How a Collaboration Between Design and Real Estate Advances Equity in Mumbai

Students in Rahul Mehrotra’s “Extreme Urbanism Mumbai” Graduate School of Design (GSD) Spring 2025 option studio faced a challenge that was intended to take them “completely outside their comfort level,” said Mehrotra. “We set a wicked problem that exposes them to an unfolding of interconnected issues.”  

Mumbai, set on a peninsula on the northwest coast of India, is one of the largest and densest cities in the world, with a population of about 21.3 million residents and more than 36,200 people per square kilometer—most of whom face a stark housing crisis. Approximately 57 percent of Mumbai’s population lives in informal homes, many of whom work in nearby housing complexes where they’re employed by the upper-class residents. Most of the students in the studio had never been exposed to what Mehrotra describes as “extreme conditions, in terms of density, poverty, and the juxtaposition of different worlds in the same space.”

“Mumbai is like nothing I’d ever seen before,” said Enrique Lozano (MAUD ’26), who had previously traveled to other parts of India. “There’s no designed urban form; skyscrapers are scattered throughout the city. It’s on a former wetland, so there are issues with water, one of my research areas.”

He and his classmates were introduced to Mumbai’s coastal Elphinstone Estate neighborhood and a site owned by the Port Authoritiy of Mumbai  that includes 40 acres of warehouses as well as iron and steel shipping offices, bounded on one side by a rail line and on the other by the harbor and P D’Mello Road, a major city street. “The Eastern Waterfront will be one of the city’s most contested land parcels to be opened for urban development in the next few years,” writes Mehrotra. “It plays a catalytic role in connecting the city back to the metropolitan hinterland….” The 900 or so people who work in this area and live in sidewalk tenements stand to be displaced once development progresses.

Students were tasked with working at three scales: regional, district (the “superblock”), and site (urban development policy). Rather than displacing workers whose lives are strongly rooted in the neighborhood, students were asked to invent schemes that would newly house those 900 families in tenements by “cross-subsidizing from market-value housing.” The studio offered a counterpoint to the government’s designation of the site as a commercial district. Students’ proposals served what Mehrotra terms in reference to his research, “instruments of advocacy,” creating a way to keep the city’s most vulnerable residents where they have always lived, while also offering needed market-value homes.

This studio differs from many others at the GSD, in that it involves collaboration between the studio and a Master in Real Estate course titled “The Development Project.” Jerold Kayden, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design and founding director of the Master in Real Estate Program, and Mehrotra brainstormed about the idea of such a collaboration and launched the idea in spring 2024. David Hamilton, a real estate faculty member at the GSD, co-instructed this year’s version in the spring 2025 semester.

“I think of real estate as the physical vessel in which people live, work, and play,” Kayden explained. “And if we can apply our multidisciplinary skills and knowledge to shape real estate in ways that create a more productive, sustainable, equitable, and pleasing world, then I can’t think of a more noble cause than that.”

The magic of the combined studio and real estate class, as Kayden, Mehrotra, and Hamilton saw it, was that students from the two programs would be interdependent and could only solve the on-site housing challenges by working together. “The real estate students couldn’t own the problem because the designers didn’t design it in a way that would work in terms of real estate sense,” said Mehrotra. “And the designers couldn’t think of the design unless the real estate folks came up with a model of financing for that cross-subsidy.”

              
Hamilton concurred that the studio set up a collaborative tension that replicated real-world challenges: “We can imagine a path that gets us from having bright ideas and a beautiful piece of land, to a proposed future that’s both appealing and realistic enough to attract investment capital to be built. Then, we get to what we call stabilization, where the new neighborhood is working physically and financially in a sustainable way. Getting there involves a million different variables, from government action and public subsidies, to the needs of the market and investors and other financial considerations.”

Lozano saw the benefits of designing in Mumbai, where “the street is an even playing ground. Everybody takes the metro, walks the Plaza, buys street food in the markets.” At the same time, like most collaborators, his group had their share of challenges as they moved through the design process. “The entire studio was a negotiation between the students—of judging our values and understanding that the real estate students want to make a return on investment, but the subversion is the social mission, and the designers had to convince them that social space is an asset.”

He described a beautiful 19th-century clock tower on the Elphinstone site, which one of his real estate group members wanted to demolish, and how they negotiated the “iterative design process” and “pushed against the blank slate idea.” They kept the clock tower, which they saw as a cultural asset, and “turned it into an incredible public amenity with restrooms, civic spaces, and movie screenings. It’s an anchor and memory of the site itself, with the maritime history and labor organizing that occurred there.” Through the collaborative process, building trust by drawing and talking through their design plans, the design students developed a final project of which they’re proud.

“As we become surrounded by the madness and complexities of the world we inhabit,” said Mehrotra, “it’s important to have multiple perspectives on the same problem, and to synthesize those multiple perspectives into a proposition.”

The final review mirrored the lively discourse the students experienced all semester, as critics discussed the merits of each proposal and the possibilities for the Elphinstone Estate. Sujata Saunik, Chief Secretary of the Government of Maharashtra, participated throughout the final review and helped bring to the conversation a sense of Mumbai’s realities. As the student groups together advocated for shared public access to the site and investing in dignified housing for people living in tenements, they presented to the government a more equitable approach to developing a site that’s unique as well as profitable.

“It’s not the solution,” said Mehrotra, “but it’s a conversation changer.”

Student Propositions

Jeanne Gang Named Kajima Professor in Practice of Architecture

The Harvard Graduate School of Design announces that Jeanne Gang (MArch ’93) has been named the Kajima Professor in Practice of Architecture as of July 1, 2025. Established at the school in 1989 by the Kajima Corporation, the endowed professorship supports a faculty member to advance instruction and scholarship in architecture.

Gang is the founding partner of Studio Gang , an international architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. The firm has built a large portfolio of globally respected projects that draw insight from ecological systems to strengthen relationships among individuals, communities, and environments. Well known projects include the Aqua Tower in Chicago, IL (completed in 2010), the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, MI (completed in 2014), and Solar Carve in New York, NY (completed in 2019). Most recently, Studio Gang has received high praise for its design of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan (2023), which provides a new entrance hall and wing for this major institution. Studio Gang has also created the campus plan for Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus and designed notable buildings for the site, including the David Rubenstein Treehouse conference center.

Studio Gang has become known for advancing ecological and community-centered design practices, and these aspects of professional life form the backbone of Gang’s pedagogy at the GSD. To help students develop their agency as designers, her option studios focus on existing buildings, such as the New England Aquarium, with an emphasis on resiliency and reuse. These studios also have provided Gang with a forum for her own research on low-carbon techniques for adaptive reuse and addition, including her concept of “architectural grafting.” Gang has developed these themes further as a guest editor, with Lizabeth Cohen, of Harvard Design Magazine 53: “Reuse and Repair,” forthcoming Fall 2025.

Grafting the Aquarium

Overlooking the Boston Harbor on Central Wharf stands the New England Aquarium, a local landmark and an icon of Brutalist architecture. It is also the subject of “Grafting the Aquarium,” a studio course held during the spring 2025 semester at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) that addressed complex issues of climate change, aging building stock, and institutional transformation—themes critical to this aquarium and numerous others throughout the world.

The studio’s name, “Grafting the Aquarium,” references the horticultural practice of grafting that has been embraced by Jeanne Gang (MArch ’93), founding partner of Studio Gang  and professor in practice of architecture at the GSD, as a model for sustainable design and adaptive reuse. As described in her recent book The Art of Architectural Grafting  (Park Books, 2024), “grafting is a design philosophy aimed at upcycling existing building stock by attaching new additions (scions) to old structures (rootstock) in a way that is advantageous to both. The practice of architectural grafting connects the two to create an expanded, flourishing, and distinctive work of architecture.” Rather than engage in the carbon-intensive cycle of demolishing existing buildings and rebuilding from scratch, grafting extends a structure’s life for greater capacity and utility. Taught by Gang and Eric Zuckerman (MArch ’18), project leader in Studio Gang’s New York City office, “Grafting the Aquarium” channeled this design approach to investigate possibilities for the New England Aquarium, a distinguished Boston organization with a celebrated past and an uncertain future.

The New England Aquarium, Then and Now

A cornerstone of the city’s waterfront revitalization plan, the New England Aquarium opened in 1969 to much fanfare. The robust concrete edifice, designed by Peter Chermayeff (MArch ’62) with Cambridge Seven Associates, sits a mere half mile from another Brutalist paragon, Boston City Hall (1963).¹ 

The aquarium’s central feature, around which African and southern rockhopper penguins caper, is the cylindrical Giant Ocean Tank, 40-feet wide and four-stories tall, home to Caribbean marine life ranging in size from tiny reef fish to a 550-lb green sea turtle.² Nearly five hundred thousand locals and tourists visited the aquarium the year after it opened; now, more than 1.3 million people annually frequent this regional attraction. 

To accommodate more visitors and create space for new exhibits, the aquarium has grown in the past half-century, with the original building remaining largely untouched. The Marine Mammal Pavilion appended to the water-facing (east) facade accommodates sea lions; a metal-paneled addition to the west (by Schwartz/Silver Architects, completed in 1996) provides a harbor seal habitat, external ticketing windows, lobby, gift shop, café, and additional exhibit spaces; and the Simons IMAX Theater (2001), constructed on the southwestern portion of the wharf, boasts a six-story 3-D film screen and 378 seats. 

Alongside these physical changes to its Central Wharf site, the New England Aquarium’s mission has evolved over the years, moving beyond the expectation for aquariums to serve, first and foremost, as venues for human entertainment. Aquariums previously offered a glimpse into elusive underwater realms; today, images and videos of these foreign ecosystems are accessible through the internet, with the click of a mouse. Furthermore, in recent decades, ethical concerns around keeping animals in captivity, especially incredibly sentient and intelligent species like dolphins and octopuses, have prompted shifts in aquarium programming, as has growing awareness of the deleterious impact of climate change on the ocean and its inhabitants. For these and other reasons, many aquariums—including the New England Aquarium—have become increasingly focused on research and conservation operations.

With this expanded scope come financial and spatial demands that exceed the limited facilities currently available at Central Wharf. Thus, the aquarium’s rescue and rehabilitation site in Quincy, 10 miles south of Boston, houses ethical breeding programs and acute care for injured animals (whether they be ailing residents or cold-stunned wild turtles). Another struture on the coast of Maine serves as homebase for a multi-decade North Atlantic Right Whale research project, one of the aquarium’s many marine science efforts. Mindful of the need for more revenue and additional space, aquarium leadership is keen to explore potentially advantageous programming and partnership opportunities beyond those that currently exist. 

Underscoring the mandate for increased funding is the stark reality that the New England Aquarium’s Central Wharf properties require interventions to address the near- and long-term impacts of climate change—in particular, rising sea levels and storm surges. These days the aquarium experiences regular basement flooding, which threatens the animals’ mechanical and filtration life-support systems, and erosion around the Simons Theater’s foundational pilings requires mitigation. Recent resiliency planning  calls for flood protection systems to withstand the inevitable tidal and storm flooding that will accompany the rising seas, predicted by 2050 to exceed four feet over current day levels. This knowledge goes hand in hand with climate-driven questions around how and when to protect against, accommodate, or retreat from the water. Consequently, in tandem with refining the institution’s mission and increasing revenue, aquarium officials must contend with aging buildings that need attention to remain operational and survive into the future.

Grafting the 21st-Century Aquarium

Under the guidance of Gang and Zuckerman, twelve GSD students from the master of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design programs undertook an in-depth analysis of the New England Aquarium. Visits to its facilities, discussions with its leadership, targeted design exercises, and expert-led workshops informed the students about the aquarium and its site as they grappled with the complex themes surrounding the project, ranging from considerations of embodied carbon and vulnerability to sea level rise to designing for biodiversity and non-human species.

The main aquarium building posed an additional challenge. Consultations with Chermayeff provided rare insight into the design intent that shaped the concrete building, the first of the many aquariums in the architect’s portfolio. With its carefully choreographed interior circulation (winding around the Giant Ocean Tank) and its distinct, otherworldly interior (sans daylight, with strategic accent lighting), the New England Aquarium set the standard for Chermayeff’s aquariums that followed, including the National Aquarium (1981) in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Oceanarium (1998) in Lisbon, Portugal. Thus, as they devised their grafting operations to address the New England Aquarium’s future needs, students had to parse Chermayeff’s original vision for the building alongside its historic significance, material nature, environmental impact, and future needs. 

As a design philosophy, architectural grafting is especially well suited to urban contexts, which are often marked by decades—if not centuries—of accretion. In her book, Gang notes that, in terms of environmental impact, “all renovations are better than building new. However, certain approaches prove more effective in reducing carbon pollution than others. In order to end greenhouse emissions in the critical period leading up to 2050, delaying the demolition of buildings saves the most carbon over any other single strategy, followed closely by increasing existing buildings’ intensity of use.”³ This holds true for the Brutalist New England Aquarium, making it and its Central Wharf campus perfect candidates for grafting. Following a strategic assessment of the existing site, the benefits it brings, and the challenges it faces, the designer then crafts sustainable solutions that honor the past, minimize carbon expenditure and waste, and build toward a resilient future. This compelling approach merges preservation and innovation to create a new whole greater than its parts.    

Building on the concept of grafting, the students’ projects address climatic, economic, and spatial concerns, designs differ in terms of resiliency strategies, envisioned revenue streams, and physical interventions within the Central Wharf site.⁴ Yet, despite the diversity of approaches, the projects all position architecture as a key force in responding to these pressing issues and in shaping the New England Aquarium’s future. Whether establishing a greater connection with the city or the islands offshore, or highlighting education and animal care, the resulting designs foreground the aquarium as a steward of the marine environment and its resident species, the health of which impacts us all.

Mauro Marinelli Wins 2025 Wheelwright Prize

Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to name Mauro Marinelli the winner of the 2025 Wheelwright Prize . The $100,000 prize supports investigative approaches to contemporary architecture, with an emphasis on globally minded research.

Marinelli’s project, Topographies of Resistance: Architecture and the Survival of Cultures, examines the role of architecture in sustaining and revitalizing rural mountainous regions that face challenges related to climate change, infrastructure, and cultural erosion. The study develops design strategies that promote autonomy, sustainability, and local identity by comparing contexts in the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas. Through analysis and field experiments, Marinelli seeks to generate architectural approaches that empower communities and challenge urban-centric biases.

The Wheelwright Prize supports innovative design research, crossing both cultural and architectural boundaries. Winning research proposal topics in recent years have included social and spatial relations in contemporary Africa ; environmental and social impacts of sand mining ;  and new paradigms for digital infrastructure .

The Wheelwright Prize will fund two years of Marinelli’s research and travel. He plans to focus his work in the European Alps, the South American Andes, and mountainous regions of China. “This support enables me to investigate how architecture can actively engage with the fragile cultural systems of high mountain communities. I intend to contribute tangible insights to both the cultural vitality of mountain territories and architectural discourse,” says Marinelli.

“I am thrilled to announce Mauro as this year’s winner. The architecture of our shared future must respond thoughtfully to specific cultural contexts, geographic conditions, and ecological forces—including humidity, wetlands, woodlands, coastlines, and many others,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the GSD. “Mauro’s research fosters precisely these kinds of responses, emphasizing self-sufficiency, local identity, and architectural approaches uniquely suited to the climatic, demographic, and economic vulnerabilities shared by mountainous communities around the world.”

In addition to Whiting, jurors for the 2025 prize include: Chris Cornelius, professor and chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning; Grace La, professor of architecture and chair of the Department of Architecture at the GSD; Jennifer Newsom, co-founder of Dream the Combine and assistant professor at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; Tosin Oshinowo, principal and founder of Oshinówò Studio; and Noura Al Sayeh, head of Architectural Affairs for the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities.

Marinelli was among four distinguished finalists selected from a highly competitive and international pool of applicants. The 2025 Wheelwright Prize jury commends finalists Meriem Chabani, Mohamad Nahleh, and Alfredo Thiermann for their promising research proposals and presentations.

About Mauro Marinelli

Mauro Marinelli is an architect and holds a PhD in Architecture and Urban Design from Politecnico di Milano, where he has served as adjunct professor of architectural design since 2016. He has been visiting professor at IUAV Venice (2024) and visiting lecturer at Università Federico II Naples (2025), and has been invited to lecture at numerous other institutions. In 2017, he co-founded franzosomarinelli with Mirko Franzoso, an architecture office based in the Alps, focused on contemporary design in fragile territories. The studio’s work has been exhibited in numerous architecture exhibitions and published internationally, with a strong focus on contextual sensitivity through material and spatial research.

About the Finalists

Meriem Chabani
Algeria-born, Paris-based Meriem Chabani is the founder and Principal of NEW SOUTH , an award-winning architecture, urban planning and anthropology practice prioritizing spaces for vulnerable bodies in contested territories. Her work on complex sites includes the Swann Arr cultural center in Myanmar, the Globe Aroma refugee art center in Brussels, and the upcoming Mosque Zero in Paris. She currently teaches at École Paris Malaquais (FR). In 2020 Meriem won the Europe 40 under 40 award. She is a recipient of the Graham Foundation Grant. In 2025, she was named one of the leading creatives in France by Le Monde.

Mohamad Nahleh
Mohamad Nahleh is assistant professor of architecture at The Ohio State University. His research and practice engage the fields of environmental history, cultural anthropology, and postcolonial literature in expanding the role and imagination of the night in architecture. Recognizing the night as a space rather than a time, his work unsettles the current interchangeability between “night architecture” and “light design” by charging architecture with the urgency to overcome the Western metaphors of light and darkness. Nahleh holds a bachelor of architecture from the American University of Beirut and a master of science in architecture studies from MIT, where he also taught for several years.

Alfredo Thiermann 
Alfredo Thiermann is an architect and assistant professor for History and Theory of Architecture at the École polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne. He has taught and lectured at Harvard University, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and other institutions. His work has been published in Harvard Design Magazine, A+U, and Revista ARQ, among other publications. Thiermann received his professional degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile and a masters degree from Princeton University. He received his doctoral degree from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich. He is the author of Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin (MIT Press, 2024).

The Art in Architecture

Spanning the length of Gund Hall’s sunny back patio stands a life-size black-and-white drawing of a stone wall, a cluster of students and critics squinting to assess its merits. This is the final review for Ewa Harabasz’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) course “Drawing for Designers 2, Human Presence: Appearance in Natural and Built Environments.” Students spent the semester observing closely and developing drawing techniques, capping off their work with the final collaborative stone wall project. Each student created a single frame 1:1 scale drawing on large sheets intended for watercolor—bumpy and uneven, creating more texture—which were then pieced together to create a continuous wall.

The range in styles that students developed this semester is evident in the shifting image of the whole from section to section. Tosin Oshinowo , a practicing architect and 2024–2025 Loeb Fellow at the GSD  who was enrolled in the class, aimed to capture the “materiality of the stone,” she said, “without copying its patterns of darkness and lightness.” Junye Zhong (MLA ’25) relied on the texture of the paper and the bumpy tack board on top of which it was created to layer texture and strong contrasts, emphasizing the cuts in the stone. One student captured in meticulous detail the ivy at the top of the wall; another portrayed the patches of sunlight on the stones, encouraging the eye to move across the drawing.

The project is the culmination of what Harabasz defined as a semester-long focus on “an expressive and playful supplement to computer-based labor.” Because architecture and design students inevitably spend hours working with various software systems that help them realize their designs, meticulously mapping out structures and landscapes on computer screens, said Harabasz, it’s equally as important that they develop their creativity and drawing skills.

“I want students to gain sensitivity and imagination,” she added, “and to strengthen their perception of the human body and architectural space and design.” She noted that the skills they develop by observing closely and learning to draw will enrich their work across the span of their careers.

Harabasz  is a working artist who hails from Poland. Her drawings, paintings, and mixed-media projects are part of the permanent collection of the National Museum in Poznań, Poland, and have been exhibited in museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa, Finland and the Kulturzentrum bei der Minoriten in Graz, Austria. Much of her work is created in large-scale formats, and deals with the violence of war and domestic abuse. Her recent series, “Icons,” for example, features stark photographs of people in the midst of conflict and grief, set on top of gold-leaf backgrounds. The images are reminiscent of medieval portraits of saints, the Madonna, and other religious figures, perhaps inspired in part by her work, earlier in her career, restoring paintings and frescoes in Poland and Italy.

This semester’s work in “Drawing for Designers 2” began with charcoal drawings. Harabasz asked students to home in on an emotional experience, gathering photographs to prompt memories, and to use charcoal in an “additive/subtractive process”—layering it onto the page as a gray base, and then erasing it to create highlights. The subject matter students chose to focus on ranged widely. Oshinowo explained that she had used charcoal in the past, “but never for abstraction.” In composing an image of a braid, she appreciated the challenge to approach the project with a different aesthetic in mind. Sabrina Madera (MArch I ’25) used the assignment to reveal to the group a recent surgery. “I felt I had to show the drawing publicly,” Madera explained. “Drawing the self-portrait forced me to have it out there.”

To offer more insight into the artistic process, Harabasz invited Polish abstractionist Urszula Śliz , PhD, to speak with the class from Poland, via Zoom. Śliz’s work, in mediums from drawing and painting to sculpture and collage, has been exhibited in museums around the world, including the Pavilion of the Four Domes Wroclaw Poland, the Nowich Museum UK, and many other cultural institutions in Europe.

For the last ten years, she’s been working on “Transposition,” a series of collages made from her own photographs of everyday materials, such as construction tape. In one collage, the tape, with red, pink, and white stripes, is criss-crossed over flowers fallen on the ground. Viewers might make their own associations—for Śliz, the red and white make her think of her Polish roots—but, she says, the tape creates its own random shapes and forms, and the photograph serves to re-process the large-scale collage. Part of her inspiration, she explained, was the first known photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827) by Nicéphore Niépce, which, she says, transforms the black-and-white rooftops and buildings into abstract forms, estranging the houses from reality—abstract art. Śliz walked students through her process so that they could think about their own place in the art world, sources of inspiration, and how their own work might evolve across mediums.

As Harabasz instructs students on how to quickly and accurately reveal what they see, she also encourages them think about perspective and form in public contexts. Each semester, she and her class install collaborative, mind-bending spatial experiences on the fifth floor of Gund Hall. This winter, their black-and-white optical illusions were made by painting stripes and laying down tape to change the perceived shape of the walls and floors: Here, a new door appears. There, a bulge pushes out. A blue cat perches at the top of wall, playing with a spool of strings. Step to the left or right, and it splits apart on a corner. The installation invites a sense of play, and engagement with other students, faculty, and staff in the space.

For the stone wall critique, several former students of Harabasz’s returned to share their insights. Paul Mok  (MArch I ’18) a New York–based architect and artist who was named 2024-2025 GSD Alumni Mentor of the Year , showed the class an in-process drawing that he created using a technique he developed back in 2017, during an independent study with Harabasz (one of four courses he took with her). He’s completed two other highly detailed pen and ink drawings  with the same methods, starting with marking the page with unplanned strokes, and then slowly filling to make the image.

“We always ask design students what their concepts are,” he explained, “and critique whether their designs are justified by their rationales. But what about intuition? I started this process of putting random strokes on paper without any preconceived ideas.”

For Mok, drawing is about “letting the mind wander,” an internal counterpoint to his work as an architect creating well-planned structures for others to inhabit. Similarly, two of Harabasz’s former students, Yuetong Li (MDes ’25) and Eva Cao (MDes ’25), spoke to the importance of the drawing classes they took at the GSD in developing their ability to “look not just at one part of an image,” said Li, “but to see the picture as a whole.” Cao appreciated the sense of narrative she developed in the course, combining image and text. They both found that drawing by hand is a useful tool, in addition to digital drawing.

Harabasz argued that developing their hand drawing skills grants designers the power to more clearly share their vision with others, and, perhaps even more importantly, to express who they are and what they value: “How do you view the world? What’s important? What do you see first, and second? How do we push the viewer to read the image as we want them to? This is what I teach.”

Summer Reading 2025: Design Books by GSD Faculty and Alumni

Whether you plan to read in the summer sunshine or an air-conditioned lounge, these recent books by Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) faculty and alumni conjure environments from the semi-arid Mezquital Valley to the frozen Arctic tundra.

Arctic Practices: Design for a Changing World  (Actar, 2025), edited by GSD lecturer in landscape architecture Bert De Jonghe (MDes ’21, DDes ’25) and Elise Misao Hunchuck, confronts two issues critical for Arctic lands: the climate crisis and the need for anticolonial reconciliation. Gathering texts by authors in the fields of design, education, and the arts, the collection offers diverse perspectives on current and future design interventions, all grounded within the Arctic’s distinct environmental and historical context.

Design for Construction: Tectonic Imagination in Contemporary Architecture  (Routledge, 2025), by Eric Höweler, professor of architecture and director of the Master of Architecture I program, bridges conceptual thinking and practical building techniques. The book delves into topics such as materials research and construction sequencing, dissecting projects by leading practitioners (including GSD-affiliates Barkow Leibinger, Johnston Marklee, MASS Design, NADAA, and others) as illustrative examples. As the discipline contends with its ecological and social impacts, re-engaging with design and building offers an opportunity for architects to assert agency while working toward a better future.

Drifting Symmetries: Projects, Provocations, and Other Enduring Models  (Park Books, 2025), by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, design critic in urban planning and design, features projects by the New York City–based architecture practice Weiss/Manfredi. Alongside the firm’s work—which is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach that melds architecture, landscape, and infrastructure—the book presents commentary from leading architects such as Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture Sarah Whiting, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization Rahul Mehrota, Hashim Sarkis (MArch ’89, PhD ’95), Nader Tehrani (MAUD ’91), and Meejin Yoon (MAUD ’97), among others.

With the recent publication Hideo Sasaki: A Legacy of Collaborative Design, author Richard Galehouse (MCP ’61)—first Sasaki’s student at the GSD and later his business partner—traces the early development of Sasaki’s professional practice in the 1960s and 1970s. Through selected case studies Galehouse illustrates the legacy of design collaboration that Sasaki endowed to his professional practice—Sasaki —as it lives on today. In a distinguishing feature of the book, Sasaki speaks directly to the reader through excerpts from an interview conducted five years after his retirement. 

All book proceeds support the Hideo Sasaki Foundation’s mission of equity in design.

Inside Architecture: A Design Journal (Balcony Press, 2025) by Scott Johnson (MArch ’75), FAIA, is structured as a personal and professional retrospective, offering a glimpse into the creative process of one of Los Angeles’s most accomplished architects. Combining candid narrative (including thoughts on his student years at the GSD), project case studies, and design commentary, Johnson reflects on the buildings, cities, and ideas that have shaped his decades-long career as the design partner and cofounder of the firm Johnson Fain.

Gareth Doherty (DDes ’10), associate professor of landscape architecture and affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies, recently published Landscape Fieldwork: How Engaging the World Can Change Design  (University of Virginia Press, 2025). This book challenges the discipline’s long-standing focus on the Global North and its current reliance on digital and technological solutions, offering tools for practitioners to engage more deeply with multidimensional, diverse landscapes and the communities that create, live in, and use them.

Landscape Is . . . !: Essays on the Meaning of Landscape (Routledge, 2025) explores various meanings of landscape as a discipline, profession, and medium. Edited by Gareth Doherty (DDes ’10), associate professor of landscape architecture and affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies; and Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture and co-director of the Master in Design Studies program, this collection is a companion volume to Is Landscape…?: Essays on the Identity of Landscape , released in 2016.

Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley (Harvard Design Press, 2025), by former Dan Urban Kiley fellows Monserrat Bonvehi Rosich (2017–2018) and Seth Denizen (2019–2021), offers an analysis of the world’s largest wastewater agricultural system, located in the Mexico City–Mezquital hydrological region, to envision an improved future environment in central Mexico. This case study presents soil as an everchanging entity that is critical for the health of the planet and all its inhabitants.

Vembanad Lake and Its Untold Stories: Ecological Fragility, Food Sovereignty, and Sustenance Habitability (Notion Press, 2025), by Hasna Sal (MDes ’25), interrogates the historical evolution, ecological challenges, and socio-economic transformations of Vembanad Lake—the longest lake in India, and the largest in the state of Kerala—over the past century. Integrating cartographic and diagrammatic analysis with oral histories by fisherman, oceanographers, and more, the book advocates for a transdisciplinary framework that values localized, experiential knowledge as essential for designing inclusive conservation strategies that support environmental stewardship and social justice.

MASS Awarded Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce that the 15th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design has been awarded to the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA) campus in Bugesera, Rwanda. MASS , which led the master planning, architecture, landscape, engineering, furniture design and fabrication, and construction for the project, will receive the $50,000 prize.

Established in 1986, the biennial Green Prize recognizes projects that make an exemplary contribution to the public realm of a city, improve the quality of life in that context, and demonstrate a humane and worthwhile direction for the design of urban environments. Eligible projects must include more than one building or open space constructed in the last 10 years.

“With this award, the GSD acknowledges not just design excellence but also excellence in the process, says Joan Busquets, chair of the Green Prize jury and Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at the GSD. “Infused with a commitment to experimentation, realized through constant negotiation between the city officials, motivated designers, and mobilized citizens, and educating other cities about implementation pathways, the RICA project sets a new standard for evaluating innovation in the field of urban design.”

“We are grateful that the Green Prize is elevating the role of design as a strategy for planetary healing and a catalyst for human potential,” says Alan Ricks, founding principal and co-executive director of MASS. “RICA is a powerful reminder that design can be both—a model of abundance not defined by excess, but by balance—where education, conservation, and community thrive together in the face of ecological limits and towards a social foundation where all can flourish.”

With Rwanda’s population expected to double by 2050, the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA) will help ensure the nation’s future food security by educating the next generation of farmers and agricultural leaders in developing healthy, sustainable food systems. Promoting biodiversity, ecological conservation, and community participation, the campus design reinforces the experiential approach to learning at the heart of RICA’s curriculum.

RICA’s master plan includes more than 20,000 square meters of buildings and 1400 hectares of landscape. The project encompasses housing, academic spaces, barn storage, processing space, stormwater systems, human and animal waste management systems, and off-grid energy infrastructure. The master plan was guided by the unique theory of One Health, an understanding that human, ecological, and animal health are deeply intertwined. RICA harnesses symbiotic ecological and agricultural relationships, and regenerative principles to achieve greater​ ​crop yields, increased biodiversity, utilized waste streams, healthier soils, and cleaner water.

The campus is connected by a central spine that supports social movement and cohesion. Connective programming along this corridor spatially links agricultural techniques and supports campus life. RICA’s research goals necessitate a variety of feed options for livestock, which include dairy cattle, goats, sheep, poultry, and swine, to complement the diversity of field and irrigation types inherent to crop management. The landscape architects established spatial parameters for the campus enterprises, including biosecurity vectors for barns, circulation/feed routes, waste management, and pastures.

RICA is expected to have a net-zero carbon footprint through landscape design, sustainable construction methods, and materials, such as stone, soil, and vegetation, sourced directly from the site. The project is energy-independent, drawing power from renewable, off-grid energy sources built as part of the project. The RICA team developed a supply chain of building materials harvested, crafted, and sourced locally, with 90 percent of the budget spent within 500 miles of the site and 96 percent of materials sourced within Rwanda. Taking into account all stages of the building process—material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and installation—RICA’s embodied carbon will be 58percent less than the global average for institutional works. RICA is estimated to become carbon-positive by 2044, positioning the project as a model for sustainable development. Employment of local workers was also prioritized, with about 90 percent of the 1300-person workforce from the Bugesera district.

RICA is completely powered by an on-site 1.5MW solar array and battery storage. In addition to the electrical draw of the campus, the array supports a network of lake pumps, filtering stations, and irrigation systems. Wastewater streams became a guiding design factor, and the team implemented a treatment plant for human waste, recycling the byproduct for forage crop irrigation. The master plan orchestrates the collection, distribution, and storage of animal waste to safely support composting and fertilization.

This year’s jury includes GSD faculty members Jungyoon Kim, Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture; Dan Stubbergaard, Professor in Practice of Urban Design; and Hanif Kara, Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology. Also on the jury is GSD alumnus Kongjian Yu, Professor and founding dean of Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape, and founder and design principal of Turenscape. The jury was chaired by Joan Busquets, Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design.

An exhibition coinciding with the prize will be on display at Druker Design Gallery beginning October 27, 2025. A public lecture and reception for the exhibition is scheduled for Wednesday, November 5, in Piper Auditorium at the GSD, and an afternoon of workshops with designers from MASS is scheduled for Thursday, November 6, 2025. Visit the GSD’s calendar of public programs for more.

Rachel Weber Appointed Chair of Department of Urban Planning and Design

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces that Dr. Rachel Weber has been appointed Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, effective July 1, 2025. Weber is an urban planner, political economist, and economic geographer who researches the relationship between finance and the built environment. Her work examines how the engagement of municipal governments with financial markets affects how cities borrow, spend, and develop.

Weber joined the GSD as professor of Urban Planning in January 2025, and she succeeds Ann Forsyth, Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor of Urban Planning, who was appointed Chair in 2023.

“I could not be more excited about Rachel’s appointment and for the future of urban planning and design at the GSD,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture. “Rachel’s research into the relationship between finance and the built environment has had an impact both within the discipline of urban planning and outside academia, influencing the creation of new public policy at all levels of government. I am also very grateful to Ann Forsyth for her leadership of the department over the past two years.”

Weber is the author of more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters and published reports. Her latest book, From Boom to Bubble: How Finance Built the New Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2015), won the Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning (2012), a compilation of 40 essays by leading urban scholars.

“Planners, designers, and developers confront urban problems in increasingly complex and polarized environments,” Weber says. “The Department of Urban Planning and Design equips our graduates for the technical and ethical challenges of building shared spatial futures. Across the GSD, faculty, staff, and students bring world-class levels of knowledge, experience, and passion to their work. I am honored to join this esteemed community of scholar-practitioners and eager to help advance our collective endeavors.”

In addition to her academic roles, Weber has served as an advisor to planning agencies and community organizations on issues related to property taxes, project finance, capital planning, and economic development. She was appointed to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Urban Policy Committee in 2008, and by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force in 2011.

Weber joined the GSD from the University of Illinois at Chicago where, since 1998, she taught and conducted research in the fields of economic development, real estate, city politics, and public finance. Her current research project spotlights the predictive knowledge practices that allow real estate investors to create and extract value from the built environment, often to the detriment of communities. Titled “The Urban Oracular: Speculating on the Future City,” this work builds on her previous insight that those involved in urban development too often are overconfident in their forecasts about supply and demand. Focusing on the period from the Global Financial Crisis through the Covid-19 pandemic, Weber is examining the role of ever more sophisticated models, algorithms, and data sources that enable investors to convert the future into capital.

Weber has been cited and quoted extensively in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Economist, Crain’s, the Chicago Tribune, and other news outlets. She holds a master’s and PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and an undergraduate degree in Development Studies from Brown University.

Announcing New Faculty Appointments for the 2025–2026 Academic Year

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces two new faculty appointments for the coming academic year: Nestor M. Davidson as Professor of Real Estate and Avis Devine as Associate Professor of Real Estate. Both appointments are effective July 1, 2025.

In his scholarship and teaching, Nestor M. Davidson (AB ’90) explores a set of related questions around transactional dynamics in real estate as well as regulatory frameworks for real estate markets. Those questions address topics including doctrinal and legal-structural concerns in affordable housing and fair housing, property theory and the constitutional dimensions of property law, and legal determinants of the built environment. He has distinguished himself in the field of urban law, exploring undertheorized constitutional and administrative aspects of urban governance, the role of law in city life, and critical fault lines in the legal relationship between states and local governments. Davidson has published widely in leading law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. Among the books he has co-authored or co-edited are Law and the New Urban Agenda (2020); The New Preemption Reader (2019); The Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy (2018); and Law Between Buildings: Emergent Global Perspectives on Urban Law (2017). His current book project, Cities in Law: Urbanism as a Legal Phenomenon, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Previously, Davidson practiced commercial real estate law at Latham & Watkins LLP, working on the real estate aspects of corporate mergers and acquisitions, real estate private equity and international project finance, as well as large-scale development, land-use, and planning projects with a particular focus on affordable multifamily housing investment, syndication, development, and compliance. He twice served at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, first as special counsel and later as principal deputy general counsel. Davidson also spent six years on the Board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency and most recently chaired the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. Davidson comes to the GSD from Fordham Law School, where he was the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law and founded the Urban Law Center. After earning his AB from Harvard College and JD from Columbia Law School, he clerked for Judge David S. Tatel on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice David H. Souter on the US Supreme Court.

Dr. Avis Devine holds a PhD in finance from the University of Cincinnati, an MBA from Duquesne University, and a BSc from Westminster College. She comes to the GSD from York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto, where she was a tenured associate professor of real estate finance and sustainability. Prior to her academic career, Devine worked in commercial real estate finance, underwriting, and valuation. Devine’s research investigates the financial and environmental performance of sustainable investment within the commercial real estate sector. Her work has been published in leading economics, finance, and sustainable development journals, including Energy Economics, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Journal of Regional Science. Her scholarly contributions have been recognized with such awards as the Nick Tyrrell Research Prize in real estate investment. Devine regularly collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with scholars and industry partners, contributing to a broader understanding of how sustainable investment and climate-related risks shape financial outcomes, portfolio strategy, and the built environment. She has received multiple research grants from academic and industry organizations and is currently engaged in projects examining the efficacy of green bond use of proceeds, the relationship between institutional ownership and carbon emissions in the energy sector, and office leasing impacts of remote and hybrid work on sustainable building adoption and commuting carbon emissions. Additionally, Devine plays an active role in shaping sustainability discourse within the real estate sector and beyond. She has served on advisory boards for the International WELL Building Institute, BOMA Canada, and RealPAC, and serves on the Real Estate Research Institute board of directors. She has crafted and frequently taught in real estate executive education programs and presents on sustainable real estate investment to corporations and real estate industry audiences worldwide. Her public presence in industry and academia alike has been widely recognized, with citations in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Commercial Property Executive, and The Financial Post.

The GSD Announces 2025–2026 Faculty Promotions

The Harvard Graduate School of Design announces four faculty promotions: Sean Canty to Associate Professor of Architecture, Jungyoon Kim to Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Pablo Pérez-Ramos to Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, and Sara Zewde to Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture.

Sean Canty (MArch ’14) is an architect and educator whose work explores the capacity of architectural form to reorganize spatial norms and forms of social life. He is the founder of Studio Sean Canty (SSC), a Cambridge-based, independent architecture practice that introduces novel geometries and materials to enrich the spaces of everyday life. Working across domestic, cultural, and civic programs, SSC’s design approach incorporates drawin­­­g, model-making, and immersive visualization to choreograph spatial adjacencies that balance solitude and collectivity. Canty is also a cofounder of Office III, a design collective with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Cambridge. The group was a finalist in the 2016 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program and designed the Governors Island Welcome Center. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and other venues. Canty has taught or coordinated Architecture Core design studios since his first appointment at the GSD in 2017 and offers courses in design media and techniques. His pedagogy emphasizes abstraction, representation, and typological invention, drawing connections between architectural form, spatial organization, and visual communication. Prior to the GSD, Canty held teaching appointments at the Cooper Union, UC Berkeley, and California College of the Arts. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, The Cooper Union, and A83 Gallery, and his writing has appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, Log, Domus, MAS Context, and several edited volumes. His accolades include the 2023 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2023 Architectural League Prize, and the 2020 Richard Rogers Fellowship from Harvard. He holds an MArch from the GSD and a BArch from California College of the Arts.

Jungyoon Kim (MLA ’00) is a practicing landscape architect, registered in the Netherlands and in Massachusetts. She founded PARKKIM with Yoonjin Park in Rotterdam in 2004 and relocated to Seoul in 2006. PARKKIM PLLC recently opened in Massachusetts with the goal of expanding its practice beyond Korea. PARKKIM has completed a wide variety of projects that range in scale and nature, including high-profile corporate landscapes and civic venues. Notable completed projects include the Seoul Museum of Craft Art (2021), Hyundai Motor Group Global Partnership Center and University Gyeongju Campus (2020), Plaza of Gyeonggi Provincial North Office (2018), CJ Blossom Park (2015), and Yanghwa Riverfront (2011). Their ongoing projects include Suseongmot Lake Floating Stage in Daegu, Korea, for which PARKKIM won the international invited competition in 2024 and is to be completed in 2026. She published the book Alternative Nature (2015), co-authored with Park, a compilation of articles written by the two principals since 2001. The term “alternative nature” was first presented in their essay “Gangnam Alternative Nature: the experience of nature without parks,” featured in the book Asian Alterity (2007), edited by William Lim, rethinking the concept of “natural” within the context of contemporary East Asian urbanism. Upon her GSD appointment, Kim has expanded PARKKIM’s design research into seminar courses and option studios, including “Lost and Alternative Nature: Vertical Mapping of Urban Subterrains for Climate Change Mitigation.” Kim was selected as “Design Leader of Next Generation” (2007) awarded by the Korean Ministry of Commerce and appointed to “Seoul Public Architect” (2011) by the Metropolitan Government Seoul. She received an MLA from the GSD and a BAgric in landscape architecture from Seoul National University with distinction.

Pablo Pérez-Ramos (MLA ’12, DDes ’18), is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM); he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core studio and teaches research seminars and lecture courses in landscape theory. Pérez-Ramos’s research explores the reciprocal relationship between design and the natural sciences, using landscape form as a medium to interpret both physical processes and abstract scientific concepts. With interests in material culture, the environmental humanities, and the philosophy of science, he has delved into the origins of ecological narratives in contemporary landscape architecture, and more recently expanded his focus to include thermodynamics, biological systematics, and evolutionary theory. His theoretical agenda underpins ongoing research on climate adaptation, traditional knowledge, and agroecological practices in conditions of extreme heat and aridity. His work is ultimately concerned with the formal tensions and interferences existing between human technology and the other physical forces and processes—tectonic, atmospheric, biological—that shape landscapes. Prior to his GSD appointment, Pérez-Ramos taught at the Northeastern University School of Architecture, Boston Architectural College, and Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as regional planning coordinator for the 2025 master plan for the Metropolitan District of Quito and previously practiced as a licensed architect in Madrid. His writings have been published in the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA), The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA), PLOT, MONU, Revista Arquitectura (COAM), Landscape Research Record (CELA), and in the edited volumes The Landscape as Union between Art and Science: The Legacy of Alexander von Humboldt and Ernst Haeckel (2023), and MedWays Open Atlas (2022), among others.

Sara Zewde (MLA ’15) is founding principal of Studio Zewde, a design firm practicing landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art. Recent and ongoing projects of the firm include the Dia Beacon Art Museum landscape in Beacon, New York; the Watts Towers Arts Center landscape in Watts, Los Angeles; Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Zewde’s practice and research start from her contention that the discipline of landscape architecture is tightly bound by precedents and typologies rooted in specific traditions that must be challenged. Without rigorous investigation, Zewde contends that these cultural assumptions will silently continue to constrict the practice of design and reinforce a quiet, cultural hegemony in the built form of cities and landscapes. Her projects exemplify how sensitivities to culture, ecology, and craft can serve as creative departures for expanding design traditions. Prior to joining the GSD in 2020, Zewde held faculty appointments at GSAPP, Columbia University, and the University of Texas School of Architecture. She holds an MLA from the GSD, an MCP from MIT, and a BA in sociology and statistics from Boston University. She regularly writes, lectures, and exhibits her work, and she is currently writing a manuscript based on her research of Frederick Law Olmsted’s travels through the Slave South and their impact on his practice. The book will be published in 2027 with Simon & Shuster.  Zewde was named the 2014 National Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, a 2016 Artist-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and a United States Artists Fellow in 2020. More recently, she was named to the 2024 TIME 100 Next and *Wallpaper’s 300 People Shaping Creative America.