John Ronan Selected to Design the Fallen Journalists Memorial in Washington, DC

The Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation (FJMF) recently announced that John Ronan Architects , led by principal John Ronan FAIA (MArch ’91), will design the first national memorial dedicated to slain journalists and press freedom. To be located on the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Fallen Journalists Memorial “honors the lives lost in the pursuit of truth and celebrates the First Amendment rights in American democracy,” according to the FJMF’s press release. The memorial’s design incorporates glass elements through which visitors navigate to reach a place of remembrance.

Established in 1999 and based in Chicago, John Ronan Architects embraces an interdisciplinary approach to design that it has deployed for a range of project types, from private homes to educational complexes to high-rise office towers. The firm can now add a memorial to this list.

FJMF’s choice of Ronan as designer culminates a ten-month selection process during which a ten-member selection committee, led by distinguished architecture critic Paul Goldberger, reviewed more than fifty proposals from the United States and abroad. The committee narrowed the field to Ronan and four other finalists, all of whom have ties to the GSD: MOS (Michael Meredith MArch ’00 and Hilary Sample); Hood Design Studio (Walter Hood, Loeb Sr Scholar ’21), NADAA (Nader Tehrani MAUD ’91 and Arthur Chang), and Höweler + Yoon (Eric Höweler, Associate Professor in Architecture at the GSD, and J. Meejin Yoon MAUD ’97). Ultimately, Ronan won the commission on the strength of his team’s “unique and compelling design concept,” notes FJMF chairperson David Dreier in the press release, “which calls for the use of transparent materials to convey themes of clarity and light,” thereby reinforcing “the importance of the work of journalists, photojournalists, and a free press.”

“It’s a very abstract undertaking,” says Ronan. “How do you put the First Amendment into physical form, or remember fallen journalists?” He began by exploring materials related to issues of “transparency and distortion,” which led to layers of glass. Ronan characterizes the visitor’s movement through the glass structures as “a journey of discovery,” echoing the way discrete facts, pieced together by an investigative journalist, coalesce into a story. Ronan envisions the memorial’s design as an architectural manifestation of this accumulative experience. The strategy of choreographed spatial progression recalls an earlier noteworthy project in Ronan’s portfolio—the building for the Poetry Foundation (2010) in Chicago, likened on the firm’s website to a poem “revealed line by line.”

The memorial will occupy a triangular island parcel on the National Mall, formed by the intersection of Independence Avenue, Maryland Avenue, and 3rd Street, in direct view of the US Capitol Building. This site is quite fitting, Ronan notes, as the memorial is “set amidst governmental emblems of power and authority yet stands apart, independent of them as well—like a journalist observes power and its mechanisms but is separate from it.”

Ronan feels honored to be the foundation’s chosen designer for the Fallen Journalists Memorial. “The role of the journalist has never been more important and the ideals of a free press never more consequential,” says Ronan. “The timing is very appropriate for a memorial like this, appreciating journalists, the risks they take to pursue the truth, and how difficult that has become in recent years.”

Congress authorized the FJMF in December 2020, and Ronan’s final design will become public after receiving federal approval in the next nine to twelve months. The memorial’s dedication is expected in late 2028. 

Jungyoon Kim’s firm PARKKIM Wins an International Competition for a Floating Stage Development in South Korea

 

 

PARKKIM , the Seoul-based landscape architectural firm co-founded by Jungyoon Kim (MLA ’00), assistant professor in practice of landscape architecture at the GSD, with Yoonjin Park (MLA ’00), has won the international competition to design a floating stage for Suseongmot Lake in Daegu, South Korea. Proposals by the four firms invited to the competition, including PARKKIM’s “Suseongmot Floating Hills,” will be showcased in the first annual Suseong International Biennial  this fall. The unique floating performance space, part of a multipurpose waterfront park, “aims to awaken the potential of Suseongmot and create a space for new programs, contributing to the revitalization of high-quality outdoor performance culture through the expansion of cultural infrastructure,” according to the competition guidelines released by the Suseong District. A panel of judges chaired by Kim Jun-seong of Hand Plus Architects Office evaluated the proposals by focusing on connectivity with waterside space, usability of space, and originality of design.

The proposed design by PARKKIM features eight sloped oval sections or “hills,” all interconnected by pedestrian walkways. Lushly landscaped with trees and vegetation, the open auditorium concept incorporates both fixed and lawn-type seating and accommodates an audience of 1,500. The platform and stage rest on a hybrid pile-slab structure, a combination of concrete and fiber reinforced polymers. Junya Ishimagi, a Japanese architect, won the concurrent pedestrian bridge competition that will land on the northern edge of the Suseongmot lake, about 100m apart from the Floating Hill stage. 

Home to Korea’s largest music festival, the Daegu International Music Festival (DIMP), Daegu is designated as a City of Music by UNESCO. In a statement, Daegu Suseong-gu District Mayor Kim Dae-kwon said, “An excellent work was selected as the winner through an international design contest . . . We will build it as a cultural landmark that goes beyond the region and is world-class.”

In addition to Kim Jun-seong, the judges included Jin-wook Kwon, Yeungnam University; A-yeon Kim, University of Seoul; Jong-guk Lee, Keimyung University; Pil-jun Jeon, Daegwu Catholic University; Daniel Valle, Baye Architects; and John Hong, Seoul National University.

The Suseongmot Performance Hall and Bridge are scheduled to begin construction in 2025 and be completed in 2026.

Holly Samuelson Awarded Starter Grant Funding from the National Science Foundation

Holly Samuelson, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is part of a multidisciplinary team that has been awarded a major grant by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF). The team’s project, titled “Intelligent Nature-inspired Olfactory Sensors Engineered to Sniff (iNOSES),” addresses the urgent need to “acquire real-time information about the air we breathe,” according to their proposal. The portable chemical gas sensor they are developing relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to accurately identify volatile compounds in the air.

Samuelson is a Co-Principal Investigator alongside Alexander Tropsha, Professor of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Principal Investigator is Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Material Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and associate faculty at Harvard’s Wyss Institute.

The NSF recently announced investing $10.4 million to “develop innovative technologies and solutions to address a wide range of challenges related to chemical and biological sensing.”  The Phase 1 grant that Samuelson’s team received is worth approximately $650,000.

According to the team’s proposal: “The real-time chemical sensing data will pave the way to standardization in detection and reporting across sectors, a documented challenge leading to poor accountability in emission monitoring, inefficiently timed ventilation and air purification processes, and unnecessary food waste, all of which are responsible for immense climate, health, and socio-economic impacts.”

The team is working toward the Phase 2 grant submission, which is focused on bridging basic science and market deployment. Six teams be funded in Phase 2 for up to $5,000,000 each.

The grant is part of the NSF “Convergence Accelerator Track” program. According to an NSF press release, the program “builds upon a wealth of foundational knowledge and recent advances in chemical sensing, sensor technology, robotics, biomanufacturing, computational modeling and olfaction to address challenges related to environmental quality, industrial agriculture, food safety, disease detection and diagnostics, personal care, substance use or misuse and possible adversarial threats.”

The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and US territories. Established in 1950 by Congress, the agency’s investments account for 25 percent of federal support to America’s colleges and universities for basic research.

Harvard Announces Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project

Harvard University has recently announced an international open call for the development of a new memorial to enslaved people on its campus in Cambridge. The Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Memorial Project Committee “invites artists, architects, designers, multi-disciplinary teams, and other creators to express their interest in conceiving a site or sites on Harvard’s Cambridge campus for commemoration and reflection, as well as for listening to and living with the University’s legacy of slavery,” according to a statement released by the University. The deadline for the application is February 20, 2024. 

In 2022, the H&LS report  recommended “that the University recognize and honor the enslaved people whose labor facilitated the founding, growth, and evolution of Harvard through a permanent and imposing physical memorial, convening space, or both.” Nearly a year after the report’s release, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project Committee will lead an effort to “memorialize enslaved individuals whose labor was instrumental in the establishment and development of the University as an institution, and define what a memorial could entail, options for where it could reside, and the process for its creation.” The thirteen-member committee is co-chaired by Tracy K. Smith, professor of English and African and African American Studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and Dan Byers, the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. 

The committee seeks “creative visions that activate and make visible complex dynamics, such as: permanence and vitality; honor and rebuke; ecology and the built environment; institutional interest and the common good.” Submissions will be accepted from individuals, collaborations, and teams without limitations on age, education, or career and professional status. Applications will be judged on their vision, committment to collaboration and partnership, and design expertise. Round one submissions must include team details, a portfolio, three references, and a 500-word narrative responding to the theme of reckoning and commemoration. The timeline and completion of the memorial is anticipated for the summer of 2027, and the University has budgeted approximately $4M for this project inclusive of artist fees, materials, fabrication, and construction costs. Additional funds from the H&LS $100 million endowment may be available for short and long-term planning, programming, and engagement. 

Read the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Request for Qualification (RFQ) and a Q&A interview with the Memorial Committee co-chairs for more information about the project. 

Niall Kirkwood Appointed Charles Eliot Professor of Landscape Architecture

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces Niall Kirkwood as the Charles Eliot Professor of Landscape Architecture, effective January 1, 2024. Established in 1926 by alumni in honor of former Harvard president Charles William Eliot (AB 1853), this professorship recognizes Kirkwood’s 40 years of service to the University. Niall Kirkwood is also currently the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

Kirkwood was educated and licensed as a professional landscape architect and architect in the United Kingdom, and as a professional landscape architect in the United States. From 2003–2009, he was the thirteenth Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the GSD, the oldest such program in North America, founded in 1901 by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Arthur Shurcliff. From 1999–2003 and 2005–2007, he was Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Degree Programs (MLA), and from 1999–2003, he was the coordinator of the “Design and Environment” track of the Master in Design Studies Program (MDes).

“Niall has consistently devoted himself to teaching GSD students how to tackle–through cultural awareness, through design, and through remediation–seemingly impossible contemporary sites: brownfields, superfund sites, landfills, and sites of extraction. Niall teaches advanced option landscape design studios and offers lecture courses, workshops, and seminars on the interrelation of design and technology in Landscape Architecture, Planning and Design,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture. “The scope of Niall’s teaching, research, publishing, and landscape consulting practice all emphasize a broader understanding of current and emerging technologies from landscape and environmental engineering and how this understanding can best result in more creative, progressive, and ethical design work in the fields of landscape architecture and urban planning and design.”

“My career at the GSD, like that of so many of my colleagues, has risen to the global challenges before us—and with effectiveness, functionality and, we hope, artfulness!”, Kirkwood says. “I have found with support from the school’s leadership we have addressed them with a breadth of vision and striking creativity and in doing so laid the foundations and structure of the unique pedagogy and ethos that is the GSD. Through this honor, I am happy to be linked to the history of the larger University as well as to the advancement of teaching and research at the GSD.”

Kirkwood was elected a Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Architectural Registration Council of the United Kingdom (ARCUK) in 1978, an Associate Member of the Institute of Landscape Architects, United Kingdom (ILA) in 1988, a Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1989 and was made a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA) in 2009.

Niall also chairs the GSD Faculty Review Board and Academic Misconduct Panel and has served as a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and a member of the faculty steering committee of the Harvard Global Health Institute. He currently serves as the GSD representative on Harvard University’s Title IX Policy Review Advisory Committee and the Vice Provost for Advanced Learning’s (VPAL) Planning Council.

Kirkwood holds courtesy academic appointments including Distinguished Visiting Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing; Founding Professorship and Dean of Landscape Architecture, School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing University (BUCEA), Beijing,vand is a Member of Academic Advisory Board of Beijing Advanced Innovation Center of Urban Design for Future Cities. During Fall 2017, he was on sabbatical at Smith College, Northampton, MA, in the Landscape Studies Program as the William Allen Neilson Visiting Professor. He was recognized for his global leadership in the area of post-industrial regeneration and brownfields by an honorary Doctor of Science (DSc.) from the University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2009.

Kirkwood is currently Deputy Editor in Chief of Landscape Architecture Journal (2020–present) and formerly Advisory Editor, (2015–2020, Beijing) was formerly Editor-in Chief of Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning (2015–2018, Bangkok), Managing Editor, Worldscape Magazine, Chief Editor, RISE Journal (2015–present, Seoul). His essays and articles on design research, practice and teaching have been published in Landscape Architecture Magazine (USA), Landscape (UK), Journal of Chinese Landscape Architecture, Landscape Architecture Korea, Business World India, City Planning Review: Journal of City Planning Institute of Japan, Landscape Architecture Journal (China), Eco City and Green Building Journal, Landscape Record, China, Worldscape (China), Environment and Landscape.

Announcing the Harvard GSD Spring 2024 Public Program

Malkit Shoshan Appointed 2024 Senior Loeb Scholar

Malkit Shoshan, Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, has been appointed the 2024 Senior Loeb Scholar. Each year the Senior Loeb Scholar is in residence on the GSD campus, during which time they present a public lecture and engage directly with GSD students, faculty, staff, researchers, affiliates, and Loeb Fellows. The program offers the GSD community opportunities to learn from and share insights with visionary designers, scholars, and thought leaders in a uniquely focused context.

Drawing upon her expertise in design and spatiality in relation to the conflict in Israel and Palestine, Shoshan will explore what building for a lasting peace can mean now. Her deep relationship to the School, as a current member of the GSD faculty, will enable Shoshan to facilitate discussions about this multifaceted theme over a period that extends beyond that of a typical Senior Loeb Scholar. She will deliver the annual Senior Loeb Scholar public lecture, titled “Designing Within Conflict,” on Tuesday, February 27 at 6:30 pm (Piper Auditorium). She will also lead the Senior Loeb Scholar Conversation, “Designing Within Conflict: Building for Peace” (Frances Loeb Library), on Friday, March 8, 12:30pm, as part of a conference organized by Womxn in Design, a student-run organization at the GSD committed to advancing gender equity in and through design. Additional opportunities for dialogue in the Spring and Fall semesters will be announced.

Malkit Shoshan is the founder and director of the architectural think tank FAST: Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory. FAST uses research, advocacy, and design to investigate the relationship between architecture, urban planning, and human rights in conflict and post-conflict areas. Its cross-disciplinary and multi-scalar work explores the mechanisms behind, and the impact of, displacement, spatial violence, and systemic segregation on people’s living environments. Projects organized by FAST promote spatial justice, equality, and solidarity.

Shoshan is the author and map maker of the award-winning book Atlas of the Conflict: Israel-Palestine (010 Publishers, 2011), the co-author of Village. One Land Two Systems and Platform Paradise (Damiani Editore, 2014), and the author and illustrator of BLUE: The Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions (Actar, 2023). Her additional publications include Zoo, or the letter Z, just after Zionism (NAiM, 2012), Drone (DPR-Barcelona, 2016), Spaces of Conflict (JapSam books, 2016), Greening Peacekeeping: The Environmental Impact of UN Peace Operations (IPI, 2018), and Retreat (DPR-Barcelona, 2020). Her work has been published and exhibited internationally. In 2021, she was awarded, together with FAST, the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for their collaborative presentation “Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip.”

Shoshan studied architecture at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, and the IUAV–the University of Venice. She is currently an international scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU and a PhD fellow at the Delft University of Technology. She is on the editorial board of Footprint, the TU Delft Architecture Theory Journal. In 2014, as a research fellow at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Shoshan developed the project Drones and Honeycombs on global processes of militarization of the civic space. The fellowship included the exhibition 2014-1914 The View From Above and a series of seminars and workshops with multiple experts, stakeholders, governmental agencies and NGOs. In 2015, she was a visiting critic at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture and in 2016, she taught the course “Architecture for Peace” at the GSD. Shoshan was a finalist for the GSD’s Wheelwright Prize in 2014.

 

 

Harvard GSD Announces 2024 Wheelwright Prize Cycle

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce the 2024 cycle of the Wheelwright Prize , an open international competition that awards 100,000 USD to a talented early-career architect to support new forms of architectural research. The 2024 Wheelwright Prize is now accepting applications. The deadline for submissions is Sunday, February 4, 2024.

The annual Wheelwright Prize is dedicated to fostering expansive, intensive design research that shows potential to make a significant impact on architectural discourse. The prize is open to emerging architects practicing anywhere in the world. The primary eligibility requirement is that applicants must have received a degree from a professionally accredited architecture program in the past 15 years. An affiliation with the GSD is not required. Applicants are asked to submit a portfolio and research proposal that includes travel outside the applicant’s home country. In preparing a portfolio, applicants are encouraged to consider the various formats through which architectural research and practice can be expressed, including but not limited to built work, curatorial practice, and written output.

The winning architect is expected to dedicate roughly two years of concentrated research related to their proposal, and to present a lecture on their findings at the conclusion of that research. Throughout the research process, Wheelwright Prize jury members and other GSD faculty are committed to providing regular guidance and peer feedback, in support of the project’s overall growth and development.

In 2013, the GSD recast the Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship—established in 1935 in memory of Wheelwright, Class of 1887—into its current form. Intended to encourage the study of architecture outside the United States at a time when international travel was difficult, the Fellowship was available only to GSD alumni. Past fellows have included Paul Rudolph, Eliot Noyes, William Wurster, Christopher Tunnard, I. M. Pei, Farès el-Dahdah, Adele Santos, and Linda Pollak.

The GSD awarded the 2023 Wheelwright Prize to Jingru (Cyan) Cheng for her proposal, Tracing Sand: Phantom Territories, Bodies Adrift. Cheng’s research focuses on the economic, cultural, and ecological impacts of sand mining and land reclamation, and her project assesses the fundamental role of these processes in the built environment and human communities.

An international jury for the 2024 Wheelwright Prize will be announced in January 2024 via Harvard GSD’s website. Applicants will be judged on the quality of their design work, scholarly accomplishments, originality and persuasiveness of the research proposal, evidence of ability to fulfill the proposed project, and potential for the proposed project to make important and direct contributions to architectural discourse.

Applications are accepted online only, via the Wheelwright Prize website ; questions may be directed to @wheelwrightprize.org .

Curry J. Hackett and Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar Win the Radcliffe Institute Public Art Competition

Harvard Radcliffe Institute recently announced Curry J. Hackett (MAUD ’24) and Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar (MArch II/MDes ’24) winners of the biennial Radcliffe Institute Public Art Competition . The duo won for their innovative proposal titled HOLD, a 30-foot-long U-shaped enclosure designed to symbolize the spaces Black communities construct for themselves, nodding to the screened porches of the American South while acknowledging the cargo holds of slave ships. The artwork is expected to be unveiled at the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Garden on Brattle Street in May 2024.

The competition offers Harvard students an opportunity to showcase projects at the intersection of art, landscape design, and structural architecture. Participants compete for a prize that includes funding for the construction of the artwork and mentorship throughout the development and installation process.

HOLD is designed to be “an outdoor experience that acknowledges and celebrates the complicated relationship Black folks maintain with enclosure,” the artists said in a statement . The structure will serve as a reminder of the various ways in which Black mobility has been restricted (redlining, incarceration, slavery) while also calling to mind the spaces Black communities build for themselves (the Black church, the front porch, the hair salon)—spaces which signify safety and embrace. Hackett and Soomar intend for HOLD to be a gathering place for events and classes—a place “for Black students and underrepresented students across campus to find space and create space for themselves.”

This public art installation is the first for Soomar and the fourth for Hackett, although Soomar has seen his work exhibited at such notable institutions as New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Venice Biennale Architettura 2023. Hackett was also a shortlist candidate for the 2022 Wheelwright Prize.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration. We bring students, scholars, artists, and practitioners together to pursue curiosity-driven research, expand human understanding, and grapple with questions that demand insight from across disciplines. For more information, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu .

 

 

Adam Longenbach Receives 2023 Carter Manny Award Citation of Special Recognition

Adam Longenbach, a doctoral candidate in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning, was recently honored with a Carter Manny Award citation of special recognition from the Graham Foundation . He is also a 2023–2024 Graduate Fellow in Ethics at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics and a 2023 Harvard Horizons Scholar.

Established in 1996, the Carter Manny Award  program supports the completion of outstanding doctoral dissertations on architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The only pre-doctoral award dedicated exclusively to architectural scholarship, it recognizes emerging scholars whose work promises to challenge and reshape contemporary discourse and impact the field at large.

In his dissertation “Stagecraft / Warcraft: The Rise of the Military Mock Village in the American West, 1942–1953,” Longenbach investigates the mid-twentieth-century entanglement of wartime policies, government agencies, private sector collaborations, and mass media technologies that led to the rise of military “mock villages.” His work connects this history to the ongoing production and operation of mock villages by militaries and police forces around the world, questioning what it means to replicate the built environment for the purpose of enacting violence in and against it.

Before coming to Harvard, Longenbach practiced for nearly a decade in several design offices, including Olson Kundig Architects, Allied Works Architecture, and Snøhetta, where he was the director of post-occupancy research. His writing can be found in Thresholds, The Avery Review, and Log, among others.