Coming Soon: Harvard Design Magazine #50: Today’s Global Edited by Sarah M. Whiting and Rahul Mehrotra

Is globalization the most powerful single force shaping the built environment today? Guest edited by Sarah M. Whiting and Rahul Mehrotra, Harvard Design Magazine 50: Today’s Global (launching in May 2022) considers the sustainability of contemporary architectural production and how design has the potential to advance a deeper and more productive discourse over globalization. Modernity has entered a phase of critical backlash against globalization, which is for some a critique of international integration, for others a critique of global and local inequalities produced by neoliberal extremism, and for many, a shared global concern over climate change. Over the past 50 years, advanced technology and the digital revolution have afforded architects and designers the ability to operate outside their own regions, customs, and cultures, at a scale and freedom that has not previously been realized. The resulting industry produces architectural commodities that increasingly dominate the built environment and promote the trend toward globalizing, consumerist cities. Globalization has not only shifted our perspective of the world, it has also transformed how architectural identity defines itself. Today’s Global enriches this dialogue and celebrates the emergence of new resources that have made broader global design talent more visible and rejects the stultifying categories—such as “first world” and “third world”—defined by contemporary boundaries. In this issue, Sarah M. Whiting and Rahul Mehrotra have invited an international group of public intellectuals, critics, scholars, and practitioners in architecture, urban planning, landscape design, and the social sciences and humanities to offer in-depth analysis of the political, social, and economic forces that have shaped global architecture and design over the past 25 years. Today’s Global features essays and conversations by distinguished contributors in their respective fields, which address the challenges and opportunities facing design thinking in a time of expanding globalization and shifting localities and regionalism. The issue concludes with a call-and-response segment, in which contributors respond to the provocative prompt: “What does it mean to be a global practitioner today?” Harvard Design Magazine is an architecture and design magazine that probes at the reaches of design and its reciprocal influence on contemporary culture and life. Published twice a year and helmed by Editorial Director Julie Cirelli at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Harvard Design Magazine invites guest editors to consider design through an interdisciplinary lens, resulting in unique perspectives by an international group of architects, designers, students, academics, and artists. For current and back issues, as well as subscription information and stockists, visit the Harvard Design Magazine website.

Zina Fraser (MLA ’23) named a 2022 Hart Howerton Fellow

---

The global planning and design firm, Hart Howerton has named Zina Fraser (MLA ’23) to its Research & Travel Fellowship Program for 2022. Fraser’s proposal to investigate the broader implications of climate change adaptation will take her to Prince Edward Island, Canada, where she will examine the area’s changing landscape and mitigation strategies for rising sea levels. “Year by year, the energy, enthusiasm and quality of research from each class of Hart Howerton Fellows has been extraordinary,” states Hart Howerton Chairman, David Howerton. “It is exciting to help foster this next generation of design thinking.” The Hart Howerton Fellowship is open to planning, architecture, landscape architecture and urban design students who are entering their final year of study. The fellowship defines an 8-week professional internship, followed by the Fellow’s self-defined topic of travel study. View the 2022 Fellowship details. Now in its sixteenth year, the Fellowships offer students an unparalleled learning experience, working as part of Hart Howerton’s project team in either their New York or San Francisco office and pursuing a self-defined research and travel topic. Fellows return to the offices after their travel to complete their professional internship and prepare a final “report,” which is presented to the firm.  

Katarina Richter-Lunn (MDes ’21) awarded a 2022 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship

Harvard University Graduate School of Design DDes candidate Katarina Richter-Lunn (MDes ’21) has been awarded the 2022 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a merit-based graduate school program for 30 immigrants and children of immigrants. Chosen from a competitive pool of over 1,800 applicants, Richter-Lunn was selected for her potential to make significant contributions through her research and work in the United States. She will join 10 other Harvard affiliated students who are being honored in 2022 by the Soros organization—all of whom receive up to $90,000 to support graduate studies. The new class of Fellows have heritage in the following countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, France, Germany, Grenada, India, Israel, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Syria, Taiwan, Uganda, and Vietnam. “I love being at the intersection of architecture, psychology, and technology because it allows me to be creative while still using the power of science to look for adaptable, amiable, and most importantly, universally accessible solutions to address mental health.” Richter-Lunn said.  “Not only is the topic of mental health very close to my heart but doing what I do for a living makes me truly feel that I can make a change in my field, and contribute to the vision of what the future of design will be.” After holding positions at Arup, Gehry Partners, IwamottoScott, and Snøhetta, Richter-Lunn returned to school and received her MDes from GSD in 2021. She is now enrolled in GSD’s DDes Program, where her primary research lies at the intersection of design, psychology, and neuroscience to address mental well-being through the built environment. As part of this work, she explores perception through the lens of material development, computational design, affective computing, and robotics. Additionally, Richter-Lunn seeks to envision how architecture, design, and our latest technological tools can embody spatial forms of therapy to provide more empathetic, seamless, and accessible design solutions to emotional disorders.

Jeanne Gang, Special Commencement Ceremony Speaker for the Classes of 2020 and 2021

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design has named Jeanne Gang (MArch ’93) to address the 2020 and 2021 classes as the GSD welcomes back these graduates for an in-person celebration and Special Commencement Ceremony. Gang will address the GSD’s classes and their families on Sunday, May 29 at 10:30 AM ET in the Gund Back Yard. Jeanne Gang is Professor in Practice of Architecture at GSD and the founding principal of Studio Gang, an international architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, where her professional studios have focused on cities, ecologies, and materials. Her analytical and creative approach has produced projects across scales and typologies, from cultural and public buildings to urban parks and high-rise towers. These include Writers Theatre, a professional theater for a company north of Chicago; the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and the 82-story Aqua Tower in downtown Chicago. Intertwined with their built work, Jeanne and the Studio also develop research and related projects such as publications and exhibitions that push design’s ability to create public awareness and give rise to change—a practice they call “actionable idealism.” Jeanne and Studio Gang are currently designing major projects throughout the Americas and Europe. These include the expansion of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; the new United States Embassy in Brasília, Brazil; a unified campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco; Civic Commons, a multi-city project reimagining public spaces across the United States; and mixed-use towers in Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, and Los Angeles Gang’s work has been honored and exhibited widely, including at the International Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. A MacArthur Fellow, 2017 William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Jeanne has been honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and was named one of 2019’s most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. Further accolades include Architectural Review’s Architect of the Year, the Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award, and the Marcus Prize for Architecture. Reveal, her first volume on Studio Gang’s work and process, was published in 2011, followed by Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago’s Waterways, and Studio Gang: Architecture in 2020. To see a full schedule of the 2020 and 2021 Special Commencement Ceremony, and for other Commencement information, please visit the GSD’s Commencement webpage.

Danielle Allen, 2022 Class Day Speaker

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design has named Danielle Allen as its 2022 Class Day speaker. Allen will address the GSD’s class and their families during the School’s 2022 Class Day exercises on Wednesday, May 25 at 3:30 PM ET in the Gund Back Yard. Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. In 2022 Allen launched a historic bid as the first African-American woman to run for governor in Massachusetts state history. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000); Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004); Why Plato Wrote (2010); and Our Declaration (2014); and co-editor (with Rob Reich) of Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013). In 2002 Allen was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her “ability to combine the classicist’s careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist’s sophisticated and informed engagement.” Allen is a frequent public lecturer and regular guest on public radio affiliates to discuss issues of citizenship and education policy, as well as a contributor on similar subjects to the Washington Post, Boston Review, Democracy, Cabinet, and The Nation. Allen is a former Chair of the Mellon Foundation Board, past Chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She is currently working on books on citizenship in the digital age and political equality and directs The Democratic Knowledge Project, a group of research projects on knowledge and democracy. To see a full schedule of 2022 Class Day and Commencement exercises, and for other Commencement information, please visit the GSD’s Commencement webpage.

Frida Escobedo to Design the Met’s New Art Wing

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has named Frida Escobedo (MDes ’12) to oversee the $500 million redesign and renovation of the modern and contemporary art wing. The wing will be named after longtime trustee Oscar L. Tang and his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang, an archaeologist and art historian, who gave $125 million toward the project. Escobedo, whose firm is based in Mexico City, will become the first woman to design a wing at the museum. In a press release, Met director Max Hollein said, “The new wing will be a vibrant, exhilarating space that meets the Met’s current and future needs while promoting a lively representation and reevaluation of the art of the 20th and 21st centuries in the context of 5,000 years of art history.” Hollein praised Escobedo as “an outstanding architect of our time,” and explained that “she wields architecture as a way to create powerful spatial and communal experiences, and she has shown dexterity and sensitivity in her elegant use of material while bringing sincere attention to today’s socioeconomic and ecological issues.” In a statement, Escobedo said, “The Met is one of the most relevant sites for culture on a global scale, and it is an honor to be selected for this historic architectural reimagining. The Tang Wing presents an opportunity to give new life to the Museum’s art from the 20th and 21st century; to celebrate the dynamics we can find within art of different times, geographies, and ideologies; and to uncover new spaces for self-reflection and connection with others.” Escobedo was chosen from a shortlist of architectural firms that included Ensamble Studio, Lacaton & Vassal, SO — IL, and David Chipperfield Architects. According to her website, Escobedo has “developed an approach based on the idea that architecture and design represent a crucial medium for raising questions and discussing social, economic, political and cultural phenomena,” and that “art, both contemporary and historical, serves as a starting point for the development of each project.” Escobedo returned to the GSD in 2018 to lead the options studio course “Domestic Orbits.” In 2019, she participated in the jury selection of the Wheelwright Prize and presented an Open House Lecture at the school. More recently, an interview with Escobedo is featured in the latest issue of Harvard Design Magazine (#49) and an upcoming monograph of her work Split Subject is slated to be published by Harvard Design Press this fall.

Buy-One-Give-One Bottled Water Start-up is First of its Kind

GIVE H2O—the first buy-one-give-one sustainable bottled water brand—offers natural spring water from Finland in reusable aluminum bottles. Founded by Henrik Ilvesmäki (MArch II ’20/ MDes ’22) and Nema Kheradmand, a master’s degree student in sustainability at the Harvard Extension School, the brand stands out for its commitment to giving back on a local scale, allowing buyers to donate to a nonprofit organization of their choosing. Among participating local charities are the American Red Cross’s Boston Food Pantry, Cambridge Women’s Center, and Somerville Fire Department. The idea emerged from Kheradmand’s coursework in 2019, when he asked Ilvesmäki, his then roommate, to design the bottle and graphic identity. The two are passionate about water and sustainability. Charged with the task of creating a brand in the saturated and unsustainable bottled water market, Ilvesmäki—a registered architect in Finland and a design thinker—tapped into knowledge from marketing classes at MIT Sloan School of Management and the GSD’s “Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape.” The bottle’s signature hexagonal shape, the untapped spring water source in Finland, and GIVE H2O’s 100 percent commitment to charity have all received a positive response so far. Over 1,000 bottles have been sold, with an equal amount locally donated. Ilvesmäki is now the company’s chief creative officer and Kheradmand is CEO. “Our goal is to definitely take this venture global one day,” says Ilvesmäki. “I’m from Finland, where the water is the best in the world, and we hope to really share that water with everyone who needs it.” Currently, GIVE H2O is sold in-store at Pemberton Farms and can be purchased online at www.giveh2o.com. For more follow GIVE H2O on Instagram @giveh2owater and Twitter @giveh2o.

Gary R. Hilderbrand Appointed Chair of the GSD Department of Landscape Architecture

Harvard Graduate School of Design announces Gary R. Hilderbrand (MLA ’85) as new chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, effective July 1, 2022. Hilderbrand is the Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor-in-Practice at the GSD, where he has taught since 1990, and Founding Principal and Partner of Reed Hilderbrand.

Hilderbrand succeeds Anita Berrizbeitia (MLA ’87), Professor of Landscape Architecture, who joined Harvard GSD as a Design Critic in Landscape Architecture in 1991. Appointed in 2015, Berrizbeitia is the 14th chair of the oldest landscape architecture department in the world, and only the second woman to hold the position.

“Gary’s sensibilities as a teacher and as a practitioner are one and the same—his unyielding efforts to reconcile imminent, often intractable forces of urbanization with ecological sustainability, cultural history, vegetative regimes, and thoughtful kindness are central to his pedagogy and practice both. I could not be more delighted he has accepted this appointment, and I am excited for what is to come under his leadership of the department. I also look forward to celebrating Anita’s important tenure as chair of the department and thank her for all that she has brought to the school,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture.

“I’m humbled and honored in equal measure by this appointment, and I am grateful to Dean Whiting for her confidence and support,” Hilderbrand says. “For more than a century, Landscape Architecture at Harvard has positively shaped discourse in research, teaching, and practice in the field. We continue that legacy forward with renewed urgency in the face of ever more dramatic environmental and social upheaval. I’m grateful for Professor Anita Berrizbeitia’s remarkable and humane intellectual stewardship over the past seven years, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the department and the school to uphold the commitment to design leadership that is demanded of us in this time. We stand well prepared.”

Gary Hilderbrand is a Founding Principal and Partner of Reed Hilderbrand. Works by Reed Hilderbrand have received more than 100 design awards to date. A committed practitioner, teacher, critic, and writer, Hilderbrand’s honors include Harvard University’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award with Douglas Reed, and the 2013 ASLA Firm of the Year award. DesignIntelligence named Hilderbrand one its “25 Most Admired Educators” of 2016. Gary is the recipient of the 2017 ASLA Design Medal, the highest design honor available to an American landscape architect.

Hilderbrand is committed to positioning landscape architecture’s role in reconciling intellectual and cultural traditions with contemporary forces of urbanization and change. Over the course of his prolific career, Hilderband has collaborated with Tadao Ando, Annabelle Selldorf, and Gensler on the expansion of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA; developed four phases of revitalizing the Hudson River waterfront at Long Dock Park, Beacon, NY; and led the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan for the City of Cambridge, MA. More recently, Reed Hilderbrand were part of five firms participating in the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, a design ideas competition that reimagines the future of Washington, D.C.’s iconic Tidal Basin. Current works include the repositioning of New York City’s Lever House, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the new Farrand House at Dumbarton Oaks, and major interventions at the Storm King Art Center.

Hilderbrand’s essays have been featured in Landscape Architecture, Topos, Harvard Design Magazine, Architecture Boston, Clark Art Journal, Arnoldia, New England Journal of Garden History, and Land Forum. Hilderbrand is co-author of Visible | Invisible, a Reed Hilderbrand monograph (2012), and he has produced two other books: Making a Landscape of Continuity: The Practice of Innocenti & Webel (1997), which was recognized by ASLA and AIGA (50 Best Books); and The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism (1999).

He has served on the editorial boards of Spacemaker Press, Harvard Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. As a competition juror, he’s participated in Harvard’s Green Prize for Urban Design (2006, 2013); I Premi Europeu de Paisatge Rosa Barba Barcelona (2000, 2002, 2003, 2018); and “Suburbia Transformed” for the James Rose Center (2010). He chaired the ASLA National Awards Jury in 2005 and the ASLA Annual Student Awards Jury in 2006

Sunghea Khil Receives Travel and Research Grant from the American Planning Association

Sunghea Khil, a joint degree Master in Urban Planning and Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Kennedy School, is one of two planning students to receive 2022 student grants from the American Planning Association to support travel and research. Her proposal, “Planning for Sustainable Urban Infrastructure in Uganda: Revenue Solutions for Municipal Services,” will research strategies for successful municipal solid waste (MSW) management in emerging markets.

“Over 90% of waste in Africa is disposed of at uncontrolled dumpsites and landfills,” notes Khil’s proposal. “The city of Kampala, Uganda is also experiencing a need for adequate solid waste management, as well as developing a landfill site that can accommodate greater needs of MSW.” Her project will ask questions including: “How can Kampala’s waste management infrastructure be financed to generate sufficient revenue solutions?” And, “Considering the potential impact of surrounding communities, what are some strategies to repurpose the old landfill site?”

During her time at Harvard, Khil has concentrated on urban economic development through the dual lenses of policy and design. She is interested in infrastructure, cities, and development in the United States and globally. The APA grant allows for study through August 2022.

Learn more about Khil’s research and the travel grant program on the APA website .

Honoring the Legacy of Urban Design Pioneer Jaqueline Tyrwhitt

The GSD renamed the 50th Anniversary of Urban Design Program Lecture for Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, a GSD associate professor who worked to establish and fortify the urban design program during its founding years. The Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture will be delivered each year by a visionary urban planner, designer, scholar, or leader who has opened novel directions in urban-design thinking and traced new intersections between urban design and other disciplines. Moshe Safdie, Lee Cott (MAUD ’70), and Jay Chatterjee (MAUD ’65) played a key role in establishing the original lecture in 2010 and fortifying its energy since.

About Professor Jaqueline Tyrwhitt

Written by Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture 

Professor Tyrwhitt (1905–1983) served as an Associate Professor at the GSD between 1955 and 1969, and worked to establish and fortify the urban design program during its founding years. Professor Tyrwhitt—or Jacky, as she preferred to be called by friends—spent her early years in London and the English countryside. While taking a course at the Architectural Association, she found inspiration in the work of Patrick Geddes and his view of urban planning as organic rather than predetermined; her study and illumination of Geddes’s ideas would later prove seminal. After World War II, Tyrwhitt would stake out a transformative role in shaping the post-war Modern Movement toward decentralized urban, community, and residential design. She left England for Canada in 1951, working to establish a graduate program in city and regional planning at the University of Toronto. She arrived at the GSD in 1955, teaching here until her retirement in 1969.

Central forces throughout Professor Tyrwhitt’s pedagogy include her humanistic approach to urban planning and design, and her commitment to communicating and sharing design discourse. She translated and edited all major works by Swiss art historian Sigfried Giedion, and in 1955 launched a journal titled Ekistics to activate the influence of Greek architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis. She moved to Greece after her GSD retirement, settling on an Attic hillside near the village of Peania; she passed away there in 1983, working on her final book. Our Frances Loeb Library offers a number of Professor Tyrwhitt’s publications; additionally, she was a focus of the library’s 2018 exhibition “Feminine Power and the Making of Modern Architectural History.”