Master in Design Studies (MDesS)
Announcement Archive
Please join the GSD Alumni Council at a reception honoring Laura Lobach (MDesS), one of the four winners of the Fourth Annual Unsung Hero Award, on Thursday, April 2nd from 6:30-7:30 pm in the Portico Rooms.
Kostas Terzidis, the Area Coodinator of Technology, will be hosting the Critical Digital Conference at the GSD from April 17-19, 2009.
Peter Christensen's paper "Out of Site, Out of Mind?: Plein Air Display in an Age of Mythic Geopolitics" has been accepted for MIT's "Research In Progress" Conference on April 3rd.
Project Management Course taught in Bilbao, Spain: For the second consecutive year the MDesS program is able to offer a class in project management taught abroad in Bilbao, Spain. All students have traveledl to Spain where the class was co-taught by Professor Spiro Pollalis and Luis Rodriguez from IDOM. For more information see the course description.
New acting Area Coordinator for Real Estate Concentration: We welcome Bing Wang to the MDesS council as the acting coordinator of the real estate concentration. Bing Wang is a lecturer of urban planning and design. Her academic research focuses on the interplays between formal representations of a society and its underlying social structure and economic driving forces. She is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Sustainable Real Estate, published by the American Real Estate Society, and of the Journal of Planning Theory and Practice, co-published by Routledge and Royal Town Planning Institute of the UK. Her writings and research are published in academic books and journals, including Planning Ideas and Planning Practices, Professionalism and Professions, Urbanization in China, Regenerating Older Suburbs, Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management and Urban Land Asia. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Architectural Profession and Modernity in China and co-editor of Prestige Retail: Design and Development for High-end Market and Nexus: Field Studies in Real Estate, Planning, and Design.
New Area Coordinator for History and Philosophy of Design Concentration: We welcome Professor Timothy Hyde as the new area coordinator for the History and Philosophy of Design Concentration. Timothy Hyde is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He teaches design studio and courses in architectural history and theory. Hyde’s scholarship addresses issues of modern architecture and culture in the postwar period with a particular attention to the intersections and transpositions between disciplines. His current research focuses on concepts of artifice in architectural, literary, legal, and cultural theory in the late twentieth century. He is also continuing an extended study of entanglements between architecture and law. This work includes his doctoral dissertation, in which he explored the relation between architecture and constitutional jurisprudence in pre-Revolutionary Cuba, and his essay “Some Evidence of Libel, Criticism, and Publicity in the Architectural Career of Sir John Soane,” published in Perspecta, which pursued connections between eighteenth-century English libel law and the life and work of Sir John Soane. Hyde’s other writings on mid-century modern architecture include a précis of the work of John Johansen for the exhibition catalog Beyond the Harvard Box, and a genealogy of mat-building published in Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital and the Mat Building Revival.
We would like to thank Professor Eve Blau, the previous area coordinator of the History and Philosophy of Design concentration, for many years of dedicated service and tireless work for the MDesS program!
Peter Davos won a scholarship from the International Real Estate Federation, FIABCI http://www.fiabci-usa.com. Congratulations Peter!
Harvard's Mobile Information Unit was displayed for the first time at the GSD's annual open house in November. Several MDesS students have been and still are involved in the ongoing development and fabrication.
Shabbar Sagarwala won the IFMA Sodexo Scholarship and participated in the IFMA World Workplace conference in Texas in October.
Peter Davos, Eric McAfee and Ray Bumhee Han all won Harvard Real Estate Consortium scholarships. Congratulations!
Marrikka Trotter was interviewed by the Boston Herald about her installation "Small Things."
Matan Mayer initiated research into new green structural materials for arid environments.
This week in collaboration with Professor Dale Clifford at University of Arizona, the research finally culminated in a new building block based on capillary movement of water in native Sonoran plants. It is published in "Archinect" online magazine
AIA News Letter: read the article about the Sustainable Design concentration area.
Yen Ting Cho (3rd semester MDesS) won an Honorable Mention in The Accolade Film Awards for his short animation titled "Life of a Fly." YT Cho is also working on a project with two Harvard Film Study Fellows EDGAR BARROSO and JUAN DE DIOS VAZQUEZ. They are working on a collaboration between composer Edgar Barroso, poet Juan de Dios Vázquez, filmmaker Aryo Danusiri, and designer Yen-Ting Cho, Kapsis will be a 7 to 10 minute piece for flute, electro-acoustic music, and video art. It will portray the mesmerizing Nahua myth of a young girl who becomes a starfish. Within the Florentine Codex there is a Nahuatl proverb which states the possibility that that which occurred before in the past, will once again repeat itself in the future. In the same way, in the current project of writing and composing a Nahua operetta, the new converges with the old. The goal is to represent the unrepresented, to provide though structured musical figuration an understanding of invisible forces and principles that regulated not only the myths, riddles and proverbs of ancient Aztecs but also the pulse of contemporary indigenous politics. Zazanilli (which in Nahuatl means both "story" and "enigma") is meant to be an oeuvre that will celebrate the bicentennial of Mexican independence, while bringing into question the so-called achievements of this significant event.
Peter Christensen's co authored book with Barry Bergdoll Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling was selected as one of the best trade illustrated books in this year’s AAUP (Association of American University Presses) annual design competition. You can find out more info on the AAUP website at http://aaupnet.org/programs/marketing/designshow/winners2009.html. The 2009 Book, Jacket, & Journal Show will premiere at the AAUP annual meeting this June, then travel around the country to various member universities from September 2009 to April 2010.
Congratulations to Sohin Hwang (3rd semester MDesS) for winning a silver prize in the Spark Awards. Sohin submitted a project titled "Light to Form." Light to Form is an experimentation on form finding which can trace non-formal quality of light and turn it into 3 dimensional form. Sohin worked on this project in a course taught by Prof. Kostas Terzidis.
Sustainable Design Area: Boston Globe Article 14 Sep, 2008, Harvard Crimson Article 19 Sep, 2008 and Discussion Panel at the GSD.
New Concentration Area: Sustainable Design
Faced with climate change and an emerging shortage of essential resources, our society increasingly experiences the need to understand and apply sustainable design principles at all levels of the built environment. This fall the Master of Design Studies program at Harvard’s GSD introduces a new concentration area entitled ‘Sustainable Design’. Coordinated by Associate Professor Christoph Reinhart, students will research holistic solutions for today’s environmental challenges. Particular areas of specialization are lighting and daylighting design, building performance simulation, green building performance metrics, green roofs, automated controls, occupant behavior and satisfaction, acoustics, as well as lifecycle and embodied energy studies. Reaching beyond the building scale sustainability studies pursue a broad range of topics that may include the impact of urban and landscape design on local climactic conditions, the investigation and design of water management techniques, traffic and infrastructure studies, strategies for brown fields and other disturbed sites, questions of landscape ecology, and many others.