News & Stories

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News Updates

Spring 2025 Update from Ann Forsyth, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design

Dear UPD Alumni, I hope this note finds you well and enjoying the winter. As the 2024–2025 academic year progresses, Gund Hall is once again bustling with students after the winter break. With phase one of the Gund Hall façade renewal project now complete, we are already enjoying a more energy-efficient, comfortable, and accessible learning…

Global Thinking. Local Action.

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design brings together the most talented students to study, investigate, and address complex design challenges at all levels—from housing shortages and community development in Boston to the effects of climate change and rapid urbanization around the world. Through practice, research, and teaching, our extraordinary faculty and staff guide students…

Knoll Empowers GSD Students to Envision the Future of the Workplace

During the 2016–2017 academic year, the Harvard Graduate School of Design concluded a three-part studio series in collaboration with Knoll, Inc., that imagined the future of the “workplace,” or the environments in which people and industries conduct work.

Alumni Q&A / Brenda Levin MArch ’76

Architect Brenda A. Levin, FAIA, MArch ’76 is known for revitalizing Los Angeles’ urban, historic, and cultural form. For over 30 years, her architecture and urban design firm, Levin & Associates Architects, has pioneered the preservation and redefinition of significant and iconic landmarks in Los Angeles

The Enduring Legacy of Professor Eduard Sekler

When Eduard Franz Sekler, Harvard University’s Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Art Emeritus and Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the Graduate School of Design, passed away last spring at the age of 96, the GSD community responded with an outpouring of letters in remembrance of the beloved educator, architect, scholar, and friend.

Alumni Q&A / John Taylor MUP ’06

John Taylor MUP ’06 is International Project Manager, National Urban Poverty Reduction Programme (NUPRP), UNDP Bangladesh. Hear from him about his time at the GSD and his career path.

Alumni Q&A / Jared Katseff MUP ’15

Jared Katseff MUP ’15 is Senior Associate, McKinsey & Company, Capital Projects & Infrastructure Practice. Hear from him about his time at the GSD and his career path.

Alumni Q&A / Aldarsaikhan Tuvshinbat MUP ’15

Aldarsaikhan Tuvshinbat MUP ’15 is Senior Program Coordinator, Metropolitan Transportation Commission (San Francisco Bay Area). Hear from her about her time at the GSD and her career path.

Alumni Q&A / Colonel Chris Castle DDes ’99, Defense Health Agency

For nearly three decades, Colonel Chris Castle DDes ’99 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, and he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service in a combat zone.

Educating Our Design Leaders

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…

Dean’s Update: 2017 Highlights from the GSD

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, the Dean writes to share highlights of the important work produced at the GSD over the past year.

Furthering Innovation for the Loeb Fellowship: Leif L. Selkregg LF ’89

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…

GSD Presence at Your Harvard: Miami 2017

Members of the Harvard community gathered in Miami 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.

Candidates for Overseers and HAA Elected Directors Announced

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,…

GSD’s First MOOC Developed and Taught by K. Michael Hays

For the first time, starting February 28, GSD alumni and architecture enthusiasts around the world will be able to study architecture through a new HarvardX course orchestrated by Michael 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.

Master in Urban Planning Degree Program Faculty News: Spring 2017

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,…

GSD Korea Builds Community with Year-End Events

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…

Studio Reviews: Fall 2016 Highlights

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.

Architectural Imagination HarvardX Course to Launch in February 2017

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…

Stephen Ross: Reimagining Manhattan’s West Side

Real estate pioneer Stephen M. Ross visits the GSD to discuss his latest megaproject: Hudson Yards, which aims to transform Midtown Manhattan’s far West Side—one of the last undeveloped areas in New York City.

Call for Alumni Submissions: Harvard GSD 2017 Wheelwright Prize

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce the fifth cycle of the Wheelwright Prize, an open international competition that awards $100,000 annually to a talented early-career architect to support travel-based research.

Industry Giving: Advancing the Global Discourse on Design

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.

Call for Applicants: Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellowship

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…

Tax-Free IRA Rollover Permanently Extended

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…

An Engaged Community: 2015-2016

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.

Global Challenges Need Designers

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 which are hallmarks of a GSD education.