GSD Alumni and Friends
First All-GSD Alumni Weekend a Success!
Sunshine and spring-like weather welcomed the large, spirited group of alumni who gathered for our first, all-School Alumni Weekend on April 20-21. Kicking off the weekend events, alumni toured the new, award-winning Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center at Wellesley College, guided by the project's architect and landscape architect, GSD Kajima Adjunct Professor in Architecture Mack Scogin and Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture Michael Van Valkenburgh.
Program highlights also included:
- Keynote lecture by leading architect and Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki (MArch '54)
- Student presentations on “GSD and Community: Making a Difference-Student projects in North Dakota, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Lowell, Massachusetts
- A presentation on Environmental Architecture and Urbanism by Assistant Professors Thomas Schroepfer and Christian Werthman with Nico Kienzel (DDes '02), with an update on Harvard's new Allston Campus sustainable architecture,
- Dean Alan Altshuler and Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture P. Scott Cohen presented Miho Mazereeuw (MArch '02/MLA 02) with her certificate as the 2007 Wheelwright Traveling Fellow in Architecture. This was followed by Miho's presentation of her Fellowship proposal, "Post-disaster Architecture and Urbanism: Three Cities along the Ring of Fire."
- Alumni Works Exhibition
For a complete program: http://projects.gsd.harvard.edu/alumniweekend/agenda.pdf
Save the date for next year's Alumni Weekend - April 11-12, 2008-and encourage your classmates to attend!
Rave Reviews for Alumni Weekend 2007. . .
“A wonderful time at the GSD! It was great to meet up with everyone again. Although it was the first time that several years have been summoned together in the same reunion, I believe that it really worked out well.” –Levi Maia Dacosta (MArch II '00) & Bernardo Vaz Pinto (MArch '95)
“Thank you for all your efforts on behalf of our small '57 contingent. I was particularly impressed with the scope of the L.Arch presentations. In 1953 I recall an early first-year project under Chermayeff where we were sent off with planners and landscapers to analyze a chaotic Harvard Square condition. At the reunion I realized how the scope had greatly expanded, and that the GSD was now a facet of globalization. Unlike most of the regional schools of architecture it seems that the GSD is playing its rightful international role. Congratulations! –Peter Cohen (MArch '57)
“Thoroughly enjoyable and informative...” Reed Shinn (MArch '66) “An extraordinary gathering! I enjoyed every conversation, every presentation.” –John H. Gewalt (MArch '67)
“Having a general GSD gathering (instead of just specific years) was great because it reconstituted the experience we had when we were students among students from other classes. I enjoyed seeing my classmates, but I also enjoyed meeting and talking with other GSD graduates from other years. . .” –Peter Vercelli (GSD '56)
“It was the first alumni event that I've ever attended, and I enjoyed it enormously. The tour at Wellesley on Friday morning, along with the Maki lecture on Friday evening, were a treat and a major reason I decided to come. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed meeting alumni from such different periods than my own, engaging them in rather intense dialogue that I found delightful. . .”
--Christopher Diehl (MArch '88)
