas as if struck by lightning and then they just executed them. My time at the GSD taught me that design solutions are cycled over time with feedback from others.
How present was the GSD in your activities or awareness as a Harvard College student? As a GSD student, did you find value in utilizing the resources of the larger Harvard community?
I took lots of classes in the anthropology department as a Harvard College undergrad which required me to walk past the GSD almost daily on my way to the Peabody Museum on Divinity Avenue. To me, the GSD was the building with all the bicycles out front since they were locked to a metal rack that stretched along Quincy Avenue. As is frequently observed, Gund Hall turns its back on the street and from the front, one doesn’t have a sense of the building’s most identifying feature—the cascade of the trays in the back. The building and its design focus wasn’t on my radar at all.
Returning to Harvard to pursue my MLA at the GSD, I think I had a much greater awareness of the broader campus than most of my classmates. I spent most of my time at Gund Hall due to the time required to succeed in studio. However in my last year, I joined the Rem Koolhaas Project on the City focused on Roman Cities. Knowing I would spend time in Italy over spring break, I decided to take Beginning Italian where I joined a group of Harvard College freshman to learn some basics. It was a little distracting and certainly unnecessary, but it was fun to be a bit whimsical and to have a reason to leave Gund Hall.
What’s your favorite memory of the GSD?
I was at the GSD when a group of MArch ’99 students, including Ray Chung MArch ’99 and Joshua Comaroff MArch ’99, MLA ’01, created Blowfish. For those who don’t know of it, Blowfish is list of actions one can take, standing in front of a design jury, when a review is going downhill. The title comes from Action #1 which is to puff up your cheeks imitating a blowfish. I remember a hard copy being passed around our landscape architecture studio and my buttmate and I hovering over it. We were laughing so hard we had tears streaming down our faces. I think we were overcome by a bit of hysteria since the list cut to the quick for any design student with intimate experience enduring critical comments at a final review. It’s so great that this is still going strong 17 years after I graduated. Bravo to its creators!
A design education teaches us to be problem solvers, to analyze complexity and find clarity, to depict (through graphics and words) and to implement (through building things and through policy). There are so many scales and venues in which planners and designers provide leadership and value.
What advice do you have for GSD students and/or alumni?
A design education can lead to many career options, not all of them in design consulting. My own role at a design firm is unusual, and I developed it entrepreneurially over many years. A design education teaches us to be problem solvers, to analyze complexity and find clarity, to depict (through graphics and words) and to implement (through building things and through policy). There are so many scales and venues in which planners and designers provide leadership and value. We all need to find our place on the spectrum (private firms, public service, academic institutions, and non-profits) and celebrate the diversity of our impact.
What would surprise us about you?
Growing up in Aspen, I was a serious ski racer with the Aspen Valley Ski Club and sponsored at a young age by Solomon (boots and bindings), K2 (skis), Cébé (goggles), and Kerma (poles). I won the events in my age group at the Junior Olympics in Winter Park, Colorado, circa 1982. My ski coach said I was fearless. How I wish I could recover that trait! Somehow I’ve lost it over the years?
A Harvard Graduate School of Design student design project has been named the 2016 Student Winner in the Built Environment category of Core77’s annual Design Awards.
Core77 awarded the honor to Alpine Shelter Skuta, designed by Frederick Kim, Katie MacDonald, and Erin Pellegrino (all MArch ’16). The trio designed the project as part of Fall 2014 option-studio course Housing in Extreme Environments, led by visiting instructors Rok Oman and Spela Videcnik, cofounders of Slovenia-based firm OFIS Architects. The course probed how extreme climatic conditions, especially extreme cold, introduce particular concerns and parameters for architects.
Asking students to design cabins to withstand the harsh Alpine climate, Oman and Videcnik selected the Kim/MacDonald/Pellgrino design to replace a 50-year-old shelter on a plot below Slovenia’s Skuta Mountain, the third tallest peak in the Kamnik Alps.
Following the course, the team worked with structural engineers AKT II—including Hanif Kara, professor in practice of architectural technology—and local mountaineers to develop and shape the structure for the particular Alpine terrain.
Referencing traditional Alpine architecture, the design comprises three separate modules, a system that not only enables transport to the site, but also organizes the shelter space programmatically: one space for storage and food preparation; a second for resting and socializing; and a third containing a bunk-bed system.
Sensitive to the surrounding terrain, the shelter’s outer form, characterized by a shifting roof line, both responds to extreme weather conditions and frames the surrounding mountain view in an aesthetically enriching way. The shelter also honors sustainability: concrete cladding harmonizes with the mountain’s gray stone, while natural ventilation and robust insulation allow for electricity-free performance.
“As modular and portable as possible. A beautiful, sustainable shelter using the least amount of material and can be created anywhere in the world,” remarked the Core77 jury. “Engaging and adapting to nature. A clear winner.”
The shelter’s August 2015 completion offered a capstone of sorts following a series of activity for the design team and their classmates. The studio bred a related exhibition in Gund Hall, and Pellegrino traveled to the Anchorage Museum in April 2015 to present a traveling version of the exhibition. MacDonald and Pellegrino traveled to Slovenia for research in January 2015 after winning the GSD’s Paul M. Heffernan International Travel Award. The shelter was exhibited on the GSD’s Dean’s Wall in the Spring 2016 semester, and the studio also produced a GSD studio report cataloging projects and insights from the entire course.
“It’s a very enriching experience to see a project leave the studio and become a reality,” Pellegrino said. “It poses new challenges, and pushes for innovation in a way that can be hard to address in an academic setting.”
To learn more and view photographs of the design and installation of the Alpine Shelter Skuta, please visit Core77’s feature.
With the aspiration of promoting engagement of the alumni community and advancing the Graduate School of Design’s impact in the world, the Alumni Council is the primary representative body of the GSD. These distinguished practitioners and academics are highly engaged in contemporary design, planning issues, and their communities’ professional, governmental, civic, and business affairs. Council members provide a strong link between the walls of Gund Hall and the world beyond. Through elevating the role of alumni and the School in the lives of the GSD alumni community, the Council builds a strong sense of lifelong community and support for the GSD.
These volunteer leaders offer their time and expertise in this way allows them to remain connected to the GSD to make the case for the power of the alumni design community and its impact on Harvard and the world. Regional ambassador events such as conversing on design and the unknown at Bruce Mau Design in Toronto; drawing, eating and talking at Lehrer Architects LA; and a panel discussion on the Hudson Yards hosted by Related Companies in New York are among the many events Alumni Council members hosted in 2015-2016. Current students, who are “alumni-in-training,” benefit from Council members’ mentorship through reviews of their portfolios, networking, and other events while learning about the value of being an engaged alumnus upon their graduation.
The 2016-17 Council membership is comprised of 50 GSD alumni spanning a wide array of fields, demographics, and regions – members hail from thirteen states and five countries, representing seven GSD programs and hold degrees bridging six decades. Members serve three-year renewal terms beginning July 1, plus serve in additional volunteer roles at the School and Harvard University, to keep the Council remaining active and vibrant. Allyson Mendenhall, who joined the Council in 2008, took the helm as Chairwoman as of July 1, 2016. To read more about her vision for the Council and initiatives that combine both grounded and visionary ideas and approaches, please read the Alumni Q&A.
The Council is pleased to welcome nine new members, three of whom are returning as formerly Emeriti members of the Alumni Council. The new members bring a wealth of experience in the arts, real estate, logistics, and architecture to serve from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2019.
Cathy Deino Blake MLA ’77, Director of Campus Planning and Design, Stanford University
Cathy Blake, FASLA, LEED AP, has been an active leader in the field of Landscape Architecture with a career spanning 40 years. In the early years, she co-founded the San Francisco office of POD, Inc. which ultimately became Sasaki Associates. At Peter Walker and Partners she was a project manager and the Partner responsible for the firm’s first Process Architecture publication and the merger with William Johnson.
Jaya Kader MArch ’88, Founder and Principal, KZ architecture
A registered architect in Florida, Jaya Kader is the founder and principal of KZ architecture, a Miami-based practice founded in 2003. The firm is committed to design excellence and sustainable building practices, with a focus on custom home residential design and a philosophy rooted in context, and purpose. She is involved with local and national AIA and a member of the AIA Committee on Design Advisory Group and chairs its sponsorship committee.
Thomas Luebke MArch ’91, Secretary, U.S. Commission of Fine Arts
Thomas Luebke has served since 2005 as the Secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the federal design review agency for the nation’s capital. As the executive director of the agency, he has edited the 2013 book, Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; he initiated and guided the National Capital Framework Plan, 2009, a major federal planning effort to extend the commemorative core of the National Mall, in cooperation with the National Capital Planning Commission.
Richard T. Murphy MLA ’80, President / CEO, Murphy Logistics Richard Murphy is a Landscape Architect and President / CEO of Murphy Logistics, an asset based 3PL that provides distribution, transportation, warehousing and value-added services for domestic and international clients. He also runs a rigging/millwright firm and numerous real estate entities. He is the 4th generation of Murphy to run the family enterprises since its founding in 1904. Ron Ostberg MArch ’68, HAA Executive Committee Former Alumni Council Chairman from 2010-2013, Ron Ostberg joined The Stubbins Associates in 1984, which later merged to be Kling Stubbins. His portfolio of work includes the Embassy and Ambassador’s Residence for the U.S. Department of State in Singapore, the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan, and three major projects at Vanderbilt University. He currently serves as a Member-at-Large for the HAA’s Executive Committee to provide oversight of the affairs of the HAA.
Ryley Poblete MArch ’14, Architectural Designer, Gensler & Associates
Ryley Poblete, LEED AP, is an architectural designer at Gensler in Houston, Texas. There he works on large scale projects ranging from corporate, mixed use, and institutional work with a focus on urban design and planning. Prior to Gensler Ryley worked for seven years at HOK on a range of projects spanning from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to Chevron’s proposed corporate headquarters expansion in downtown Houston.
Mark Rios MArch ’82, MLA ’82
Formally trained in both architecture and landscape architecture, Mark Rios has long seen those two disciplines as inseparable. He founded Rios Associates in 1985, now renamed Rios Clementi Hale Studios, with a singular vision: to imagine, design, and build complete environments. Under his leadership, the firm quickly developed an international reputation for its groundbreaking multidisciplinary approach to all its commissions.
Paris Rutherford MAUD ’93, Principal, Catalyst Urban Development Paris Rutherford is Principal of Catalyst Urban Development, a Dallas-based real estate company focused on the creation of Great Places through experiential, economic and social success. Following this mission, Catalyst has arranged over $2.3B in transactions since 2009 and is currently developing $300M in transit-oriented, urban residential and mixed-use projects through both traditional and public/private financing.
The Council bid a fond farewell and thank you to Michael Lehrer, FAIA, MArch ’78, principal at Lehrer Architects LA, for his accomplished 2013-16 term as Chairman and the members rotating off or ending terms: Nathaniel Belcher MArch ’92; Teman Evans MArch ’04; Teran Evans MArch ’04; Sarah Graham MArch ’82; Michael Hickok MArch ’76; Michael Hricak MArch ’78; Cathleen McGuigan LF ’93; and James Wilson MArch ’93. The GSD is grateful for their passion and commitment to cultivating community and heightening awareness of the consequential role that the GSD plays in shaping the built environment.
Three members of the Alumni Council also play an active role as leaders and citizens of the broader University community by serving as the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) Board of Directors. Allyson Mendenhall MLA ’99 and Jennifer Luce MDesS ’94 began their second year of their terms as HAA Appointed Directors. Together, they represent the School, raising its profile with the HAA, sharing its mission broadly to fellow alumni leaders across the University, and demonstrating the work of GSD alumni in the world and the impact of design at Harvard and beyond. Additionally, former Alumni Council Chairman Ron Ostberg MArch ’68 serves as a Member-at-Large for the HAA’s Executive Committee to provide oversight of the affairs of the HAA.
To learn more about the Alumni Council, visit the Council’s webpage. Also, you can watch Alumni Council members and emeriti share a memorable GSD moment.
Alumni from classes ending in 1′s and 6′s returned to campus for 
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The first part of the course introduces the idea of the architectural imagination as a faculty that mediates sensuous experience and conceptual understanding. Two examples of the architectural imagination—perspective drawing and architectural typology—are explored through video presentations and hands-on exercises. You will be introduced to some of the challenges involved in writing architectural history, revealing that architecture does not always have a straightforward relationship to its own history.
This year, the global design community mourned the passing of Dame Zaha Hadid (1950-2016), the first female recipient of both the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2004) and the RIBA Gold Medal (2016). As her untimely passing saddened friends, clients, and admirers, her legacy inspired the GSD to find a way to celebrate her extraordinary contributions to the field of design.
