News

October 2019 News Roundup

Interboro's engagement event with Youth Advisory Committee to design a Forest Park Natural Playscape

Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations Along Urban Corridors in India

Sai Balakrishnan‘s new book Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations Along Urban Corridors in India from the University of Pennsylvania Press will be released on November 1st.  A related panel discussion moderated by Rahul Mehrotra will take place on November 5th at the Harvard South Asia Institute.

Diane Davis was a guest speaker on the topic of resilience at the 2019 Conscious Cities Festival at the Pratt Institute in New York, hosted by The Centre for Conscious Design. Davis, along with Maria Atuesta (Ph.D. candidate), recently published a research paper supported by the Joint Center for Housing Studies titled “Progressive Politics and Inclusive Social Housing: Enablers and Barriers to Transformative Change in Bogota.”

Daniel D’Oca and his firm, Interboro Partners, designed a seventeen-acre natural playscape for the City of St. Louis’ Forest Park. The city just broke ground on the playscape and it is planned to open next summer.

Forest Park Natural Playscape, Spring Activity Area

Christopher Herbert will be giving the opening remarks at an upcoming event, “Housing and Innovation: Lessons from the Ivory Prize,” hosted by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies on November 15th. Innovative strategies on how to overcome challenges of affordable housing will be discussed.

Bing Wang has been appointed as Advisor of Master Planning by the Royal Commission of Al Ula in Saudi Arabia. Also, Wang, along with former MDes student Van-Tuong Nguyen, gave a talk titled “Co-Living in the Sharing Economy,” which was sponsored by the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The Harvard Gazette’s interview with Tom Hollister and Katie Lapp explored Harvard’s positive annual financial report and touted the success and promise of Executive Education across the University. While growth of Executive Education university-wide is at 12%, the GSD’s Executive Education grew at more than double that rate last year, at 27%.

Jorge Silvetti and Rodolfo Machado are awarded the 2019 Druker Award & Lecture. Silvetti and Machado will be receiving and giving respectively, at the Boston Public Library on Saturday November 9, 2019. The Griffin Award is presented annually to a speaker or speakers who has or have made outstanding and important contributions to the world of urban art and architecture. This award is a reproduction of the historic copper griffins gracing the roofline of the Boston Public Library’s iconic McKim Building (1895), designed by acclaimed architect Charles Follen McKim.

Toni Griffin is awarded Social Justice Design Award by the Institute for Public Architecture. IPA uses design to challenge social and physical inequities in the city and believes in a future in which design is used as tool for facilitating social justice and the public has a voice in all decisions that shape our built environment. Griffin will join two other honorees, Deputy Mayor Vicki Been and artist Mary Miss at the IPA’s 7th Fall Fete on November 13 at JACK Studios.

Jesse Keenan leads and serves as Editor of the publication Community Development Innovation Review, “Strategies to Address Climate Change Risk in Low- and Moderate-income Communities” published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. It was discussed as part of a larger conversation on the New York Times regarding how climate change causes financial risks and their ramifications. The conversation continues on a Bloomberg article, with alarming statisticsIn other research, Keenan’s study of the U.S cities identifies Duluth, Minnesota as a well-situated climate sanctuary, which was further discussed on Reuters and Inverse. In a Washington Post article, Keenan made a comment about the threat of water rising to stadiums along the coast and their supporting transportation and infrastructure.

Student groups are active at the GSD. A new student group: Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA), recently forms for the community. Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW, a larger Harvard University-wide published a zine “What Will It Take?” on Strike Authorization Vote.

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) announced their 2019 student awards. Six awards went to GSD students in all categories. The Student Awards will be presented at the 2019 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Diego, November 15-18.

Photosynthesis of Galaxy by Panharith Ean

Panharith Ean (MArch I ’20) was selected as one of the top five finalists in the Samsung Mobile Design Competition, a global context calls for the next paradigm of mobile wallpaper, incorporating interactivity and contextual awareness. Ean recently presented his design in London before a jury panel.

“Style Worry or #FOMO” curated by Max Kuo is exhibited on the Experiments Wall, displaying works produced for a seminar under the same name. The exhibition makes explicit the wide formal variety of architectural work that is not only coursing through GSD but also a widespread condition of our contemporary moment. This exhibition also underscores disciplinary concerns of architecture where research and scrutiny of how to make form is of primary concern.

“Landscape: A Human Centered Notion of Existence” by Shikun Zhu (MDes ’20) is exhibited on the Student Forum Exhibition Wall, the second floor of Gund Hall. It exhibits a series for photography records a range of landscape as well as existence, from our artificial objects in nature to our presence in nature and urban environment.