GSD News Archive: September 2007
Mohsen Mostafavi is named dean of the GSDHarvard University President Drew Faust introduced GSD Dean Designate Mohsen Mostafavi to the GSD community on September 20th in Piper Auditorium. Dean Designate Mostafavi also spoke at the occasion.
An accomplished academic leader, architect, and scholar, Mostafavi is currently the dean of Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning, where he is also the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture. Formerly an associate professor of architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD) and director of the Masters of Architecture I program, he served for nine years as chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, one of Europe's foremost schools of design, before his appointment at Cornell. "Mohsen Mostafavi has an impressive record of leadership at two distinguished schools of architecture and design, and his intellectual vitality and international outlook promise to serve our Design School well," said Faust. "His interests extend across the GSD's principal domains of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning and design, and his leadership style is marked by an openness to new ideas and an instinct for crossing boundaries in creative ways. He is also a highly respected scholar and educator who has longstanding ties to the Design School and who bridges the worlds of theory and practice with unusual aplomb. It will be a pleasure to welcome him back to Harvard and to work with him as he and his colleagues create the brightest possible future for the GSD." "I am deeply honored and excited by my appointment to the GSD," said Mostafavi. "I look forward to working with the School's extraordinary students, faculty, and staff. To return to Harvard at such a pivotal moment and to have the opportunity to work with President Faust is an incredible privilege. I know she shares my belief in the importance of design as an indispensable part of making the world a better place and the importance of collaboration across the University. It is particularly gratifying to return to Harvard, where I spent many happy years." full Harvard Gazette article... [Harvard Gazette, August 10, 2007] image: Mohsen Mostafavi, photo by Jason Koski
Architectural Record article... [Architectural Record, by John Gendall, August 22, 2007]
Harvard Magazine article, "A New Dean Designs without Borders"... [Harvard Magazine, November/December 2007]
Azure Magazine "A New Dean for the GSD"...
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San Francisco Bay Area GSD Landscape Architecture Faculty and Alumni Take Lion’s Share of ASLA Awards George Hargreaves, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture; James A. Lord (MLA ’96) and Roderick R. Wyllie (MLA ’98), both of SurfaceDesign, Inc., are honored. For a list of additional GSD faculty, alumni, and students who received this year’s ASLA awards, please scroll down the page to September 11, 2007.
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Prof. Toshiko Mori to speak at MOMA symposium on Women in Modernism Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture, will participate in the symposium, "Women in Modernism: Making Places in Architecture," to be held on October 25th at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This program explores the role that architectural arbiters have had and continue to have in shaping the history and defining the legacy of modern architecture in the United States. Through a lecture and discussion, scholars, curators, and architects address the process of selection and the values that they employ each time they design a course or exhibition, or publish a book or an article. The symposium is sponsored by MOMA and the Beverly Wills Architecture Foundation. See the MOMA website for additional information. |
Prof. Preston Scott Cohen Wins the Taiyuan Art Museum International Competition
The Urban Planning Department and Research Center of Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China recently announced that Preston Scott Cohen, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture, won the Taiyuan Art Museum International Competition. Located on an island adjacent to the Fen River in the Chang Feng Culture and Business District, the proposed 22,000 m Taiyuan Art Museum will be one of the five most important cultural projects of Shanxi Province. Together with the Great Theater of Shanxi, Shanxi Library, the Science and Technology Museum of Shanxi, and the Geography Museum of Shanxi, it will form a group of architectural pieces on the island which will symbolize the city’s culture life. Cohen is known for his inventive use of light and geometric form. His most renowned project to date is the 20,000 m Tel Aviv Museum of Art, currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2009. Cohen’s design for Tel Aviv has garnered international awards including the Progressive Architecture Award and the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Cohen’s design for Taiyuan offers a new approach for establishing relationships between place, technology and artistic culture, past and present. The building’s form is inspired by lore from local traditional culture and by the extraordinary agricultural landscapes native to the Shanxi Province. The jury found “the shape of the design to be very attractive and the interior spaces colorful and inviting.” The new museum will exhibit ancient and modern Chinese calligraphy, sculpture, apparel, and painting; folk kirigami, shadowgraphics, and lacquer painting art; crockery art, photography, complex media, drawings, prints, caricature, and performance art. The three invited finalists of the international competition were KSP (Shanghai) Inc. of Germany; RGBA Inc. of Canada; and Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. of the United States. The declaration was presented by the members of the final jury: Jin Qimin, Wang Weimin, Chen Jianqiu, Geng Yanbo, member of the Standing Committee of Taiyuan City, the Standing Vice Mayor, and several leaders of the Culture and Television Broadcasting Department of Taiyuan City. |
Architecture Critic Robert Campbell of the Boston Globe calls GSD Ecology.Design.Synergy exhibition “superb.”
“[The exhibition is], itself, an example of an instructive and delightful environment…..I hope all students of architecture will visit [the exhibition],” writes Campbell.
Read full Boston Globe article...
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Herzog and de Meuron win Praemium Imperiale
Arthur Rotch Design Critics in Architecture, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, have won the architecture category in the world’s most lucrative art award.
By Heidi Ancell [BD/Building Design UK, Sept. 21, 2007]
Read full article at Building Design. |
Professor of Urban Planning Susan Fainstein quoted in The Economist Special Report: Enduring Attraction Success may come at a price, but not one seems put off “The income discrepancy between haves and have-nots in the world’s financial capitals has not been this great since America’s “gilded age” in the late 19th century,” says Susan Fainstein, an expert on urban issues at Harvard. “The trend began in the 1980s and has become stronger, despite temporary blips such as the dotcom bust in 2001. A report on wealth inequality in Britain in July found that the gap between rich and poor is now bigger than it has been for 40 years, with the proportion of middle-class households shrinking.”
[The Economist, September 13, 2007]
Read full article at Economist.com. |
Welcome to the Land of ‘Wow-Factor’ Museums (Major museum projects designed by Rafael Moneo, Josep Lluis Sert Professor of Architecture; and Arthur Rotch Design Critics in Architecture, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.)
Photo: Matias Costa for The New York Times Part of the major expansion of the Prado Museum in Madrid, which has added display space for art and entrances for visitors. By Andrew Ferren
". . . On Oct. 30, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain will cut the ribbon on the glorious new Jerónimos Wing of the Museo del Prado (Paseo del Prado; 34-91-330-2800; www.museoprado.es; 6 euros). Designed by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo the 150-million-euro expansion finally brings this nearly 200-year-old institution into the modern era. . . But keep the scissors handy — just a few weeks after they cut the ribbon at the Prado, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía will be across the street providing the same service at the new CaixaForum-Madrid (Paseo del Prado 36; 34-902-22-30-40; www.fundacio.lacaixa.es; free), run by the philanthropic arm of the Catalan bank La Caixa. Designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in a former electrical power station, the new exhibition space adds to the cultural density of one of the world's largest constellations of art museums, anchored by the Prado, Thyssen-Bornemisza and Reina Sofía museums. . . ."
[The New York Times, September 23, 2007]
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Harvard GSD Associate Professor of Architecture Michael Meredith Designs a New Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art Featured architect Michael Meredith, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, has designed and adapted the exhibition for the ICA’s galleries.
Work of GSD Department of Architecture Chair Toshiko Mori Featured Among Highlights of the Best Contemporary American Design One of the featured designs is by Robert P. Hubbard Professor in Practice of Architecture Toshiko Mori, Chair of the School of Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, who created the Newspaper Café, a reading room featuring hundreds of daily newspapers—as the newspapers change each day, so does the structure.
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"Ecology.Design.Synergy” Exhibition Opens in Cambridge By Russell Fortmeyer
Behnisch Architekten is no stranger to the Boston area. The Stuttgart, Germany-based firm, which also has an office in Los Angeles, designed Cambridge’s Genzyme Center, a lab that also happens to be a LEED Platinum project (Genzyme Center). More recently, the firm has embarked on a range of projects with the Stuttgart-based consulting firm, Transsolar ClimateEngineering, that represent some of the most progressive sustainable design approaches in contemporary architecture. The exhibition “Ecology.Design.Synergy,” featuring the work of Behnisch Architekten and Transsolar ClimateEngineering, opened in Cambridge in August. The photos are from the Berlin installation from earlier in 2007. The fruits of this collaboration are on display in a joint exhibition, “Ecology.Design.Synergy,” that is currently at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, but is slated to travel around the United States through 2008.
[Sept. 10, 2007, GreenSource/Architectural Record. Photo © Frank Ockert] Read full article at Greensource Construction website. |
(Prof. Jerold Kayden weighs in on protecting private space for public use...) Changes Are Afoot at Lincoln Plaza By David W. Dunlap
At 30 Lincoln Plaza, a serene and green public space. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)
Often, the most important thing missing from privately owned public space is the public. Many plazas and arcades built since the 1960s, as a requirement of new development or as a zoning incentive, are unused by the people who were supposed to benefit from them. Either they offered few amenities in the first place or they have been neglected — even padlocked — since they opened. Or both. A pleasant exception to this rule is the 30 Lincoln Plaza plaza, reachable from Broadway, 62nd Street and 63rd Street, which draws dozens of people through the day and into the evening. Designed by M. Paul Friedberg and developed by the Milstein family, it opened in 1978. Its red-brick mounds create a meandering pond fed by cascading waterfalls. They are framed by tall trees, small lawns and bright flower beds. “This landscaped scene is one of the more felicitous to be found in the city’s collection,” Jerold S. Kayden wrote in Privately Owned Public Space: The New York Experience, a comprehensive survey of such spaces, published in 2000. He said the landscaping “performs the minor miracle of making this space feel parklike, as if a patch of Central Park had jumped over Central Park West.”
[September 18, 2007, The New York Times]
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September 11, 20072007 ASLA awards to be conferred to GSD landscape architecture faculty, alumni and students at ASLA Annual Conference in October
Professional Awards: Gary Hilderbrand, Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture, MLA ’85, and Doug Reed, MLA ’81, general design award of excellence, for Leventritt Garden at The Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University Andrea Cochran, MLA ’79, general design award for Curran House and another private residence, San Francisco Peter Walker, MLA ’57, and his firm PWP, general design award for One North Wacker Drive, Chicago Martha Schwartz, Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, DES ’77, general design award for Mesa Arts Center in Arizona. Professor Schwartz will also participate in a panel discussion, “Newsmakers Roundtable,” moderated by Christopher Hawthorne of the Los Angeles Times, at the Annual Conference.
Tom Oslund, MLA ’86, general design award for University of Minnesota Duluth, Swenson Science Building Richard Shaw, MLA ’76, and Design Workshop, general design award for Glacier Club, Durango, Colorado, residential design honor award for Woody Creek Garden, Colorado Jonathan Levi, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, with Bergmeyer Associates, general design award for Harvard Graduate Student Housing
Mario Schjetnan, LF ’85, residential design award for Malinalco House in Mexico Marta Fry, MLA ’86, residential design award for Sonoma Vineyard, Glen Ellen, California George Hargreaves, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, MLA ’79, and Hargreaves Associates, award for analysis and planning of Hunters Point Waterfront Park, San Francisco Sasaki Associates (Dennis Pieprz, MAUD ’86, President), analysis and planning awards for Penn Connects: A Vision for the Future, Philadelphia, and University of Balmand Campus Master Plan, Lebanon EDAW (Joe Brown, MLAUD ’72, President), analysis and planning award, Atlanta BeltLine Redevelopment Plan Kenneth Helphand, MLA ’72, research award of excellence for the book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime
“Very spiritual and well resolved on the land. Excellent use of sun/shade and the well thought out site plan." — 2007 Student Awards Jury Comments
first image: The central lawn of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University second image: Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Art Museum third image: One North Wacker Drive, Chicago fourth image: Pte Oyate Academy, classrooms and athletics facilities - perspectives |
Professor Joan Busquets Honored as Distinguished Chair Joan Busquets, Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, has been named the distinguished Cátedra Luis Barragán 2007. The annual nomination for this chair by the Tecnológico de Monterrey en Guadalajara, México, entitles a leader in the design profession to present his thoughts on the development of contemporary urban architecture. Previous years Cátedra Luis Barragán nominees have included architects Tadao Ando, Ricardo Legorreta, and Eduardo Souto de Moura. |
Traveling “Transurban” Exhibition Opens in Madrid
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Adjunct Professor of Architecture Andrea Leers Appointed to BCDC |
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GSD Aga Khan Fellow, Aziza Chaouni’s, MArch ’05, competition entry for City Hall featured in ArchitectureBoston, gallery exhibitionArchitectureBoston invited Aziza Chaouni’s firm, kuo.chaouni, with Uenal Karamuk, among six young design teams to consider the “sins” of Boston City Hall and to imagine ways in which the building could be modified, both to correct its failures and to address the changes in its social, political, and physical context. Their proposals offer fresh visions of what City Hall might be, and they help to identify the essential elements of the building—the powerful presence that has drawn legions of supporters to its defense. The kuo.chaouni/Uenal Karamuk presentation will be on exhibition with those of the other design teams at the Pink Comma Gallery, with a reception on September 15, 6-8pm. All are invited. Pink Comma Gallery, 81B Wareham St., Boston. www.pinkcomma.com full ArchitectureBoston article... |
Charles Anderson, MLA ’85, Landscape Architecture, General Design Category, Honor Award for the Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, Washington. (Lead Designer: 
James A. Lord, MLA ’96, and Moritz Moellers, MLA ’98, of Surfacedesign Inc, residential design award for Erman Residence, San Francisco
Alex Krieger, Professor in Practice of Urban Design, participates in BSA Roundtable