GSD joins Harvard’s “green” celebration with panel on sustainable design >>

Interest in green building is high at the GSD judging by the attendance at a lecture on October 21. “Designing for Sustainability” was part of the popular and event-packed sustainability celebration instituted this year by Harvard President Drew Faust. Participants in the panel were introduced by Jerold Kayden, Co-chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design.

[Harvard Gazette; October 23, 2008]

Danish planner Bent Flyvbjerg on the follies of megaprojects >>

What do the Big Dig, the Chunnel and Denver’s International Airport have in common? According to Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor of Planning at the Department of Development and Planning at Aalborg University in Denmark, all three megaprojects suffered from large cost overruns and benefit shortfalls. In his lecture, The Follies of Infrastructure: Why the Worst Projects Get Built, and How to Avoid It, he noted that large-scale projects that look best on paper are often those with highly inflated benefit-cost ratios. The problem is deep-seated in policy and planning for major infrastructure. Flyvbjerg’s lecture showed a way out. 
 
[The Harvard Crimson; October 21, 2008]

Harvard Graduate School of Design Concentrates on Sustainability
New degree concentration pushes eco-friendly design forward >>

[AIArchitect, October 17, 2008]

Prof. Jerold Kayden screens film, leads discussion: NYC cityscape formed skateboarding >>
 
“Deathbowl to Downtown,” a new movie which was screened last Friday at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), argues that building practices adopted in the 1960s inadvertently helped spark the explosion in skateboarding culture that has occurred over the last 30 years.

In 1961, New York City adopted new building regulations designed to encourage more modern architecture and create more privately-owned public space. As part of this effort, the city offered extra floorspace in return for the inclusion of plazas and arcades in building plans. This “inventive zoning” offered huge economic benefits to developers. Professor Jerold Kayden of the GSD has studied these effects and is featured in “Deathbowl to Downtown.”

[The Harvard Crimson, October 17, 2008]

MDesS candidate Marrikka Trotter beautifies city lot >>

The garden of 500 flowers, made by the kids in the Red Oak Summer Program at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center from painted recycled bottles, is Trotter’s second effort to beautify the city’s small in-between spaces that often get overlooked. The city has a lien on the fenced-off Hudson Street lot, which is owned by an absentee landlord, and Trotter’s nonprofit organization, the Department of Micro-Urbanism, did a guerrilla-style installation last month peeling back the fence to lay in the garden.

[Boston Herald; October 15, 2008]

GSD students develop plan for school for the deaf >>

Andy Lantz, MArch ’10; Brett Albert, MArch ’10; and Jonathan Evans, MArch ’10 have designed a 55,000-sqaure-foot, four-story structure for the Beverly School for the Deaf in Beverly, Massachusetts.

[Harvard Gazette; October 8, 2008]

Prof. Alex Krieger discusses Boston’s past and present on NPR >>

In part two of the series, Boston By Design, reporter Ken Shulman, along with some of the area’s top architects, including Alex Krieger, professor in practice of urban design, lend an ear to Boston’s past and present, listening to the “Song of the City.”

[Boston By Design: Song of the City, by Ken Shulman; WBUR-FM; October 7, 2008]

Deathbowl to Downtown: cityscape’s influence on skateboarding >>

Board meeting. Former Brookline-ite Coan “Buddy” Nichols and his co-director Rick Charnoski will roll into the Harvard Graduate School of Design Friday to screen their documentary, “Deathbowl to Downtown: The Evolution of Skateboarding in New York City.” They’ll be joined by urban planning professor Jerold Kayden, whom they interviewed about how 1960s zoning laws shaped the landscape that would become a playground for city skaters.

(Click image to view larger)

[Boston Globe; October 7, 2008]

Prof. Hashim Sarkis edits book on Josep Lluis Sert

Josep Lluis Sert: The Architect of Urban Design 1953-1969, coedited by Hashim Sarkis, Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies, examines the emergence and evolution of the discipline of urban design as articulated through the work of Josep Lluis Sert (1902-1983), one of the profession’s most influential practitioners and theorists. Eric Mumford coedited the book with Neyran Turan, instructor in urban planning and design. The newly published book (Yale University Press and Harvard University Graduate School of Design) presents essays by leading scholars, including “Sert, CIAM, and the GSD,” by Eduard Sekler, former Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Art Emeritus and professor of architecture emeritus; and “Planos, Planes y Planificacion,” by Timothy Hyde, assistant professor of architecture.

Video of Prof. Michael Hays and Buckminster Fuller exhibition at Whitney Museum

[Architectural Record video library]

To view the video, click on the image in top row, second from left: http://construction.com/video/

Hashim Sarkis designs for Lebanese communities by collaborating with them >>

[Architectural Record; October 2008]