Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Alternative Futures Collaborative
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has recently established a research platform that aims to mobilize the creative role of design and planning towards imagining better futures for society. The collaborative builds on the intellectual and creative resources of the GSD to take on the challenges of projective thinking. It focuses on imagining the ways in which technology and the media impact the shape of future cities and buildings. It also highlights questions about environmental change and the role that architecture and planning can play in redressing ecological problems. In so doing, the collaborative aims to prepare students to become leaders in speculative thinking and in generating imaginative solutions. The collaborative aspires to build a truly multi-disciplinary platform that reaches out to the rest of the university to help mobilize the creative dimension of the different schools at Harvard and their abilities to imagine better futures (better workplaces, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, etc.)
The collaborative’s first undertakings include a series of colloquia on the idea of the future, on the future of urban regions, and on the impact of new media on the physical environment. It is also in the process of planning new courses and research projects related to these topics.
The collaborative was launched by Dean Mohsen Mostafavi in the fall of 2008 and will hold its first colloquium in the spring of 2009. It is directed by Hashim Sarkis, Aga Khan Professor at the GSD.
For any further information, please contact:
Hashim Sarkis at hsarkis@gsd.harvard.edu, Phone: (617) 496-0330 or
Aimee Taberner at ataberner@gsd.harvard.edu, Phone (617) 495-9581.
For more information on the collaborative's upcoming History of the Future Colloquium, please see the Colloquium Website.