Farshid Moussavi Unveils Design of Ismaili Center in Houston

Professor in Practice of Architecture Farshid Moussavi recently unveiled the design for the first Ismaili Cultural Center in the United States, which will be built along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park. Moussavi was selected by His Highness the Aga Kahn following an international competition in 2019. The design team for the Ismaili Center Houston also includes Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, DLR Group, and engineering firm AKT II—co-founded by Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology Hanif Kara. The center in Houston joins its counterparts established in London, Lisbon, Dubai, Dushanbe, Vancouver, and Toronto. As ambassadorial buildings, these centers are dedicated to advancing pluralism, public understanding, and civic outreach.

In a press release put out by His Highness the Aga Khan, the Ismaili Center Houston is described as “a venue for educational, cultural, and social events, to encourage understanding and facilitate the sharing of perspectives across peoples of diverse backgrounds, faiths and traditions. It will aim to build bridges through intellectual exchange by hosting concerts, recitals, plays, performances, exhibitions, conferences, seminars, conversations, book launched and community gatherings. The building will also provide space for quiet contemplation and prayer, as well as serve as the administrative headquarters of the Ismaili community in the USA.”

It also states that the center’s contemporary design is “reflective of a historically rooted, rich architectural heritage. It combines contemporary architectural technology—its light steel structure—with traditional Persian forms and ornament.” The central atrium, for example, features a stepped structure that “celebrates the heritage of the cupola dating back to 3000 BCE dominant in both the architecture of the Sasanian period in Persia and the Christian buildings of the Byzantine empire.”

In presenting the design, Moussavi says: “What made this project especially rewarding was the close alignment between the aspirations of the client and architect. What made it especially challenging was my awareness of the rigorous standards that His Highness the Aga Khan has established for architecture. We have tried to work with Islamic design philosophy, and celebrate its singularity and unique qualities as well as the features it has in common with Western design, so that the building, both through its fabric and through the way it is used, would act as a symbol of dialogue.”

The Ismaili Center Houston is scheduled to be completed in three years, expanding the city’s cultural realm and providing a place of gathering for the Ismaili community.

Announcing the Harvard GSD Spring 2022 Public Program

The Harvard GSD presents its series of public programs for the Spring 2022 semester. The program features designers, artists, theorists, policy makers, and others from across the design disciplines. Highlights include a visit by this year’s Senior Loeb Scholar and founder and director of the African Futures Institute, Lesley Lokko (March 1), as well as Marcia Fudge, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who will deliver this year’s John T. Dunlop Lecture (February 8). The Spring 2022 public program also introduces Harvard Design Magazine #50: “Today’s Global” (April 19) as well as the inaugural Jacqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture, featuring architect and Pritzker Prize winner Anne Lacaton (March 28).

All are invited to participate online in this semester’s series of programs. Harvard ID holders are welcome to attend programs in person, except where an event is listed as *Virtual. All times are listed in United States Eastern Time (ET). Please visit Harvard GSD’s events calendar for current information.

Live captioning will be provided for all programs. To request other accessibility accommodations, please contact the Public Programs Office.

Spring 2022 Public Program

John T. Dunlop Lecture: The Honorable Marcia L. Fudge
Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
February 8, 6:30pm

John Hejduk Soundings Lecture: Anthony Titus, “Rupture and Reconciliations”
February 17, 6:30pm

Small Infrastructures
Symposium with UC Berkeley Architecture
February 23, 9:00pm
*Virtual

Senior Loeb Scholar Lecture: Lesley Lokko 
March 1, 6:30pm

Aga Khan Program Lecture: Mariam Kamara
March 7, 12:30pm
*Virtual

International Womxn’s Week Keynote Address
March 8, 6:30pm

Rouse Visiting Artist Conversation: Archive Matrix Assembly: Nana Last and Thomas Struth
March 21, 6:30pm

Bringing Digitalization Home
Symposium
March 24–26

Jacqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture: Anne Lacaton 
March 28, 12:30pm
*Virtual

Rachel Dorothy Tanur Memorial Lecture: Sam Olbekson, “Culture, Community, and Environmental Justice in Contemporary Indigenous Design”
March 30, 6:30pm
*The date of this event had previously been earlier in the calendar, but was changed to March 30.

Iñaki Echeverria, “Parque Ecológico Lago de Texcoco, an Ongoing Ecological Recovery in the Mexico City Valley”
March 31, 6:30pm

Sandra Barclay & Jean Pierre Crousse, “Transversal Grounds”
April 1, 12:30pm

TERREMOTO // David Godshall and Jenny Jones
April 5, 6:30pm

Interrogative Design: Selected Works of Krzysztof Wodiczko
Closing Reception
April 8, 4:30pm

Sylvester Baxter Lecture: Joan Nogué, “A Journey through Landscape: From Theory to Practice”
April 11, 12:30pm
*Virtual

Introducing Harvard Design Magazine #50: “Today’s Global” with editorial director Julie Cirelli and guest co-editors Rahul Mehrotra and Sarah Whiting, and featuring contributors from the issue
April 19, 12:30pm

John Portman Lecture: Bruther (Stéphanie Bru et Alexandre Thériot)
April 21, 6:30pm

Mayors Imagining the Just City
Symposium
April 22, 1:00pm

Lesley Lokko Appointed Spring 2022 Senior Loeb Scholar

Lesley Lokko has been appointed the Harvard GSD Loeb Fellowship ’s Spring 2022 Senior Loeb Scholar, a cherished and dynamic role within the GSD community. Each year, the Senior Loeb Scholar spends time on campus at the GSD, during which time they present a public lecture and engage directly with GSD students, faculty, staff, researchers, Loeb Fellows, and others. Since its inception, the program has offered the GSD community opportunities to learn from and be in discourse with visionary designers, scholars, and thought leaders in a uniquely focused context.

Lokko will be in residence at the GSD on Monday, February 28 and Tuesday, March 1, 2022. She will deliver the annual Senior Loeb Scholar public lecture on Tuesday, March 1 at 6:30 pm ET. Details on Lokko’s other engagements will be shared in the coming weeks. These will include connecting with Black in Design student organizers, who had initially invited her to the School last fall for the fourth biannual conference, Black Matter .

Lokko is a Ghanaian-Scottish architectural academic, educator and best-selling novelist. She is the founder and director of the African Futures Institute, established in Accra, Ghana, in 2020 as a postgraduate school of architecture and public events platform.

In 2015 she founded the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. She has taught in the UK, in the US, Europe, Australia and Africa (the Bartlett School of Architecture; Kingston University and London Metropolitan University in London; Iowa State University and University of Illinois at Chicago in the USA; University of Johannesburg and University of Cape Town in South Africa and UTS in Sydney, Australia.) In 2019, she took up an appointment as Dean of Architecture at The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, CCNY, from which she subsequently resigned in 2020 to start the African Futures Institute in her home country, Accra, Ghana.

For the past thirty years, her work in both architecture and literature has looked at the relationship between ‘race,’ culture, and space. She is the recipient of a number of awards for contributions to architectural education, among them: the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Education 2020; the AR Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contributions to Architecture 2021.

In 2004, she made the transition from architecture to fiction with the publication of her first novel, Sundowners (Orion), following up with further novels. Her thirteenth novel, The Lonely Hour is forthcoming in 2023 from Pan Macmillan. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture, and a UCL Press Series Guest Editor. She is the author of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Space and Architecture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2000). She holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of London and a BSc (Arch) and MArch from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

She is currently a founding member of the Council on Urban Initiatives, co-founded by LSE Cities, UN Habitat and UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose; and a Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

Lokko was a member of the International Jury of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2021. In December 2021, she was appointed Curator of Biennale Architettura 2023 of La Biennale di Venezia.

Lokko joins a cohort of previous Senior Loeb Scholars who include Walter Hood (2021); Bruno Latour (2018-2019); Kenneth Frampton and Silvia Kolbowski (2017-2018); Richard and Ruth Rogers (2016-2017); and David Harvey (2015-2016).

Learn more about the Loeb Fellowship on the Loeb Fellowship website .

Hanif Kara Recognized with Order of the British Empire Award in Queen’s New Year Honours 2022

In recognition of his services in architecture, engineering, and education, Professor Hanif Kara received an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire award (OBE) in the Queen’s New Year Honours List . “I am overwhelmed and grateful to so many people who have supported me over the years,” Kara said in an email. “To be recognized in the three fields—architecture, engineering and education—is particularly satisfying.” The twice-yearly award recognizes the achievements and contributions of extraordinary people across the UK.

Internationally known for linking design, research, education, and practice, Kara is a professor in practice of Architectural Technology at the GSD. He is also design director and co-founder of AKT II , a design-driven structural engineering firm based in London with satellite studios in Manchester, Cambridge (England), and Copenhagen. His particular approach and interest in innovative form, pushing material uses, sustainable construction, and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on pioneering projects that tackle numerous challenges facing the built environment today. Follow Kara and AKT II on Instagram at @hanif.kara and @akt_ii .

AKT II has won over 350 design awards including, recently, the RIBA Stirling Prize for Town House at Kingston University , a multipurpose student hub in London, designed in collaboration with Grafton Architects. In 2021, a retrofit scheme, 100 Liverpool Street , was awarded Project of the Year by Building Awards and won the “working” category at the New London Architecture Awards. AKT II supported Hopkins Architects to deliver the net-zero building, which now serves as a blueprint for future sustainable developments.

In spring 2022, Kara will teach “Unterbau City,” an option studio that juxtaposes heritage with/against progress at a mixed-use development in Regent Quarter, a 5.8-acre site in London. The studio will offer a critical examination of urban scale with a particular focus on public open space, circulation, and historic preservation while developing students’ capacity to employ collective planning strategies.

Retrospective of Rahul Mehrotra’s RMA Architects Showcased at Goethe-Institut Indien

The Goethe-Institut Indien in Mumbai recently organized Architecture of Practice: Research, Reflections and Reformulations, an exhibition on RMA Architects . According to the exhibition’s introduction, RMA Architects—founded by the GSD’s Rahul Mehrotra in 1990—has become “a robust practice that has not only designed and built architectural projects across India as well as abroad, but has also been a practice involved in various research projects in areas such as architectural as well as urban conservation, design, planning and policy formulation for the built environment.”

Curated by Kaiwan Mehta, the exhibition , which concluded on December 31, 2021, included an annotated biography of RMA Architects, reflections and arguments around their recent and ongoing projects, and a selection of the firm’s research and publications in relation to practice.

Kingston University London’s Town House, Engineered by Hanif Kara’s AKT II and Designed by Grafton Architects, Wins 2021 Stirling Prize

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has awarded Kingston University London’s Town House the 2021 Stirling Prize . Currently in its 25th year, the Stirling Prize is RIBA’s most prestigious award. It is given annually to a new building in the United Kingdom considered to have made a significant contribution to the discourse of architecture in the past year.

Structural engineering for the Town House was provided by AKT II , the global firm co-founded in 1996 by Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology Hanif Kara. The building was designed by Dublin-based architecture firm Grafton Architects . Founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara held the GSD Kenzo Tange Chair in 2010. Last year, Grafton Architects won the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the RIBA Gold Medal.

Town House is described as a welcoming and transparent public place. It celebrates and encourages human encounters with large public terraces, wide staircases, and open-plan study areas that look across dance studios and performance spaces. Speaking for the Stirling Prize jury, Lord Norman Foster describes the building as “a theatre for life—a warehouse of ideas. It seamlessly brings together student and town communities, creating a progressive new model for higher education, well deserving of international acclaim and attention. In this highly original work of architecture, quiet reading, loud performance, research, and learning can delightfully coexist. That is no mean feat.”

The project marks the fourth time since 2000 that AKT II has been honored with the Stirling Prize. Previous wins include the Peckham Library and Media Centre in 2000, the University of Cambridge Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012, and the Bloomberg Headquarters in 2018. As design director at AKT II, Kara follows a “design-led” approach in his practice. His interest in formal innovation, materiality, sustainability, and complex analytical methods have allowed him to work on multiple groundbreaking projects and address many of the challenges facing our built environment.

In 2018, Kara spoke with Travis Dagenais about the research, engineering, and collaboration behind the Stirling Prize-winning Bloomberg headquarters in London.

Gareth Doherty Selected as CELA Regional Director

Gareth Doherty, director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program and associate professor of landscape architecture, has been voted onto the board of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) . He will assume the role of the CELA director of Region 7, which includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, andVermont, and the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec.

“I first participated in a CELA conference, ‘Languages of Landscape Architecture,’ in June 2004 at Lincoln University in New Zealand. I greatly benefited from the comments received on my paper, not to mention the knowledge gained from the lectures and panels and the casual conversations over dinner, or on a bus. To this day, I remain friends with several of the participants from that conference way back in 2004. To me, this shows how effective CELA can be in providing a platform for sharing knowledge, ideas, and friendships,” recalls Doherty . “I’m thrilled to be part of CELA and to play a role in encouraging the sharing of new knowledge. As academics, we need to exchange ideas to thrive. And our institutions need CELA to thrive too.”

Doherty received his Doctor of Design degree from the GSD and his Master of Landscape Architecture and Certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania. His teaching, research, and publications consider “people-centered issues alongside environmental and aesthetic concerns” through the framework of human ecology. His research also “advances methodological discussions on ethnography and participatory methods by asking how a socio-cultural perspective can inspire design innovations.”

Faculty- and Alumni-led Firms Named AN Interior Top 50 Architects 2021

AN Interior Magazine and the Architect’s Newspaper recently announced their “Top 50 Architects 2021,” and a number of GSD faculty- and alumni-led firms are among this year’s picks. Currently in its fourth iteration, the annual Top 50 list is chosen by editors to highlight design firms working in North America at the forefront of interior design and architecture.

According to AN Interior Magazine, “The list is intentionally diverse by firm size, reputation (many are quite young, while others have been leading the pack for decades), demographics, geographic location in North America (including Mexico and Canada), and type of work—everything from large public and institutional projects to single-family homes and installations.”

Faculty-led firms on the list include Dash Marshall , a multidisciplinary design studio co-founded by Design Critic in Architecture Ritchie Yao (MArch ’07), Bryan Boyer (MArch ’08), and Amy Yang. The practice, which is featured for the second year in a row, operates at the intersection of architecture, interiors, and civic strategy, believing that “architecture and interiors, buildings and cities can be better. Not only should they be more inspired and joyous, but they should help us live, work, and play more effectively.”

OMA New York , founded by Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design Rem Koolhaas, was also recognized. Among the firm’s current projects is the 11th Street Bridge Park design, which is led by OMA partner Jason Long (MArch ’04) with associate Yusef Ali Dennis.

Other GSD-affiliated studios to make the list include:

• Architecture Research Office , led by Stephen Cassell (MArch ’92)
• BLDGS , led by David Yocum (MArch ’97) and Brian Bell (MArch ’97)
• FUSTER + Architects , founded by Dr. Nathaniel Fúster (MAUD ’96, DDes ’99)
• IwamotoScott Architecture , founded by Lisa Iwamoto (MArch ’93) and Craig Scott (MArch ’94)
• Kwong Von Glinow Design Office , founded by Lap Chi Kwong (MArch ’13) and Alison Von Glinow (MArch ’13)
• Low Design Office , founded by Ryan Bollom (MArch ’09) and DK Osseo-Asare (MArch ’09)
• Snøhetta , led by Alan Gordon (MArch ’82)
• Spiegel Aihara Workshop , founded by Daniel Spiegel (MArch ’08) and Megumi Aihara (MLA ’07)
• Stayner Architects , founded by Christian Stayner (MArch ’08)
• Utile Design , led by Matthew Littell (MArch ’97)
• WRNS Studio , founded by Bryan Shiles (MArch ’87)

Faculty-led CO-G Wins WS Development’s Inaugural Design Competition for Public Art

CO-G , the design studio led by Design Critic in Architecture Elle Gerdeman, is a winner of WS Development ’s new biennial juried competition, Design Seaport . Emerging practices were invited to submit designs for public art that “engages, inspires, and unites” the fast-growing Boston neighborhood.

The puffy, cobalt-blue installation—incorporating recycled denim and foam—plays on Gerdeman’s early career in fashion. An interest in materiality, tectonic assemblies, maintenance, construction, and weathering finds its way into all of her work.

Read more about the project on the Interior Design website.

Three Student Proposals Addressing the National Housing Crisis Place at the 2021 Hack-A-House Competition

Proposals developed by three groups of Harvard Graduate School of DesignGSD students were recently recognized at the 2021 Hack-A-House competition . Hosted by Ivory Innovations and co-sponsored by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, the annual 24-hour charette-style competition seeks solutions to the national housing crisis. Once given a prompt, teams of one to five students have 24 hours to submit an innovative proposal for a problem directly affecting housing affordability in one of three categories: Finance, Regulatory & Reform, or Construction & Design. The solutions seek to create economic opportunities for vulnerable populations in the participants’ communities and beyond.

“Legacy Living: A Pathway to Affordable Multi-Generational Homeownership” by Miguel Lantigua-Inoa (MArch II ’23), Margaux Wheelock-Shew (MArch II ’23), Adam Yarnell (MDes EE ’22), and Arami Matevosyan (MDes REBE ’22) was the winner in the Policy & Regulatory Reform category. The team addressed the lack of affordable elderly housing, the projected shortage of home health aides, and the increasing percentage of adults over the age of 65 in the United States. In response, the project proposes the development of mixed-use, multigenerational housing that includes healthcare services alongside traditional retail outlets.

Watch the team’s video presentation .

 

“Union Squared: A Housing Typology for ALL Households” by Cassie Gomes (MArch I ’22) and Angela Blume (MArch I ’22) was a runner-up in the Construction & Design category. The proposed project seeks to make homeownership affordable to 30 percent of area medium income (AMI) households by providing a “diverse assortment of housing types for varying household arrangements” through a “catalogue of parts that can be used to expand a house over time.” The team identified modular construction as an affordable and efficient method that can expand incrementally based on household needs.

Watch the team’s video presentation .

 

“Assumable Mortgage Financing: Affordable Equity-Building in Gateway Cities” by Zoe Iacovino (MUP/MPP ’23), Claire Tham (MUP ’23), Chadwick Reed (MUP ’22), and Allison McIntyre (Tufts University) was a runner-up in the Policy & Regulatory Reform category. The project seeks to combat gentrification in cities on the peripheries of major metro areas, like Lowell, MA, that are facing population growth in the wake of mass adoption of work-from-home policies due to COVID. Team Undecided proposes that ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds are used to originate assumable mortgages on homes in neighborhoods subject to gentrification to allow an affordable path to homeownership for lower income residents in Lowell and beyond.

 Watch the team’s video presentation . 

This is the second year in a row that GSD students have placed in the annual Hack-A-House Competition. In 2020, Iacovino, Reed, Ryan Johnson (MUP ’22), and Gianina Yumul (MUP ’22) won the competition’s grand prize in the Policy & Regulatory Reform category for their project, “Parking Lot Potential: Converting excess parking to affordable manufactured housing in a post-COVID world.”