Bay State Commons Cohousing, a “typology-challenging 45,000-square-foot multifamily structure,” recently broke ground for construction. Designed by French 2D, an architecture studio co-founded by Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture Jenny French, the project won a P/A Award from Architect Magazine. According to the studio, “The innovative 30-unit cohousing community is the first of its type under Malden’s newly created Cohousing Zoning Ordinance, the result of two years of incredible community work and support.”
A GSD team led by Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, lecturer in Landscape Architecture; Seth Denizen, 2019–2020 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow and lecturer in Landscape Architecture; and David Moreno Mateos, assistant professor of Landscape Architecture won a 2019 SOM Research Prize. Their project, “The Right to The Sewage,” will “evaluate the successes and failures of the Mezquital Valley as the world’s largest experiment in fertilizing agriculture with human wastewater. Almost 200,000 acres of land in the fertile Mezquital Valley are irrigated with the untreated sewage of Mexico City. The project will ask what hydraulic, soil, ecosystem, social, and policy conditions can increase chances for success and what its prospects for socio-ecological sustainability are.”
Heidi K. Brandow (MDes ’21), Elsa Hoover (MArch ’23), Jaz Bonnin (MDes ’21), Zoë Toledo (MArch ’23), and Taylor Cook (MArch ’21) founded the Harvard Indigenous Design Collective (HIDC) with the mission to “support the education and work of our Indigenous architects, planners, designers, scholars, allies, and alumni of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The HIDC promotes design by and for Indigenous communities as foundational to the history, theory, and practice of design fields on these Native homelands. The Harvard Indigenous Design Collective acknowledges that the land on which Harvard sits is the occupied territory of the Massachusett people, and a gathering place for nations since time immemorial.”
Nashra Balagamwala (MDes ’21) was named one of Forbes “30 Under 30” in The Arts. According to Forbes, Balagamwala “designed a board game to raise awareness about arranged marriage and its challenges. Other games she has created include Paltering Politicians, a card game that makes a statement about corruption and hypocrisy in politics.”
Michael Manfredi, design critic in Urban Planning and Design and expert-in-residence, and Marion Weiss, his partner at architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi, won the 2020 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. They are recognized for their work in redefining the relationship between landscape, architecture, and urbanism, which as UVA School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman notes, “not only underscores the significance that Thomas Jefferson attributed to these intertwined realms, but also speaks to the necessity, in our current age, to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and create newly integrated cultural-ecological paradigms.” Fellow recipients of this year’s awards include Sonia Sotomayor, associate justice of the Supreme Court; Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Ted Turner, media pioneer.