Affiliated Students
Neyran Turan
Neyran Turan is an architect and currently a doctoral candidate at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She received her B. Arch. degree from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey and holds a masters degree from Yale University School of Architecture. Her master research at Yale examined the relationship between global networks and urbanism in contemporary culture.
Turan has taught at Harvard Design School, Yale School of Architecture, Boston Architecture College and Istanbul Technical University. Her work is published in several journals including Thresholds and Domus_m. Turan’s current research explores contemporary urbanities in Istanbul. Her article on the shifting condition of the twentieth century Istanbul seafront will be published in the upcoming book Landscapes of Development.
Turan will be presenting a paper at the ACSA Surfacing Urbanisms Conference in Fall 2006; and her work will be exhibited at the 2nd International Architecture Biennial of Istanbul in 2007. Mrs. Turan is currently acting as the publications coordinator at the Harvard Design School Aga Khan Program.
Rania Ghosn
Rania Ghosn was born, raised and educated in Beirut where she received her Bachelor in Architecture from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 2000. Benefiting from a British Council Chevening scholarship, she further pursued her interests in the relations of space, capital and power and completed her MSc in ‘Modernity, Space and Place’ at the University College London (UCL) in 2003.
Such concerns engaged her in several multidisciplinary research projects and workshops, including: ethnographies of low-income informal neighbourhoods of Beirut, the role of a leading Arab engineering consulting firm in ‘third-world-urban-development’, the iconography of Lebanese political parties during the Lebanese Civil War, and the Syrian Elites’ practices and representations of Beirut in the wake of socialist changes in Syria.
Along with research, her enthusiasm and commitment have been to academic instruction, and particularly to the architectural design studio as a site from which to call upon the empowering potential of representation. She has repeatedly taught basic and advanced level studio courses at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and at the Lebanese American University (LAU). ‘Utopia in the Landscape’ is the upper level design studio she has recently co-taught and in which each student developed her vision of a place of ideal perfection.
Rania brings such utopian aspirations to her first year in the DDes program at the GSD. As a citizen, she has dreams for her city and a vital stake in shaping it. While her geographical investigation particularly draws on the city of Beirut, the theoretical and pedagogical interests of the project celebrate the role of committed design and creative subjectivity in nurturing and envisioning a good world.
Stephen Ramos
Stephen J. Ramos is a Doctor of Design candidate researching the impact of new global infrastructure on the physical form of cities, with Profs. A. Hashim Sarkis, Peter G. Rowe and Joan Busquets. Stephen is trained as an urban planner, and his first year at the Graduate School of Design included a Teaching Fellowship in the Spring 2006 for Prof. Hashim Sarkis’s Developing Worlds: Planning and Design in the Middle East and Latin America After WWII course, co-authorship of the article “Dubai: Port as Prototype” for the Neutra. Revista de Arquitectura of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Andalucía (forthcoming), authorship of the article “Superlative Blasé: Locating Dubai’s Urban Trajectory” for forthcoming book on Dubai through the Harvard Press, based on a presentation given at the “Dubai: Emerging Critical Themes in Urban Planning and Design Harvard Graduate School of Design Workshop in March 2005, and a Research Fellowship at the Institute for International Urban Development in Cambridge, MA.
Stephen completed his coursework and examinations for the Doctoral Program in May 2006, and plans for the 2006/7 school year include: a Teaching Fellowship for Prof. Jerold S. Kayden’s Public Private Development course in the Fall 2006, assistant editorship for Prof. Hashim Sarkis’s forthcoming book When Schools Went Modern: Primary and Secondary Education Facilities in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, assistant editorship for the International Manual for Planning Practice published by the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISoCaRP), and continuing research on his doctoral dissertation.
Gareth Doherty
Since 2005 a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Design. Originally from Ireland, Gareth previously studied at University College Dublin (B.Agr.Sc. and M.Agr.Sc. in Landscape Studies) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.L.A. and Certificate in Urban Design). He has worked with CHORA architecture and urbanism in London since 2000 and has taught design studios, workshops and lectured internationally. His research focuses on contemporary landscape and urbanism in Bahrain.
Activities in 2005/06 include:
Non refereed articles:
Topos (56), Munich. “Cultural Continuums in Bahrain” with Ahmed Dailami, (forthcoming) October 2006.
Neutra, Seville. “Dubai: Puerto como Prototipo” (Dubai: Port as Prototype) with Stephen Ramos and photographs by Ahmed Kanna. Spanish translation by Stephen Ramos. (forthcoming) October 2006.
Architectural Review Australia, Canberra. “The Long Shadow of Ian McHarg”. December, 2005. p.94-97.
Book contributions:
Dubai: Emerging Critical Themes in Urban Planning and Design. “Dubai as Landscape”. Aga Khan Program Harvard University Graduate School of Design, (forthcoming) Spring 2007.
Consequence 4 Book Series on Fresh Architecture: CHORA/Raoul Bunschoten. Springer: Vienna & New York. “Proto Politics: Mapping and Identity in Donegal - Speculations and Realities”, with Raoul Bunschoten. 2005. p.76-87. Summary text and maps of original article published in Building Design (13) Dublin. Winter 2004. p.30-35.
Reviews:
Landscape Australia. Canberra v.27, n.3(107). “A Review of the Groundswell Exhibition of Landscape Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York”. Aug. 2005. p.58,59.
Invited Lectures:
X-Larch II – landscape-X-periments International Symposium. University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna. “Landscape as Urbanism”. 27 April, 2006.
Conferences:
Dubai Workshop, Aga Khan Program, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. “Dubai as Landscape”. Paper presented 20 March 2006.
Teaching:
Bahrain Society of Engineers, Manama, Bahrain. Three-day training program on “Landscape Architecture, Road Ecology & Urban Planning”, 5-7 June, 2006.
Teaching Fellowships:
Graduate School of Design. Professor Hashim Sarkis “Developing Worlds: Planning and Design in the Middle East and Latin America Since World War II”. Spring semester, 2006.
Resident Advisor:
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cronkhite Center. 2006/07.
Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Career Discovery Program, June-July 2006.
Research Associate:
Institute for International Urban Development, Cambridge, MA. June-September 2006.
Forthcoming 2006/07:
Lecture:
Boston University, Graduate Painting and Sculpture Department Tuesday Evening Lecture Series. “Landscape Experiments”. November 28, 2006.
Conferences:
International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE). Bangkok, Thailand. “From Moonshine to Sunshine: Landscapes of local industry in rural Ireland”. Peer-reviewed conference presentation, December 18, 2006.
Review:
Topos (57) Munich. “The Landscape Urbanism Reader”. Forthcoming January, 2007.
Awaiting confirmation of publication (working paper):
Projections: MIT Journal of Planning short paper. “London/derry and Londonderry: Citizenship and Public Space in Northern Ireland”.