GSD Green Design Team contributes to 2008-2009
Harvard Climate Collaborative Annual Report >>

Joseph Claghorn selected as Harvard Commencement student orator >>

Prof. Van Valkenburgh and Design Critic Michael Blier receive ASLA 2009 Professional Awards

The American Landscape Architecture Society (ASLA) awarded its top prizes for 2009 to 45 professionals, including two honors for Michael Van Valkenburgh, Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture and an honor for Design Critic in Landscape Architecture Michael Blier. Prof. Van Valkenburgh received an Honor Award in the category of General Design, for Teardrop Park in New York City. His second was an Honor Award in the category of Analysis and Planning for Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, New York. The firm of Michael Van Valkenburgh is also the subject of a newly released book, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes (University of Pennsylvania School of Design), which won an ASLA Honor Award in the Communications category.

Design Critic Michael Blier’s firm, Landworks Studio, Inc., received an Honor Award in the General Design category for the Macallen Building. Situated between South Boston and an expansive field of infrastructure, and addressing the Boston skyline, the Macallen Building and landscape form an icon of sustainable development for the city. 

The jury considered nearly 600 entries—the largest number in ASLA history—from around the world and selected 49 projects for recognition in general design, residential design, analysis and planning, communications and research. The awards ceremony will take place at the ASLA Annual Meeting in Chicago on September 21. For more information: http://asla.org/2009awards/.

The Function of Forms, by Prof. Farshid Moussavi, to be released

Actar and the GSD will publish The Function of Forms by Farshid Moussavi, Professor of Architecture, on June 15.

Faculty Notes

Susan Fainstein, Professor of Urban Planning and Design, has been appointed chair of the committee on advanced research grants for the study of the environment and society of the European Research Council, an organization of the European Union. The committee, which meets in Brussels, awards large grants (2.6 million Euros) to senior researchers. Professor Fainstein also edited a symposium on “The New Mega-projects: Genesis and Impacts” that appeared in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. The symposium includes an article by Professor Fainstein on “Mega-projects in New York, London, and Amsterdam.”

Mack Scogin, FAIA, Kajima Professor in the Practice of Architecture, sparked discussion during his presentation at the Boston Society of Architects’ “Conversation on Architecture” roundtable series on April 9. He spoke on “Health Services, Paradise Extension, Chandeliers and the Anxiety of Difference.”

The firm of Adjunct Professor of Architecture Peter Rose and team, which included Matthias Schuler, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Technology, has been shortlisted for the SITRA Low 2No competition. Peter Rose + Partners’ team secured one of the five spots from 75 entries. SITRA, the Finnish Innovation Fund, and the city of Helsinki are launching the international SITRA Low 2No competition for building a sustainable and innovative block in the Western Harbor of Helsinki.

GSD student comments on OMA/AMO’s Shohei Shigematsu’s “architectural autobiography”
in NOW? Conversation >>

“In last week’s “Now? Conversation Series” with Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, Shohei Shigematsu, a partner at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Director of OMA/AMO New York,  presented his autobiography as tied to the fluctuations of world economy, especially the highs and lows of the Japanese and American financial systems.

April 28, 2009

GSD featured School at HAA spring board meeting; dean, faculty and students participate

The spring meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association board of directors featured the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and included an address by Dean Mohsen Mostafavi on “Design Futures” and a presentation on “Planning Futures” by Jerold Kayden, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design and Co-Chair and Program Director of the Department of Urban Planning and Design. A GSD student panel on diversity and social change was moderated by Jonathan Levy, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, and Laura Snowdon, Dean of Students. Panelists included Dk Osseo-Assare, GSD ’09; Jon Evans, GSD ’10; Andrew Lantz, GSD ’10; and Marrikka Trotter, GSD ’09.

Student Chinatown Library project featured at local mayoral candidate’s College Night >>

Andrew Thomas, MArch ’09, presented the GSD student proposal for the Chinatown Storefront Library on April 30 at College Night, hosted by mayoral candidate Sam Yoon at the Hong Kong Lounge in Harvard Square.

Press features GSD students helping Netherlands plan for future >>

“Arriving this morning we made our way to our home for the next six nights, the floating hotel boat, The Merlijn,” wrote Martin Zogran, assistant professor of urban design in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), in his blog that highlighted details of the Harvard-Netherlands Project: Climate Change, Water, Land Development, and Adaptation. “We hoisted our Harvard flag and learned the lay of the land from our hosts on board.”

[Harvard Gazette, April 30, 2009]

Harvard Design Magazine editor Bill Saunders on the evolution and purpose of urban design >>

William S. Saunders, editor of Harvard Design Magazine, and GSD professor Alex Krieger, collaborated on the new book Urban Design, which asks prominent architects, landscape architects, and planners to take stock of the field of urban design—how it’s evolved, where it’s fallen short, and what its purpose should be.

[Metropolis; April 27, 2009]

Rem Koolhaas’s OMA launches shape-shifting Prada Transformer >>

The Prada Transformer, designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), the firm of Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design Rem Koolhaas, will showcase an innovative series of cross-cultural exhibitions, screenings and live events over the next five months, bringing a unique mix of visual arts to Seoul, Korea. The pavilion, which opened April 25, combines the four sides of a tetrahedron: hexagon, cross, rectangle, and circle. The steel-framed structure is entirely covered with a smooth, elastic membrane that can be flipped using cranes to completely reconfigure the visitor’s experience with each new program. Whenever one shape becomes the ground plan, the other three shapes become the walls and the ceiling.

Image: The Prada Transformer, designed by Rem Koolhaas’s Office of Modern Architecture. Photo courtesy of Prada press office.

[Interior Design; April 27, 2009]

Prof. Joan Busquets wins design competition

After three rounds of selection, Joan Busquets, Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design, and the team at his firm, BAU-Landscape Architecture Urbanism, were selected to develop the Eastern New City Gateway in Ningbo, China. The Gateway area will be a new landmark for this dynamic city. Scheduled to open in 2013, the 400,000-square-meter Gateway will cost $5.86 billion.

Image: Eastern New City Gateway, Ningbo, China.

Algorithms for Visual Design by Kostas Terzidis released May 1st

Algorithms for Visual Design: Using the Processing Language by Kostas Terzidis (Wiley, 2009) aims to dramatically enhance one’s programming skills by experimenting with design problems in the digital domain.  As the first book to share the necessary algorithms for creating code to experiment with design problems in the processing language, Algorithms for Visual Design offers a series of generic procedures that can function as building blocks for designers to experiment, explore, and channel their own thoughts, ideas, and principles into potential solutions. The book covers such topics as structured shapes, solid geometry, networking and databases, physical computing, image processing, graphic user interfaces, and related topics.

Richard M. Sommer named Dean, Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape & Design, University of Toronto

Richard Sommer, who has been a member of the GSD’s faculty since 1998, and has directed the School’s Urban Design Programs, will succeed George Baird as the University of Toronto’s dean. Sommer's design practice, research, and scholarship have developed along two interrelated lines. The first pertains to re-conceiving architecture and urban design's disciplinary basis to better address the competing forces of liberalization in property markets and the increasing expectations for democratic access in city-making processes. The second line of research frames the monument as the historical exemplar of architecture, tracing its transformation through its encounter with modern forms of democracy and the American landscape. His writings and projects have appeared in publications such as Perspecta: The Yale Architecture Journal, the Journal of Architectural Education, Any, Metropolis and Arcade and in a number of books, including Shaping the City: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design, Regenerating Older Suburbs and Urban Design. Support for Sommer's research has included awards and grants from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Tozier Fund, The GSD’s Wheelwright Fellowship, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. He has also held a number of other distinguished academic appointments. These include serving for the past four years a Visiting American Scholar and the O'Hare Chair in Design and Development at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, where he has been working with academics, government agencies, and designers in private industry to develop innovative design models with which to reform Northern Ireland's cities and towns.

GSD’s Second Critical Digital Conference explores role of designer
in a digital world >>

Incoming Loeb Fellow chooses GSD over Seattle City Hall

Former Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck won’t run for mayor but instead will spend a year at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He will be a Loeb fellow at Harvard and research U.S. urban policy and environmental challenged.

“Through this fellowship, my challenge will be to study the politics, principles and best practices of sustainability, and then to examine how to advance these strategies in U.S. cities for global impact,” Steinbrueck said in a news release.

Seattle Times, April 17, 2009 >>

Harvard Crimson, April  27, 2009 >>

Student and faculty exhibits explored sustainability in tandem with Ecological Urbanism exhibition >>

Coordinated by students Luis Miguel Lus Arana and Aude-Line Duliere, the exhbit Vegetal City: Dreaming the Green Utopia was conceived as “…a progression in time and space, through Luc Schuiten’s eye, focusing on Nature’s presence as a model for a new way of building.”

Loeb Fellows inspire school children to create “carbon footprint” >>

“The Kids at McCormack School Know about Their CARBON FOOTPRINT.  Do YOU?” That’s the neighborhood billboard that students from The McCormack School in Dorchester created following their tour of the Ecological Urbanism Exhibition at the GSD on April 9. Peter Christensen, candidate for a Master in Design Studies, guided the tour.

Student collaboration aims to improve Chinese village life

Professors Margaret Crawford and Marco Cenzatti of the Department of Urban Planning and Design are conducting a research seminar looking at “Villages in Development” in Panyu, a suburban district of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta in southern China. This spring, the seminar, made up of students from all GSD programs, focused on two villages, Longmei and Xiani. Students used enthnographic techniques to learn about the villages' economy, society, politics, and culture.  Collaborating with planning and landscape architecture students from the South China University of Technology (SCUT), they spent a week in the villages, talking to village leaders, residents, and migrant workers.  Based on their research, they will propose interventions to improve the quality of village life and give villagers more control over their economic destinies. Both groups of students will present their work in Cambridge in late May to an audience of Harvard and SCUT faculty, China experts, and the village leaders. The seminar is sponsored by the Asia Center and the Harvard China Fund.

Image: GSD students Dorothy Tang and Nilay Mistry talk to Xiani residents about their agricultural pursuits and daily lives.

GSD student receives REAI grant to research pedestrian experience of redeveloped Times Square

Timothy Hyde speaks on contemporary architectural criticism

Timothy Hyde, Assistant Professor of Architecture, presented at “A Matter of Opinion,” a conference held on April 11 at The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture.  He and other speakers discussed issues of contemporary architectural criticism, debating the implications of techniques of description, discernment, and discrimination that are employed in historical, theoretical, and critical writing on architecture today. For more information, see the conference website.

Ecological Urbanism Conference Promotes Holistic Approach to Creating Alternative and Sustainable Cities >>

More than 50 speakers and nearly 500 students, academics, and practitioners attended the sold-out Ecological Urbanism Conference held at the Harvard Graduate School of Design April 3-5. Participants and attendees included experts in urban design and planning, public health, social epidemiology, landscape architecture, architecture, public policy, engineering, art and allied professions, who explored the complexity of myriad issues and systems related to creating alternative and sustainable cities of the future. 

Related articles: Boston Globe, April 12, 2009; The Harvard Crimson, April 6, 2009; Harvard Gazette, April 6, 2009; World Landscape Magazine, April 5, 2009.

GSD studio a centerpiece of Harvard-Netherlands Project

Spearheaded by Jerold Kayden, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design and co-chair of the Urban Planning and Design Department, GSD students and faculty members have begun research under the auspices of The Harvard-Netherlands Project on Climate Change, Water, Land Development, and Adaptation, subtitled “Water Is Our Enemy, Water Is Our Friend.”  The two-and-a-half-year project will examine how land planning and development strategies may best take into account the water-based impacts of climate change.

more >>

MArch student Jungmin Nam wins first prize in BSA competition

MArch candidate Jungmin Nam was awarded First Prize for Design Excellence in the 2009 “In the Pursuit of Housing” competition.  His project, “Toward the Emerald Necklace, Housing as a Visual Mediation,” and the other winning submissions were the focus of a special forum at the Residential Design and Construction convention and tradeshow in Boston, April 1-2, 2009.  The jury comments will be available at RDC and thereafter on the BSA awards website.

Harvard Design Magazine Editor William Saunders to address next steps in architecture

William Saunders, editor of Harvard Design Magazine, will speak at “The Next Step: Project Architecture” conference on May 7 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He  and other panelists will discuss whether today, in the time of globalized capitalism, it’s still possible to practice architecture as a project; that is, as a practice of architectural transformation of reality. Other speakers include Prof. Kenneth Frampton, Columbia University;  Prof. Dr. Luis Fernádez-Galiano, School of Architecture, Madrid University, and editor of AV/Arquitectura Viva, Madrid; and  Prof. Dr. Rado Riha, Institute of Philosophy, Centre for Scientific Research at the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art in Ljubljana. The conference is organized by  The Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, in co-operation with Zavod ARK – the Institute for Architecture and Culture, and the Faculty of Architecture University of Ljubljana.