To most people, trash is just a mixture of discarded things without value. However, to Arthur Huang MArch ’04, trash represents a new beginning. Huang’s Taiwan-based company, MINIWIZ, home of the remarkable TRASHLAB laboratory, revolutionizes the waste and recycling industries through innovation, technology, and design. Essentially, MINIWIZ is on a mission to unlock the upcycling…
“Without financial aid, students from developing countries, like us, would not be able to attend prestigious schools like Harvard. Iran is full of talented architects, but they are at a disadvantage if they want to continue their education abroad. I hope that we are able to fill the knowledge gap and make a positive impact…
To most people, trash is just a mixture of discarded things without value. However, to Arthur Huang MArch ’04, trash represents a new beginning. Huang’s Taiwan-based company, MINIWIZ, home of the remarkable TRASHLAB laboratory, revolutionizes the waste and recycling industries through innovation, technology, and design. Essentially, MINIWIZ is on a mission to unlock the upcycling…
“Change will only happen if we include people that don’t come from hegemonic forms of power and influence, yet are disproportionately affected by structural outcomes.” — Francisco “Pancho” Brown MDes ’20 We recently spoke with Francisco “Pancho” Brown MDes ’20. Pancho is a Nicaraguan designer and creative consultant with experience in humanitarian and commercial architecture,…
“You can be an ambitious person who’s had a robust professional career, but also be self-aware enough to know when you need to take a break—because of whatever is happening in the world or in your life. The choice was clear to me once I sat down and really thought hard about what the best…
Tosin Odugbemi MArch ’24 often inhabits several spaces simultaneously, a skill and perspective that deeply benefits her study of the built environment. A child of two doctors, Tosin moved with her family from South Africa to Canada at a young age. She grew up in the prairies of British Columbia in a predominantly white neighborhood, with…
“I believe our role as designers is to think more systematically. It’s not just about designing the layout of the house, but understanding the impact of that house. What trees were on the land before? What species lived in those trees? We are beginning to understand that our role is not to design spaces and…
“Nature is changing, the climate is changing, and so we, too, need to change. We must understand that fixed definitions of nature from the past no longer apply in this era of uncertainty we are confronting. Climate change is causing cities to sink, and our current infrastructure is making us even more vulnerable to severe…
Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces Grace La MArch ’95 as Chair of the Department of Architecture, effective July 1, 2023. La is Professor of Architecture at the GSD and principal of LA DALLMAN, a practice internationally recognized for work that integrates architecture, engineering, and site. La is the second woman to be…
“On our very first day of school, [GSD professor] Jerold S. Kayden [MCRP ’79] said to me, ‘Being a planner can be a curse, because you actually live in your work and decisions.’ As I’ve grown in my position, that’s something I think about often. It helps me to be aware of the responsibilities and…
“My work is multi-layered and multi-disciplinary; sometimes it’s civic art, sometimes it’s planning, sometimes it’s community engagement, sometimes it’s architecture, sometimes it’s landscape design, and sometimes it’s a combination of everything.” — Paola Aguirre Serrano Paola Aguirre Serrano MAUD ’11, is a GSD Alumni Council member and the founder of Borderless Studio, an urban design…
Dear Landscape Architecture Alumni, I bring you greetings from Cambridge, where the autumn weather has been beautiful, and we are already past the midpoint of our fall semester. It’s my great pleasure to report that from where I sit, the mood in the school is positive and upbeat. Our “Back to School” gathering in early…
A Fall 2022 Message from Dean Sarah M. Whiting Dear GSD Alumni and Friends: First and foremost, I welcome students, faculty, staff, and soon alumni and friends, back to the GSD. It’s hard to believe it, but this is the first semester that we are starting fully in person since spring of 2020! Not only…
The GSD Alumni Council Award honors outstanding leadership by GSD alumni, underscoring the essential role GSD graduates play in leading change around the world. Founded and led by the GSD Alumni Council, the award recognizes and celebrates the diversity, leadership, range, and impact of GSD alumni within their communities and across their areas of practice….
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce Chelina Odbert MUP ’07, Donald Stull MArch ’62 (in memoriam) and David Lee MAUD ’71, and Allyson Mendenhall FASLA, AB ’90, MLA ’99 as the 2022 recipients of the Harvard GSD Alumni Award. The award, in its second year, honors outstanding leadership by GSD alumni, underscoring…
Following the launch of Harvard Design Press last spring, the Press is pleased to announce the release of three titles this fall: John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense, Frida Escobedo: Split Subject, and Empty Plinths: Monuments, Memorials, and Public Sculpture in Mexico. Documenting John Andrews’ MAUD ’87 path from Australia to the United States and…
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Alumni Council and the GSD’s Frances Loeb Library are pleased to honor five students with the 2022 Unsung Hero Book Prize. This year’s honorees are Junainah N. Ahmed MArch ’23, Aeshna Sanjive Prasad MAUD ’21, MDes ’22, Sarah Elizabeth Page MAUD ’23, Naksha Satish MAUD ’22, and Arshaya Sood MDes ’22,…
Dear Alumni and Friends, With the end of commencement ceremonies and celebrations held over the past several days, the school year officially has come to a close. Congratulations again to the class of 2022, as well as the graduates from 2020 and 2021, for whom we were, at long last and not a minute too…
During an unprecedented time, the Harvard GSD Alumni Council created Design Impact, a leadership series that emphasized design as a tool for transformative change and healing. Design’s power has always been most potent when its practitioners can come together. In the early days of the pandemic, though, the world was folding into small, quarantined boundaries….
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce a new 12-month degree, the Master in Real Estate (MRE), for individuals seeking to acquire core real estate skills while learning how real estate can advance beneficial spatial, social, and environmental outcomes in cities and metropolitan areas worldwide. The school has received a combined…
First Graduate School of Design alum to serve as HAA president, Allyson Mendenhall is committed to creating inclusive alumni experiences When Allyson Mendenhall AB ’90, MLA ’99, walked past the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall as an undergraduate at Harvard College, she never imagined that she would one day step inside as a…
In 2021, the Harvard Graduate School of Design invested in a set of short introductory education programs that are directed at sharing the value of design with the global public. Early Design Education (EDE)—which invites different audiences to “think and make” through design—includes Design Discovery Virtual, Design Discovery in-person, and Design Discovery Youth summer…
Mead is a member of the GSD’s Dean’s Leadership Council and Candidate for Board of Overseers. Scott Mead AB ’77 was 13 years old when he received one of his grandfather’s cameras, a gift that sparked a lifelong passion for photography. He captured images around his home and spent hours in his family’s darkroom developing…
Dear GSD Alumni and Friends, I write to encourage you to pause and take in yesterday’s email from President Bacow sharing the Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. The report opens with the simple, direct claim that “Harvard’s motto, Veritas, inscribed on gates, doorways, and sculptures all…
Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) announces Gary R. Hilderbrand MLA ’85 as new chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, effective July 1, 2022. Hilderbrand is the Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor-in-Practice at the GSD, where he has taught since 1990, and Founding Principal and Partner of Reed Hilderbrand. Hilderbrand succeeds Anita Berrizbeitia MLA…
The GSD renamed the 50th Anniversary of Urban Design Program Lecture for Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, a GSD associate professor who worked to establish and fortify the urban design program during its founding years. The Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture will be delivered each year by a visionary urban planner, designer, scholar, or leader who has opened…
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Gund Hall, we raise a glass to you and all those who have helped shape the school into what it is today and what it will be in the future. Thank you for being a valuable member of the GSD community. Wishing you and yours a joyful and…
The Oberlander Prize, an initiative of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, includes a $100,000 award and two years of public engagement activities focused on the laureate and landscape architecture The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has named Julie Bargmann MLA ’87 the winner of the inaugural Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize (Oberlander Prize), a biennial…
Dear Alumni and Friends, With the GSD community together on campus again, we return to a world that needs thoughtful, caring designers more than ever. I recently listened to an interview with George Saunders, one of my favorite writers, and a phrase he said truly resonated with me: “Kindness is the only non-delusional response to…
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Alumni Council is pleased to honor four students with the 2021 Unsung Hero Book Prize. This year’s honorees are Bailey Morgan Brown MArch ’22, MDes ’22, Heidi Brandow MDes ’21, Mary Taylor MUP ’21, and Kathlyn Kao MArch ’22. The Unsung Hero Book Prize celebrates GSD students who…
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce Everett Fly MLA ’77, Deanna Van Buren Loeb Fellow ’13, and Jack Dangermond MLA ’69 as the inaugural recipients of the 2021 Harvard GSD Alumni Award. The award honors outstanding leadership by GSD alumni, underscoring the essential role GSD graduates play in leading…
While GSD students, faculty, and staff have learned and worked virtually for over a year, the GSD’s Fabrication Lab has brought Gund Hall to the 3D virtual world, with Virtual Gund Hall. Digital Fabrication Analyst Christopher Hansen and a team of students designed the immersive GSD campus experience, which enables viewers to visit and engage…
The R. Buckminster Fuller Professorship of Design Science will be awarded to an eminent scholar working to advance innovation in design and promote a sustainable future. The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces the establishment of the R. Buckminster Fuller Professorship of Design Science, thanks to the generosity of Amy C. Edmondson…
In this episode of Talking Practice, host Grace La MArch ’95 moderates a special roundtable, Practice in an Uncertain World. This informal event was recorded over zoom in May 2020, after the Harvard GSD evacuated its campus due to the COVID pandemic. The occasion gathered thirteen prominent architectural practitioners, who assembled on an early Saturday…
This spring, Harvard Graduate School of Design has turned its Druker Design Gallery, Experiments Wall, and other exhibition spaces “Inside Out,” with installations shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. The series, entitled “Inside Out,” will be screened nightly (4:00 pm to 11:00 pm, EST) through March 18, rotating through a…
Perkins&Will and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) today announce the launch of the Black in Design Mentorship Program pilot, an initiative that aims to promote greater representation of Black talent in the design industry. Originally conceived by students and Perkins&Will professionals at the 2019 Black in Design Conference, the mentorship program will…
Wishing the GSD’s Alumni & Friends prosperity, happiness, and good health. After such an unfathomable year, I am glad to be welcoming a new year, one that I hope will offer renewal and connect us with the loved ones, communities, and ideas that nourish us. One of the more uplifting moments that came from this…
Anyone remember air travel? In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe and international flights were hurriedly cancelled, the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Laboratory for Design Technologies (LDT) pivoted its three-year focus project, The Future of Air Travel, to respond to new industry conditions in a rapidly changing world. With the…
Harvard GSD continues its series of virtual public lectures for the Spring 2021 semester, inviting designers and other curious viewers from around the world to join the school’s dialogue. This spring program offers topical observations, as well as launches of two new Harvard GSD publications: its redesigned Harvard Design Magazine, as well as the to-be-revealed student-run journal Pairs. All programs…
Dear GSD Alumni, Covid-19 revealed the impact of structural racism in its starkest terms. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery underscore the pernicious truth that America remains a country marred by rampant racism. The ongoing display of police brutality on Black Americans across our country shows us that we, as a…
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Alumni Council is pleased to honor four students with the 2020 Unsung Hero Book Prize. This year’s honorees are Yonghui Chen MDes ’18, DDes ’21, Sydney Fang MUP ’20, MPP ’20, Brittany Giunchigliani MLA ’21, and Kyle Miller MUP ’21, MPH ’21. The Unsung Hero Book Prize celebrates GSD students who act in selfless ways…
The GSD presents two podcast series featuring in-depth interviews with leading design practitioners from around the world.
In this Q&A, Panzano shares insights into the Undergraduate Architecture Studies program, what makes the GSD MArch I model distinctive, and how she keeps busy outside of the GSD.
At the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), affordable housing is an urgent concern in the pursuit of healthy, equitable cities. In this video—the first in a series of brief looks at the ways in which topical issues are explored at the GSD—Rahul Mehrotra MAUD ’87, Daniel D’Oca MUP ’02, and Farshid Moussavi MArch…
Dear MDE Alumni, Greetings from Cambridge! As the fourth year of the program progresses, it is a pleasure to have two cohorts of graduates out in the world. We have enjoyed hearing about your new careers and activities, and as always, we wish to keep you informed with news from the program side as well….
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 Teaching Fellow will be appointed Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for the 2020-21 academic year, and is…
Mark Lee MArch ’95 assumed the role of Chair of the Department of Architecture and Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) on July 1, 2018. He is a principal and founding partner of Johnston Marklee, which since its establishment in 1998 has been recognized nationally and internationally with over thirty…
In December 2018, a gift from Samuel Plimpton MBA ’77, MArch ’80 and his wife, Wendy Shattuck, established the Plimpton Professorship of Planning and Urban Economics. The professorship will advance the GSD in the field of urban economics, fundamental for understanding the economics of cities, as well as land use, planning, and real estate decisions in…
Frederick Chan MAUD ’74 believes that the most impactful design happens outside of the studio, and that the most important work of a graduate school is to carry out research that can shape the profession. That deep conviction in training designers of the future led to Chan’s generous gift to the GSD’s Annual Fund, which will…
As the child of artists and an artist herself, Melissa Kaish GSD ’85 grew up with painters, musicians, and writers gathering at her home for creative discussions. For her, art and design are not bound by walls; these disciplines can—and should—spill into the public sphere for the community’s benefit. With that value in mind, Kaish and her…
