A View on Harvard GSD Vol I

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This publication began as an experiment. Last summer we invited all of our graduating students to make a one-page contribution to View, a new book solely dedicated to their work. The normal practice would have been to organize the work by subject area, but instead of dividing the book according to, for example, the academic departments, the submissions were arranged alphabetically. This approach instantaneously produced a sense of cross-disciplinarity that complemented the other forms of collaboration already embedded in the work.

This year, we have been working with Tank, a magazine whose reach extends from art and architecture to fashion and fiction, to develop a new model, one that combined View's far-ranging qualities with an almost sculptural, design-led approach. We hope it proves an enduring record of the exciting work that is being produced at Harvard's Graduate School of Design this year.

With this book, we invited both students and faculty to contribute. The content is a cross-section of the thinking and ideas that are currently prevalent at the GSD. The alphabetical—and therefore, to some degree random—arrangement of the material provides surprising and productive juxtapositions, which we hope will provide the basis for new forms of transdisciplinary practice in the years ahead.

Many thanks to our students, faculty, and staff, as well as to Tank, for making this experiment a reality.

Mohsen Mostafavi
Dean
Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design
Harvard University
Graduate School of Design

MAY 2009

 

To purchase a copy of this book, see TANK magazine >>