Class Day at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is a celebratory time for graduating students and their families, a day to honor achievements and reflect on the potential of a design education to impact the world beyond Harvard. In past years, invited speakers from outside the GSD community have joined the proceedings to share perspectives on design shaped through their own professional, academic, and philanthropic pursuits. The Class of 2025 will hear from someone who is already well-known at Gund Hall, and whose work is at the forefront of what design means for the world today—a world in conflict.
Malkit Shoshan, a design critic in Urban Planning and Design at the GSD, has built a practice and pedagogical methodology that foregrounds how designers can understand the sources of conflict and ultimately envision a more just and peaceful world. Much of her early work originated in the specific histories and geographies of Israel and Palestine. As founder and director of the architectural think tank Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST), Shoshan explores spaces of conflict in the region, foregrounds their histories, and envisions possible futures.
Over the past year, Shoshan has shared her perspective with the GSD in the role of Senior Loeb Scholar, another position that, in the past, has been filled by visiting scholars and practitioners. In this vital role Shoshan, presented her work and led a series of conversations that brought together interdisciplinary participants. She challenged the community to think deeply about how design can both address conflict in the present and define spaces of care and repair. Shoshan’s visually rich presentations featured layered images that evoke the complexity of her subject. Archival materials, detailed geographic studies, and personal stories came together to drive new narratives.
An ethos of design informed by a commitment to human rights underlies Shoshan’s courses at the GSD, including Forms of Assembly, an advanced research seminar for Master in Design Studies (MDes) students to prepare open projects. The course encourages approaches to design that inspire democratic processes and broad participatory discussions. It is in that spirit that Shoshan will address her students and the wider community. In advance of her address, Shoshan spoke with the GSD’s William Smith about her work and her message to the Class of 2025.
Given the many projects that you currently have underway as a teacher, scholar, and practitioner, why was it important to you to take on the additional role of Senior Loeb Scholar?
My work is situated at the intersection of spatial design and human rights. We at FAST use architecture, urban planning, and participatory design processes to make visible and address public concerns, co-developing alternative visions through design. We primarily collaborate with institutions such as UN agencies but also work directly with local communities in conflict-affected regions. Our initial projects, which started decades ago, were in Israel-Palestine, my homeland.
The Senior Loeb Scholarship, I believe, was a response to the events following October 7th. The brutal Hamas attack on Israeli civilians was devastating, as was the subsequent Israeli response. We are part of an international community, interconnected by shared humanity. Moreover, the technologies available us today project the news in eerie high resolution and in real-time, straight into our mobile devices. Even at a distance, we are close to each other.
This period was overwhelming and deeply personal. It was especially painful for me: most of my family is in Israel, and I have friends in Gaza. I have been working on a project since 2020 with a group of Gazan farmers, studying how the Israeli blockade and occupation protocols impact daily life on their small farm. This project was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Sadly, the farm has now been destroyed; many farmers have been killed, and those who remain are living in tents, surviving each day, hour by hour, minute by minute.
All of this is part of my personal background, but I was not alone in feeling overwhelmed. At the GSD, I had students eager to talk about these issues. They wanted a safe space for conversations—personal and professional. Because we are all driven by hope, I used the Senior Loeb Scholarship as an umbrella to organize a series of lectures, events, conversations, and workshops with students and practitioners—including scholars, policymakers, civil servants, artists, architects, and human rights lawyers. The goal was to explore how injustice manifests at different scales and in various spaces and to learn how spatial design can contribute to addressing these complex issues.
One of the discussions you organized focused on the theme of “care.” How does care manifest in design?
An important aspect for me was emphasizing not only the humanization of each other but also care amidst the violence that surrounds us. We cannot ignore or suppress these narratives. In her book The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit writes:
“What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and prisons out of them. To be without a story is to be lost in a vast world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.”
I often cite this quote, as well as the long and important essay of Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. Sontag discusses the role of empathy and imagination, with a virtual meditative conversation with Virginia Woolf—highlighting the challenge we face in truly understanding and imagining others’ experiences and suffering. These writings inspired the framework for my events: how can we, during the most difficult times, put ourselves in someone else’s story? How can design help foster empathy and expand our imagination?
Design represents a way to imagine what else is possible, to speculate on a future beyond violence and despair. It provides a space where we can rethink and reimagine our possibilities, offering hope in a very challenging world. Escaping this sense of helplessness is difficult, but I believe that engaging with design as a form of active hope can be part of the solution.
By sharing your work and leading discussions informed by decades of practice, you gave the GSD community and important perspective. What did you learn through the conversations you inspired as Senior Loeb Scholar?
The role was an opportunity to create a space for meaningful dialogue around complex, often contested issues. These conversations are inherently challenging because they touch on deeply held beliefs, systemic inequalities, and emotional investments. The nature of these discussions underscores the difficulty in addressing contentious topics; many individuals tend to be entrenched in their opinions or operate within echo chambers, facilitated by social media and technological platforms that often reinforce rather than challenge individual perspectives.
Through guiding these discussions, I learned that while the space for dialogue can be fraught with discomfort, it is also profoundly necessary. It’s a space where confusion and vulnerability are not only inevitable but also valuable. Encountering students and community members who are initially shy or unsure about forming opinions reminded me that many people need time, patience, and a safe environment to engage meaningfully with complex issues. It became clear that the process of questioning, openness, and active listening are essential components of growth—not just for individuals but for the collective community. It is not about having answers, but about listening, and that is something that I also had to work and need to keep working on myself; it is so much easier to speak than to listen and just realize that there are always so many narratives at place, and that’s OK.
My main goal with these events was to hold space—creating an environment where difficult conversations can take place ideally without judgment. This meant acknowledging the emotional labor involved and recognizing that meaningful engagement requires time and care. The Senior Loeb Scholars program provided a valuable umbrella for these efforts, demonstrating that institutional commitment to such dialogue can build trust and slowly encourage a deeper understanding of the situations and of ourselves.
Importantly, I feel that we need to find ways to embed these kinds of spaces in a more systemic way to allow sustaining these formal and informal critical conversations beyond isolated events. Designing intentional structures which is also not overly institutional and prescribed in advance within academic and professional communities can enable ongoing engagement with uncomfortable knowledge.
How do you, as a designer, work with archival materials and historical sources to understand today’s conflicts?
The archive emerges as an essential, yet complex, tool for understanding and intervening in contested spaces. It isn’t merely a collection of past documents; it functions as a living infrastructure for knowledge production, memory, and power. Navigating the archive requires care, criticality, and awareness of its inherent contours—since archives are often political spaces that both preserve contestation and serve as sites of potential intervention.
The landscape on which we design is fundamentally non-neutral. It is a terrain layered with histories, claims of ownership, power dynamics, and social conflicts. The lines we inscribe on this terrain—whether literal boundaries or symbolic demarcations—are rendered visible through archival materials such as maps, photographs, governmental records, or historical narratives. These lines both reflect and shape ongoing territorial disputes and social struggles, serving as contested evidence of ownership and control.
In this context, the act of working with archives becomes an act of engagement with these underlying conflicts. As Saidiya Hartman has extensively discussed, archives hold evidence not only of victory but also of subjugation, erasure, and exclusion. Recognizing this, I approach archives with an ethical awareness: they reflect histories of dominance and resistance, of displacement and resilience. To neglect this complexity is to risk reproducing or silencing parts of these histories.
My own engagement with archives has been shaped by historical materials from my country, Israel. For example, I have studied the archives of the architecture faculty at the Technion, where old national atlases from the post-World War II era (which were not exclusive to Israel), exemplified rapid processes of nation building. In my case, I wanted to understand the history of my country, so I studied these atlases and the associated material (such as regional masterplans) which documented not only physical rebuilding but also the reconstruction of national identity through master plans and territorial delineations. Maps, in this context, are more than representations—they are sites where the national project unfolds at an unprecedented pace, often implicating complex processes of displacement, exclusion, and territorial assertion.
In my teaching and practice, I emphasize that designing in such environments demands sensitivity to these histories. It requires recognizing that spaces carry stories of belonging, displacement, and resilience. Our interventions must be aware of their capacity to reinforce existing structures or open pathways toward repair and inclusion.
Beyond academia, I direct a foundation based in Amsterdam dedicated to engaging with archives as infrastructures for knowledge and intervention. Each project we undertake integrates archival research—collecting stories of often-invisible realities, histories, and cultural practices. For example, our research on the impact of UN peacekeeping missions is stored in the national architecture archive of the Netherlands, serving both as documentation and as a resource for future inquiry. Similarly, our studies of Gaza’s farming communities are preserved within a textile museum archive, reinforcing the importance of diverse, community-driven histories.
Archives can reveal stories that challenge existing narratives, highlight marginalized voices, and offer pathways toward understanding and reconciliation. They remind us that spaces are not merely physical entities but are constructed through histories, memories, and social struggles. As designers, our role is to navigate these complexities ethically, critically, and creatively—using historical sources not as definitive answers but as avenues for engaging deeply with the present and envisioning more just futures.
Many of the MDes open projects presented in your Spring 2025 course “Forms of Assembly: All Things Considered” grappled with difficult challenges related to environmental degradation or longstanding conflicts. But there was also an overarching belief in the power of public assembly and collective expression. How do you encourage students to maintain that sense of hope and purpose as designers amid seemingly overwhelming challenges?
I don’t need to encourage the students. They are extremely motivated and concerned, and they are eager to discover what tools they have and what they can do with design to contribute to society and their communities.
I started offering this course during the Covid-19 pandemic, when all of us were confined to our homes, often living in different countries, cultures, and time zones. The GSD’s international makeup is one of its strengths; we are exposed to so many cultures and languages. As we met via Zoom at the time, the question of assembly became very relevant. How do we assemble under these conditions? We explored spaces of dialogue, exchange of ideas, and solidarity; spaces which perhaps resemble the description of the world by Hannah Arendt—the invisible table that we humans gather around to exchange our ideas and make them public.
Students began sending postcards and items they cared about across the globe to connect more intimately with each other. They developed lasting friendships and eventually made parts of these stories public. A student shared a key to her art studio in Shanghai with a student from Brooklyn while exploring how to share both her process and her exhibition with the group. They exchanged recipes and hosted online dinner parties, which I liked because it allowed us to share more of our personal backgrounds than when we meet in person.
In that first class, two students—one from Bangalore, India, and another from Santa Fe, New Mexico—looked into the archives of the Peabody Museum and created a two-day international symposium online. Both students come from communities that have been oppressed under imperialism—India and the Navaho Nation—so each looked into different entries and provenance items shown at the museum. The symposium they initiated was beautiful, bringing together so many diverse voices.
How has the class evolved since the pandemic?
In a peculiar way, given recent news regarding the risks of academic freedom and the international make up of our school, this question has received a new sense of relevance. How to assemble? What are the forms of effective assemblies we can enact under stress?
We can only face the challenges of today as a collective, an assembly, as practitioners, as human beings, which are part of a bigger web of actors. The stresses we are under, whether the climate crisis, diminishing democracies, polarization, growing inequality, or the fact that even mentioning the word “justice” as a value and direction we should all aspire toward has become contested, we can, of course, address these issues—and need to address these issues—at a personal level. But these are collective, societal challenges, and to contribute to change, the assembly is important.
Yet this assembly should not be considered a homogeneous group. Forms of Assembly: All Things Considered, the course from Spring 2025, is about the power and beauty of diverse voices and opinions, of the different forms of life that inhabit this planet and the importance of situated knowledges –the depth of knowledge that exist in each site we engage with. In We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour suggests that we should begin thinking about a new constitution that is more inclusive, representing not only humans but also nonhuman objects and things: all those who inhabit this planet.
Many of the projects in this class originated from a very personal place and turned it into something much bigger. Students are often much more passionate and can understand how to navigate such complexity better when working on issues they care about. They can learn how to engage design and apply it to their cause because of their familiarity with the context. After that, the methods they develop can be used in other cases and places.
This year, for instance, one student spoke about order and freedom in contested times. Building on her Jewish heritage and family ritual of the Passover Eve Seder and its tale of physical and spiritual transformation from slavery to freedom, she saw an opportunity to speak about what liberation means for everyone else. Another student investigated, for the first time, the impact of a dam on her community in India and the protracted environmental degradation it caused. She looked at it from multidisciplinary perspectives, from labor conditions to agricultural practices to gender and class disparities.
Another student worked with a women’s NGO from Mexico that is working continuously to address cartel violence, trace the hundreds of thousands of missing people (some of whom are their family members—sons, husbands, brothers, fathers), and campaign for policy change. The student from Mexico worked with them to create a nomadic exhibition that helps raise awareness, creating a space of gathering/assemblies in different spaces that function not only as a representation tool but also as a dynamic archive, a memorial, and a space that brings victims together. It was a beautiful project that also creates a direct bridge from the academia to the real world.
How you see the role of the designer in today’s world of multiple, overlapping crisis, from climate change to military conflict to the rise of authoritarianism?
In our increasingly complex, siloed, and fragmented world—what many now refer to as a “polycrisis”—the role of the designer is more vital than ever. Design can serve as a bridge—connecting ideas, sectors, communities, and ecological systems that are often seen as isolated or incompatible. In a world rife with fragmentation, design can demonstrate the relationality between elements, highlighting our blind spots while expanding our collective imagination of what is possible. It becomes a lens for understanding and intervening in the interconnected webs that shape societal and environmental outcomes.
Our world is composed of complex ecosystems—built environments, social networks, natural landscapes—that are shaped by socio-economic, cultural, historical, and financial factors. These factors influence the quality of our lives and are often invisible or overlooked in traditional approaches. When we use design to examine these interconnections, it opens entirely new possibilities for insight: understanding how policies influence environments, how technology shapes urban life, or how financial mechanisms impact ecological stability. Design is thus a tool for generating knowledge in the in-between spaces—those zones where disciplines, ideas, and stakeholders converge.
This approach transforms design from a static object into an active agent—one that can reveal past and present damages, stimulate dialogue, and propose alternative futures. For example, in the classroom we often addressing migration and environmental challenges. Students explore the complexities of migration—designing support systems, informational tools, and policy proposals that for instance facilitate safer journeys for migrants from Latin America to the United States. These projects involve engagement with NGOs, legal experts, and local communities, demonstrating how design can serve as a strategic instrument—amplifying voices and fostering tangible change
Design has the power to act as a catalyst for systemic change. I encounter this both through my practice and the ongoing collaborations, as the director of FAST with UN agencies—one of which influenced a UN resolution on peacekeeping missions in 2017, as well as important policy papers—and through my pedagogy, the work we do in class, where students are developing innovative proposals. The design of the built environment and design thinking are uniquely suited to help us navigate complexity because of their multi-scalar, multi-temporal, and interdisciplinary nature.
This semester, in another course I taught—Spatial Design Strategies for Climate and Conflict-Induced Migration—we worked closely with UNHCR and UN Habitat to gain a deeper understanding of the spatial challenges faced by a world in motion. With hundreds of millions of displaced persons, the question of how we design homes for people on the move has received new salience.
What would you say to those who might downplay the importance of design in the face of seemingly more urgent or pressing issues?
In a world of urgent crises, dismissing design as irrelevant or secondary is a mistake. Instead, we must recognize that design is a potent agent—one that can connect fragmented systems, empower communities, and foster innovative pathways toward a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable future.