Grace La and James Dallman Appointed First GSD Graduate Commons Program Faculty Directors

Grace La, professor of architecture and chair of the Practice Platform, and her husband, James Dallman (MArch ’92), have been appointed the newest faculty directors as part of Harvard’s Graduate Commons Program (GCP) . They are the first couple from the GSD to serve in the role, in which they will direct interdisciplinary, university-wide programs, serving as the intellectual leaders of the graduate residential communities of the GSD, HBS, FAS, and SEAS.

“We are thrilled to have our first GSD faculty directors joining us next year,” says GCP Director Lisa Valela . “In conversations with former HUH residents and interns, we learned that Grace and James share a commitment to mentoring and supporting graduate students.”

The couple will become the leaders of 10 Akron Street beginning in the fall of 2022. “James and I are delighted to join the distinctive GCP program, which enables us to contribute to the intellectual life at Harvard in new and expansive ways,” says La . “We look forward to collaboration across the university.” They will be joined by their two sons.

La and Dallman both hold degrees from the GSD. La graduated from Harvard College in 1992 and received her MArch from the GSD in 1995, and Dallman graduated with an MArch from the GSD in 1992. The pair are also principals and cofounders of the architecture practice LA DALLMAN .

This spring, La is leading the design research studio “Eco Folly” alongside Erika Naginski, Robert P. Hubbard Professor of Architectural History. The studio and corresponding seminar uses the folly opportunistically to create “a space of design experimentation in which participants will explore the behavior of materials, understand the life-cycle of buildings, and evaluate sustainable consequences.” The design work will be exhibited at the GSD’s House Zero this coming fall, and is generously funded by the Center for Green Buildings and Cities and the Department of Architecture.

Learn more about La and Dallman’s new leadership role in the Harvard Gazette .

Design Proposals for the Uncertain Future of American Infrastructure

As the world ground to a halt in the spring of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering shops, schools, subways, and offices, a street in Queens opened itself up as a new site of social infrastructure. [1] Located in Jackson Heights, one of the most congested neighborhoods in New York City with among the least green space per capita, a 26-block stretch of 34th Avenue was transformed into a 1.3-mile-long “vertical park” by the grassroots 34th Ave Open Streets Coalition. For 12 hours a day, every day, the street closed down to cars, permitting weary workers, solo-living seniors, and working-from-home parents and their children to stretch their legs, join in socially distanced exercise classes, swing by a community-led food pantry, or tend to a communal median garden that was—finally—their own.

Heralded as a visionary prototype for a more equitable and sustainable future city, the project also underscored the importance of civic space in an era marked by increasing privatization of the public realm. Reclaiming the street within a pandemic that both exposed and exacerbated the stark inequities of access to healthcare, community support, and green space across the United States framed the necessity of such spaces, in the words of sociologist Eric Klinenberg, as a matter of life or death. [2] In a keynote lecture recently delivered at the GSD , Klinenberg highlighted 34th Avenue as a success story within a larger domestic policy movement toward an expanded definition of infrastructure, in part fueled by the pandemic. “The pandemic forced us to hunker down and maintain physical distance,” says Klinenberg. “But we also developed newfound appreciation for gathering places that we had taken for granted. My hope is that we channel that into support for social infrastructure. We’re living through a unique moment, and we’re poised to make transformative investments in the physical systems that sustain us.”

Such an investment may begin through the Biden administration’s Build Back Better framework. Viewed as one of the most significant domestic policy agendas since the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s, Biden’s original $3 trillion BBB plan comprises two pieces of legislation: the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, signed into law on November 15, and the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) bill, which remains stalled after a firm rebuke from Senator Joe Manchin.

The infrastructure bill (also called the public works law) addresses what we typically think of as infrastructure, and offers the largest investment in the sector in over a decade. It includes funding for repairing and expanding roads, bridges, mass transit, and rail service, as well as upgrades to ports, electric grids, and water infrastructure. It casts a wide net across the country, including the replacement of lead pipes in Illinois, bridge repairs in Massachusetts, regional transit connections in Louisiana, and abandoned mine cleanup in Kentucky. In addition to bolstering material infrastructure, the bill hones in on the so-called “digital divide,” funneling $65 billion into expanding broadband access to rural and disadvantaged communities in the US.

The controversial BBB bill—focusing on what it terms “human infrastructure,” or social infrastructure—includes allocations of $150 billion for new affordable housing, $550 billion for climate-related policy and programs, $18 billion for universal pre-K, and $200 billion for childcare. For political reasons, however, many of these provisions will be absent from the bill, if it ever clears the senate. Both bills are the first pieces of federal legislation in over a decade to address the climate crisis and suggest solutions for mitigating the impact of global heating.

Across both bills, the idea of infrastructure expands to include social reform, digital telecommunications networks, climate justice, clean energy, and affordable housing. In addition to Klinenberg’s keynote, multiple studios and seminars at the GSD last term attempted to grapple with this multifaceted understanding of infrastructure. “That the Biden bill recognizes and supports social infrastructure, the economies of care, and reproductive labor, particularly at the household scale, is an exciting step for a country wherein everything has been relentlessly privatized,” says Malkit Shoshan, who taught “Reimagining Social Infrastructure and Collective Futures” in the fall. “By strengthening the household economy, stronger households can better interact with other households and create a commons. These issues should be essential to talking about the future of infrastructure—that it’s a matter of the values we preserve as a society.”

Shoshan framed her project-based seminar with key theories intersecting the social sciences, economics, feminist theory, and ecology, including those of economist Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics, and philosopher Sylvia Federici, whose writings on reproductive labor have found new relevance during the pandemic. Students were asked to envision a more intersectional social infrastructure, where the well-being of mothers, caregivers, the elderly, and other marginalized groups, as well as precarious public services, were integrated into a collective future vision of a healthier planet. Among the projects to emerge from the seminar was a reimagining of the post office infrastructure, which is at risk of privatization, as well as a mobile “Care-a-Van” that revitalizes the lives of the elderly and reintegrates them into public spaces, generating new social networks. A “school for the future” sought to support an underserved public high school in East Boston, the largest in the area, in a neighborhood expected to be flattened by sea-level rise as early as 2050. In addition to providing climate infrastructure, the project proposed opening up the physical infrastructure to community use in after-school hours.

Ron Witte’s studio, “ROOM,” took a micro-scale lens to the question of what constitutes good social infrastructure, from the design perspective of the public interior. Utilizing a new reading room for the Central Boston Public Library as a case study, students were asked to envision alternative design protocols for indoor institutional spaces in an era where the role of such spaces is expanding as social infrastructure. Proposals varied widely, from reimagining the cultural status of the library to a “high-tech medium,” where visitors are given a window into the guts of archival space through a series of tubes transporting reading materials, to cracking the institution open like an egg, making its processes visible from the outside and expanding the internal boundaries of the building. “Architecture has been pushed to the side in this conversation around the future of infrastructure,” says Witte. “We’ve tended to focus on broad questions around social infrastructure, economies, and public spaces, but without architecture to prompt them into a new state, nothing will happen.”

Additional federal efforts are necessary to ensure the Building Back Better framework’s climate resilience funds meet those who need it most. The new White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council is a step in the right direction, with 26 leaders from diverse communities appointed to judge applications for community-led climate infrastructure projects. [3] But there must also be increased support at the local level, to ensure these communities have no barriers to accessing funds and can realize these projects collaboratively. Responding to this condition, Dan D’Oca’s fall studio, “Highways Revisited,” was an exercise in reimagining the future of 10 cities and their surrounding highway systems. Each student was connected with a local activist or government official to envision an alternative use for that highway infrastructure while taking stock of its historical damage to disadvantaged communities.

Whittled down from a short list of 50 areas, the selected sites cover a wide range of topologies and racial and socioeconomic spectrums—they include El Paso, the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Detroit, Oakland, and New Orleans. “The idea was to find examples of cities where there was already a conversation about highway removal, but where things weren’t so settled,” explains D’Oca. “It was important for students to be able to think big and dream, but also have the guidance of a good liaison, and the tenability of a pitch process.”

“When you destroy a neighborhood you don’t just destroy homes, you destroy vehicles for amassing generational wealth.” – Dan D’Oca

With guidance from a lifelong resident of the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans (one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in the US, and the birthplace of jazz), one student transformed a stretch of I-10 that decimated the neighborhood into a powerful piece of community infrastructure, complete with public housing, green space, events programming, and an arts and music venue. (The White House has proposed removing the expressway altogether). For El Paso, another student nixed the freeway running along the US-Mexico border, restoring the original landscape of a green river valley and building a new neighborhood alongside it. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a student worked with local liaisons to envision the removal of an eight-mile stretch of I-94, replacing it with a parkway, a rapid transit system, and new neighborhoods. The studio explored the emerging concept of “right to return,” currently piloted by the city of Santa Monica , which specifies Black communities displaced by mid-century urban renewal policies should be at the front of the line in new affordable housing markets. “When you destroy a neighborhood you don’t just destroy homes, you destroy vehicles for amassing generational wealth,” explains D’Oca. “So this idea of a ‘right of return’ being implemented by some local policymakers integrates the idea of infrastructure as an opportunity for reparations.”

Tom Oslund and Catherine Murray’s studio, “Harnessing the Future,” looked beyond the US to address the social, ecological, and economic entanglements of digital infrastructure in the small west Irish town of Asketon and the surrounding Shannon Estuary, where a new data center is slated for development. With a local environmental engineer as steward, students were tasked with reimagining the design of the data center to support the local economies and histories of Ireland, while adhering to the region’s strict conservationist protocols, and achieving carbon neutrality. One of the proposals utilized the energy of cow waste and Atlantic wind turbine production to fuel the data center. Another restricted its size and energy consumption to the amount of energy needed to churn Ireland’s signature domestic export, Kerrygold butter (and recycling the energy to do so). And the third proposal divvied up the area into wind energy–producing parcels of land owned by locals to sell back to data providers, flipping the power hierarchy between opportunistic data companies and residents. Oslund cites the main challenge with equivalent projects in the US as “a problem of too much land and too little restraint”—but is optimistic that an industry-led initiative for ecological design alternatives could catch on across the Atlantic. “The paradigm change that must happen is the responsibility of these companies,” he says. “Data centers have already surpassed airlines in carbon emissions, and there’s too much at stake. This studio was put in place to showcase more environmentally conscious design alternatives that support local economies and culture.”

As the future of the BBB remains uncertain, and the real work of the Infrastructure Bill lies ahead, it’s crucial that in expanding our definition of infrastructure, we take care not to divide it. A truly democratic approach to infrastructure acknowledges its constituency and responsibility across all sectors and publics: in other words, digital infrastructure must be social infrastructure; climate resilience infrastructure must also impart a civic value. Closing out his keynote lecture, Klinenberg gave a simple example for how this might be achieved: by revamping the design of a levee, which will be an increasingly common piece of infrastructure amid rising sea levels, to include a public park on top. What’s required is a crucial shift of perspective that enables new infrastructure. As Oslund says, it needs to “provide the same function, but allow for a different story.” There must be a design sensitivity on both a micro and macro scale to ensure it benefits those it has a particular duty to serve. The future of infrastructure requires a feminist design approach that centers marginalized groups; an equitable approach that incorporates reparations to communities who bore the damage wrought by earlier infrastructure projects; an ecological approach that acknowledges the stakes of the climate emergency; and the support of a public resource system that ensures the longevity of grassroots initiatives. Despite its warranted criticisms, the BBB framework offers a vital first step in this direction. Now, it’s up to designers and policymakers to get to work.

[1] In his book, Palaces for the People, sociologist Eric Klinenberg defines social infrastructure as a loose category of public places—parks, playgrounds, libraries, and town halls, as well as grocery stores, cafés, and barber shops—that are the spatial glue of a healthy society. Formal and informal, organized and happenstance, these are the hang-out spots where communities are made and people learn to look out for each other, particularly in times of crisis.

[2] Klinenberg’s acclaimed research on the “high resilience” areas of the 1995 Chicago heatwave pinpoints the significance of robust social infrastructure in contributing to low death tolls in otherwise demographically similar neighborhoods.

[3] Both bills intend to jumpstart the Justice40 Initiative ordered by Biden just days after taking office. It outlines that 40 percent of federal climate spending must reach underserved areas (formally defined as low income, rural, and/or communities of color), as a climate justice initiative. Despite these promises, critics argue this money will largely benefit middle-class, white communities .

New Book by Andrew Witt Examines the Visual Intersections of Architecture, Mathematics, and Culture

A new book by Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture Andrew Witt examines more than 150 years of seeing, drawing, and modeling architecture mathematically. It presents a rich tour of the drawing machines, geometric patterns, crystal structures, and stereoscopic images that connected modern architecture to modern science and expanded spatial imagination. The book’s research builds on the GSD seminar “Narratives of Design Science” led by Witt in past years.

Released in January 2022 by the MIT Press, Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture bridges the art of science and design. The book studies architecture’s encounter with mathematical calculation systems that were ingeniously retooled by architects for design. To illustrate initial exchanges between design and science, Witt provides a catalog of pre-digitization drawings and calculations from mid-twentieth-century mathematical practices in design. Formulations also takes up the “formal compendia that became a cultural currency shared between modern mathematicians and modern architects.”

As a way of illustrating the many ways mathematics penetrated design thinking as we know it today, Formulations examines a variety of innovations, including early drawing machines that mechanized curvature, the virtualization of buildings and landscapes through surveyed triangulation and photogrammetry, and stereoscopic drawing.

Antoine Picon, director of doctoral programs and G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the GSD, describes the book as a “brilliant and thought-provoking navigation through complex mathematical notions, models and machines, spatial patterns, and construction techniques. A must-read for anyone interested in the relationships between architecture, mathematics, and digital techniques.”

Formulations is part of the Writing Architecture series, edited by Cynthia Davidson, which includes previous contributions from Harvard faculty members including Giuliana Bruno, Edward Eigen, and K. Michael Hays. It is the first book in a complete graphic redesign of the series, by graphic designer Ben Fehrman-Lee .

Trained as both an architect and a mathematician, and a graduate of the GSD’s MArch and MDes programs, Witt’s research explores the relationship between architecture, science, and visual techniques through the lens of mathematics. He is also editor of the trilogy “Studies in the Design Laboratory ,” jointly published by the GSD and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The final installment of the series, Tange Lab: The Quantified Economy and Urban Futurism, will be available online soon.

Learn more about Witt’s Formulations from the MIT Press .

Announcing the 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship

The Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) are pleased to announce the launch of the 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship, taking place in Spring 2022.

The 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship will help mayors navigate a just and equitable recovery from the pandemic, providing actionable ideas for city leaders rising to meet this moment of change. Building on the inaugural 2020 Fellowship , this program will explore ways to create lasting, transformational impacts from new federal funding streams such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the American Rescue Plan Act. The Lab’s Just City Index  will frame dynamic presentations and dialogues with experts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art activism, housing, and public policy. Over the semester-long program, mayors will identify how racial injustices manifest in the social, economic, and physical infrastructures of their cities and develop manifestos of action for their communities.

The 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellows include Charleston, SC Mayor John J. Tecklenburg ; College Park, MD Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn ; Duluth, MN Mayor Emily Larson ; Madison, WI Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway ; Providence, RI Mayor Jorge O. Elorza; Richmond, VA Mayor Levar M. Stoney; Salisbury, MD Mayor Jacob R. Day ; and Youngstown, OH Mayor Jamael Tito Brown .

The Just City Lab is a design lab located within the GSD and led by architect and urban planner Toni L. Griffin. The Lab has developed nearly 10 years of publications, case studies, convening tools and exhibitions that examine how design and planning can have a positive impact of addressing the long-standing conditions of social and spatial injustice in cities. The Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD), the nation’s preeminent forum for mayors to address city design and development issues, is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors . Since 1986, MICD has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities.

“I’m delighted to see this powerful collaboration between the Just City Lab and the Mayors’ Institute on City Design continue,” says Sarah Whiting, dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture. “This year’s cohort of mayors come from many cities that are particularly interesting to our students as they consider their future plans. These are mostly middle-sized cities that are transforming quickly as a response to the skyrocketing costs of our nation’s largest urban centers. The Mayoral Fellowship is well-timed to help these eight mayors lead in terms of equity and opportunity. Our aspiration is that ‘just cities’ will become the standard for what we expect in this country, not the exception to what so many experience today.”

“Mayors have led our communities through a series of unrelenting challenges over the past two years. With new federal funding streams, we have a unique opportunity for once-in-a-generation change,” said Tom Cochran , CEO and executive director of the United States Conference of Mayors. “Mayors are now tasked with uniting their communities around real solutions and making transformational investments. The traditional MICD experience, with its candid, small-group format and access to national design experts, is so often transformative for mayors. There is no better model for empowering mayors to find solutions in our nation’s cities, and the United States Conference of Mayors is proud to partner with the Just City Lab to help guide mayors through this important chapter of American history.”

“Building on the National Endowment for the Arts’ vision to heal, unite, and lift up communities with compassion and creativity, we are proud and humbled to continue this important collaboration between MICD and the Just City Lab,” said Jennifer Hughes, NEA director of design and creative placemaking. “This program will take the transformative power of MICD, which illuminates the power of design to tackle complex problems, and apply it to the defining challenge of our time: ensuring equity and justice for everyone.”

On April 22, the 2022 Fellows will come together to discuss strategies for using planning and design interventions to address racial injustice in each of their cities at a GSD event hosted by Griffin. The program will be free and open to the public.

The Just City Lab and MICD are thrilled to continue this fellowship to help mayors shape more just cities. Learn more about the host organizations at www.micd.org and www.designforthejustcity.org .

Parts of this press release also appeared on the MICD website .

Jordan Weber, Germane Barnes, Design Earth Named 2022 United States Artists Fellows

Fellows and graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Design are among the 63 recipients of 2022 USA Fellowships from national arts funding organization United States Artists (USA). Now in its 17th year, USA Fellowships provide recipients with an unrestricted $50,000 award to support their creative and professional development.

According to the United States Artists’ announcement , “The 2022 USA Fellows were selected for their remarkable artistic vision and their commitment to community—both within their specific regions and discipline at large.” They represent 23 states and Puerto Rico and span 10 artistic disciplines, including Architecture & Design.

Regenerative land sculptor and environmental activist Jordan Weber was honored with a fellowship in the Visual Arts category. He is the inaugural joint Loeb/ArtLab artist in residence , a collaborative program intended to enrich the Loeb Fellowship experience with studio space in the ArtLab and access to resources from the ArtLab community. This fall, “Perennial Philosophies ,” a public artwork by Weber commissioned by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA), was unveiled on the grounds of the ArtLab. The sculpture responds to the dual pandemics of 2020—COVID-19 and racial injustice—and features an excerpt from “The Hill We Climb,” the poem written by Harvard graduate Amanda Gorman for President Biden’s inauguration.

Architecture & Design fellowship winner Germane Barnes leads Miami-based research and design practice Studio Barnes . His 2021 Wheelwright Prize–winning project, Anatomical Transformations in Classical Architecture, examines Roman and Italian architecture through the lens of non-white constructors. Barnes is also the recipient of a 2021-2022 Rome Prize in Architecture and a 2021 Architectural League Prize.

Cambridge-based research practice Design Earth was founded in 2010 by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy (both DDes ’10) and honored with a USA Fellowship in the Architecture & Design category. The pair are founding editors of the GSD journal New Geographies and edited the “Landscapes of Energy” and “Scales of the Earth” issues. Ghosn and Jazairy are also associate professors of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan respectively.

The practice of 2020 Design Critic in Architecture Jennifer Newsom, Dream The Combine, which Newsom founded with Tom Carruthers, was also recognized with a USA Fellowship in the Architecture & Design category. Newsom led the fall 2020 option studio “Movements” at the GSD. Read an interview with Newsom on foregrounding the kinetic body in architectural representation.

In 2021, GSD professor Jennifer Bonner (MArch ’09) and Spring 2021 Senior Loeb Scholar Walter Hood received USA Fellowships. Other past recipients include 2019 GSD Class Day speaker Teju Cole (2015) and Johnston Marklee, the practice of GSD professors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (2016).

Mohsen Mostafavi Remembers Richard Rogers (1933-2021)

Richard Rogers was one of the few remaining major figures in architecture whose career and education had a direct link with the ideological project of the modern movement and its call for social change. Richard loved bright colors, in architecture and in clothing, and believed in the contribution of cities toward a better quality of life. More specifically, he championed urban regeneration on brownfield or disused sites with an emphasis on compactness and density.

Born in Italy and raised in the UK, his ideas and works were shaped by his European heritage. He was related to the celebrated Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers, editor of Casabella magazine and a founding member of BBPR, the practice responsible for the iconic Torre Velasca in Milan.

Despite having dyslexia, Richard completed his diploma at the Architectural Association in London, where he worked with Peter Smithson, among others. He then continued his education at Yale under Paul Rudolph. His time at Yale coincided with that of another British architect, Norman Foster.

Richard will probably be best remembered for two of his practice’s most iconic buildings, the Pompidou Center in Paris (1977) and Lloyd’s in London (1986). The former was designed in collaboration with Renzo Piano; Peter Rice was the engineer on both.

However, it is two relatively small houses that helped define his characteristic approach toward architecture. The first of these, Creek Vean, was designed within the context of a collaborative practice, Team 4, made up of Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and their then partners, Su Rogers and Wendy Ann Foster. Anthony Hunt was the engineer for the project, which was completed in 1966.

Looking at the house today, one wouldn’t associate it with the later work of either Richard Rogers or Norman Foster—apart, perhaps, from the open-plan interiors with their beautiful views of the landscape captured through the plate glass windows. Still, the house is important for Richard’s subsequent and lifelong commitment to teamwork and the idea of collaborative practice.

While Creek Vean was designed for Su’s parents, Richard soon had the opportunity to design a house in the London suburb of Wimbledon for his own parents, a doctor and a ceramicist. Based on an unrealized project, the Zip-Up house, it required the use of factory-made insulation panels that could be easily assembled on site. Ironically, given this dream of industrial production, the result was, to a large extent, a bespoke and handcrafted artifact. But the innovative and experimental house not only captures the DNA of Richard’s later work, it also exemplifies the sense of lightness, joy, and color that defines the best characteristics of his architecture.

On a personal note, I was fortunate to have Su Rogers amongst a group of teachers when I first started my architectural education. Later, during my tenure as the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Richard and his second wife, Ruthie, generously gifted the Wimbledon house to the GSD. The house was meticulously restored by Gumuchdjian Architects. Philip Gumuchdjian had been a former student and had also worked with Richard for a long time before setting up his own practice. The landscape architect for the restoration of the garden was a GSD graduate, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.

When the house was first built it had a carport, which was subsequently turned into a separate smaller house, creating an intimate courtyard with the main house. The two buildings, with the help of a generous donor, provided the basis for a GSD/Richard Rogers residential fellowship program. The aim of the Richard Rogers Fellowship was to enable designers and scholars from around the world to spend up to three months in London and to engage in the study of the built environment. Richard’s own interests in architecture, culture, technology, the arts, and the city provided the framework for the broader scope of the fellowship.

In addition, a series of events on the city, and London more specifically, brought a diverse range of speakers and experts together. Organized as a “salon,” these small gatherings of around 50 people in the main living room of the house created great opportunities for debate, on such topics as engineering and housing. It was inspiring to have Richard participate in these events and to meet and mentor the fellows. He also enjoyed the experience very much.

Richard and Ruthie spent about a week at the GSD a few years ago when we invited them to be the Senior Loeb Fellows. Ruthie, a celebrated chef, gave a wonderful talk about how they managed and organized the produce and the menu at her restaurant, the River Café. Richard met with students and talked about architecture and, as you might expect, about what it could do for society.

Probably more than any other architect of the recent past, Richard was committed to architecture and technology’s social and political impact. It can be argued that his practice’s work, especially the exclusive residential projects, didn’t always align with his intellectual and political beliefs. But during certain moments, the practice’s outcome genuinely challenged the relationship between architecture, technology, and the conditions of production. He also managed to be hugely influential for a period of time with Britain’s then ruling Labour Party by making architecture and the built environment topics of political significance that affect people’s quality of life, and indispensable cornerstones of democracy.

I will miss Richard’s friendship, warmth, and generosity. And of course, his flair for colors.

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.

Strictly Typographic: Behind this year’s public programs posters by Harsh Patel

The Harvard Graduate School of Design’s art director Chad Kloepfer first came across designer Harsh Patel ’s work in two books: Of Walking in Ice by Werner Herzog and Roman Letters by Evan Calder Williams (co-designed with Mark Owens). “They both felt as if they had landed in the here and now from a different era,” says Kloepfer. “It was hard to pin down a reference point and I was immediately charmed by the mystery and mood of it all.” It was in part due to these two exquisite objects that Patel was invited to design this year’s public programs posters, the second iteration of which will be unveiled today with the announcement of the spring semester’s public programs. Kloepfer and Patel sat down to discuss design practice and thinking in a world that’s pushed ever further into the digital sphere.

Chad Kloepfer: Coming into this season’s public programs posters, we were interested in pushing this project somewhere new, graphically. Can you talk about your entry into the process and the creation of this poster? 
Harsh Patel: In our initial discussions, I suggested that the seemingly straightforward task of presenting this information could simultaneously express two different feelings about the second year of this pandemic. The first approach—reflecting how introspective everything sort of got, assuming you stayed inside—was to be pared down typography, in a kind of first-person singular voice. It would be laid out in dense, intricate grids with pragmatic but idiosyncratic typefaces like the original Futura. The second approach resonated more with me on a personal level, although it made for a far less practical working methodology. It’s a visual summary of the anxious barrage that we stepped into when we went outside. The public programs poster and all of the individual event posters are pastiches of these ideas.

I want to backtrack for a moment and ask: when you get a commission like this one—where there is not a lot of specificity to the brief—how do you begin to generate an idea or concept? Do you have a methodology that applies to a broad range of work, or is it a different working model, specific to every project?
Employing a set methodology could make things easier on myself, financially. Designers in the cultural sector with one of those in place really do manage assembly-line operations, especially in cities like New York. But, no: the problem-solution model isn’t something I believe in. There’s sometimes a financial incentive to commit immediately to a project like this and think backwards from a timeline or budget, but nowadays it’s more important to find a meaningful intersection, and to know when to say no.

Something I’ve always appreciated about your work is how it defies an easy definition. Almost every component of the work appears, to me, to be “found” for lack of a better word—which I mean as a compliment—and this poster is no exception. How did you arrive at the mixture of different typefaces used on the poster and how do you see that relating to the form of the lecture poster?
The typography is a capsule of street level commercial design—mostly the more vernacular kind that preceded today’s digital hypermarket. It’s the lettering on a paper cigarette package, or the logo on the underside of a plastic toy, or the made-to-order lightbox signage of a fried chicken shop. The only purely institutional component was the base typeface, Margaret Calvert’s New Rail.

Is there a strategy to the typeface(s) chosen for each lecture, or is it something you come at from a more instinctual place?
There’s no set strategy, other than going for lesser-known types.

The posters for the GSD are strictly typographic, but I’ve always been curious about your use of imagery; it’s quite specific. How do graphics and imagery find a place in your work?
In our profession, we typically receive photographic content pre-determined to fit within the image-and-copy relationship that defines most advertising design. We are usually granted some license to manipulate these images and attempt to subvert their meaning, as long as we remain within the bounds of the brief. This framework just isn’t that interesting to me. Graphic design shouldn’t willingly constrict its expressive possibility to that kind of messaging.

We also have more access to images and to the means of comparatively simple image making than ever before. In my intro courses, a ground concept is that we can articulate our aesthetic subconscious into visual form. It takes confidence and honesty to mine those depths and hone meaning into an individuated language or style. Making images is only meaningful or fulfilling if I feel that the translation from thought to expression is clear and concise, that the process is economically sensible in terms of time and resources, and that there’s ideological consistency in the bird’s-eye view.

We spoke briefly over Zoom about the relationship, or influence, of European design on US design. You were born in Nairobi and you currently work from both Los Angeles and New York City: how does both a sense of place and design’s many histories enter your work?
My upbringing in India and Kenya gave me a set of cultural experiences that shaped how I see myself amongst the world, generally. The American cities I’ve lived in as an adult have shaped my critical outlook and working methodology. Certainly my perception is that our daily practice hasn’t fully realized the value of biographical self-examination. It usually draws a freehand line to mid-20th-century European techniques that were engineered for workhorse production and systemic portability. As an immigrant and as someone who is interested in more intimate, or sensitive, ways of creating and appreciating, I protest this reality more than I accept it.

I find this approach very beautiful and refreshing—and it brings to mind the influence and power of “local” design histories. I feel like there is still so much to learn from both individual and local practices.
Yeah, there is. I’ve taught and talked about the history of graphic design for 10 years now. A public archive of that class material is slowly building up here . Every example there asks questions about how and why things are categorized.

You work as both a traditional designer (taking commissions) and with self-generated content. How does either side of that coin inform the other, if at all?
Assuming I say yes to the right projects, then there shouldn’t be a marked difference. By sharing my editorial skills with my collaborators, and helping them identify some of their own visual amalgam, we usually find an authentic communication strategy.

I find being a graphic designer is to exist very much in a gray zone, which brings to mind the question of designer as editor, designer as artist. How do you see your role within the work or a given project?
The initial discussions—where you exchange values and decide what’s interesting, sustainable, and efficient—should take considerable time. Traditional studio structures operating on bureaucratic calendars can’t manage this as easily as someone with a completely solo operation like mine. My role is at first articulative, and then about devising expressive strategies.

Thank you, Harsh! We look forward to unveiling this spring’s public programs posters. 

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 .