Student Projects
Women in Design (WiD) Spring Symposium
March 13, 14, 20, April 14
Women in Design (WiD) works to increase the visibility of practicing women designers and to further incorporate their experiences into our education at the Graduate School of Design (GSD) at Harvard University. WiD offers a supportive network and a critical forum in which students from all departments of the school —
Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design—discuss topics ranging from studying at the GSD to operating in the professional environment. Other activities, including conversations with faculty and visiting practitioners, aim at connecting current students to practicing designers while simultaneously addressing
some of the fundamental issues students face when they transition into the professional world. Recently WiD hosted larger-scale symposia on issues facing women in the design fields today.
Archi-Olympics: The Shaping of a New Beijing
March 15, 2008
Sponsored by ChinaGSD
The event will address the unprecedented architectural and urban transformation of Beijing – perhaps the largest such undertaking in the world – as motivated by the 2008 Olympic Games. The symposium will focus on a critique of the main architectural works and urban transformation in Beijing, followed by a discussion on how changes from the Olympics will affect social, economic, architectural and urban development in the capital city.
OUR COMMUNITIES: FUTUREPRESENT - April 3, 2008
A symposium and initiative to increase diversity in the design professions.
Structures for Inclusion Conference - April 4-6 2008
Last spring, 13 GSD students attended the Structures for Inclusion 7 conference (SFI7) at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Highlights of the weekend included other students' enthusiastic response given high GSD turnout, and the GSD alumni presence among panelists (five of the twelve speakers were GSD graduates: Justin Lee, Phoebe Crisman, Nils Gore, Robert Corser and Lori Ryker). The GSD students met with Bryan Bell, the director of Design Corps and the SFI7 planning committee, with the hope that they could host the next conference at the GSD. The Dean supported the proposal and a new student group, SFI@GSD was formed. It has been busy organizing this spring's conference.
Butaro Hospital Design Project, Rwanda
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This project is a design collaboration between the nonprofit Partners In Health and a group of students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, for a new district hospital in the Burera district of northwest Rwanda.
project_KHAYELITSHA
Grant provided by GSD Community Service Fellowship Program (Summer 2007)
Ashley Heeren and Patrick Stowe Jones
Blog by students
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Project Khayelitsha is an effort to design and assist in construction of a new multipurpose community center in Khayelitsha, South Africa. The recently acquired site provides an opportunity to create a center which fosters a sense of community ownership, and a space serving an entire neighborhood with education and development projects. Khayelitsha is the second largest township in South Africa, home to over 500,000 people. This project is affiliated with Art Aids Art and MonkeyBiz, nonprofit organizations working with a South African collective of women artists to create employment and empowerment for disadvantaged women through beadwork in the township.
Design Initiative for Youth (DIY)
In the fall of 2006, GSD students signed up to teach a design apprenticeship for Citizen Schools' 8th Grade Academy and since then have been working with a group of 10-12 8th grade students every semester to teach them basic concepts about design. At the end of each semester, students showcase their new knowledge in a final project called "WOW." The hope is to get the students excited about potential futures in design, possibly leading to their participation in Career Discovery once they're in high school or even pursuing an education in design.
Citizen Schools is an organization that works with middle-school students to 'bridge' the gap between elementary school and high school, using tutoring, writing workshops, and weekly apprenticeships to help students prepare for a college-track high school experience. The apprenticeships are 11 weeks long, taught by volunteer teachers in a variety of subjects so that students can sign up for the one that most interests them.
Siqinrilaq Tatqiq (Moon with no Sun): A Study of Mid-Winter Arctic Landscape - Winner of the Penny White Prize (Fall 2007)
Matthew Jull (MArch I 7) and Leena Cho (MLA I 3)
Siqinrilaq Tatqiq (moon with no sun) is the Inuit expression for December, when the sun remains continuously below the horizon and the arctic landscape is in a state of frozen darkness. The Inuit have lived in an extreme climate for thousands of years in a landscape that largely consists of snow, ice, water, and rock. For this study, we will travel to an Inuit community above the Arctic Circle in the month of December to accomplish the following: 1) to study and document the ways in which Inuit perceive and relate to the mid-winter arctic landscape, and 2) to document and research typology, visibility, reflection, refraction, shadow, and texture of arctic light and ice/water conditions. Our goal is to learn the functional and poetic relationships of the Inuit to the arctic environment, the phenomenological nuances they have developed, and to contrast this with our own analysis. We believe this study is timely given changing global climate and new economic development that is significantly impacting the arctic and traditional Inuit ways of life.
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Christoph Ibele MArch I 2009, Aron Chang MArch I 2009, and Sabeen Hasan MArch I 2009, attended the Design Corps summer studio in Waveland, Mississippi. The projects were involved in the design and construction of a single family home and all its’ components. It entailed modular construction and local material sourcing and salvaging, part of a broader effort to provide disaster relief in the Gulf Coast.