Ali Malkawi talks Center for Green Buildings and Cities, HouseZero project with Harvard Gazette

The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) revealed its centerpiece initiative, the HouseZero project, last month, and CGBC founding director Ali Malkawi recently conducted a Q&A with the Harvard Gazette  to offer an inside look at the ambitious venture.

“Being in a university setting and having the knowledge that we have accumulated, we thought it would be important to be able to see what we can do with existing technologies and design ideas that enable us to have ambitions that have not been met before, as well as change the perception about certain challenges that we have in relation to the built environment,” Malkawi tells the Gazette.

With the HouseZero project, Malkawi, who also is professor of architectural technology at the GSD, aims to turn the CGBC’s Cambridge headquarters into a building that uses as little energy, materials, and resources as possible. Among other design and engineering elements, HouseZero’s HVAC system will be replaced with thermal mass, and a ground source heat pump for extreme cold. A solar vent will instigate buoyancy-driven ventilation and triple-glazed windows will employ natural cross ventilation through a manual and automated system that monitors for temperature, humidity, and air quality.

“Though this is a stick-frame building, the same ideas can be applied to other types of homes or structures throughout the world,” Malkawi tells the Gazette. “We will be able to translate some of our learning lessons, not just now but as it evolves. It’s not about globalization. It’s about localization related to principles that can then be applied.”

Read Malkawi’s full Q&A at the Harvard Gazette‘s website , and learn more about the launch of the HouseZero project via the GSD’s coverage.

Dean’s year in review: Highlights from 2016–2017

Dear GSD Alumni and Friends,

As the spring semester culminates in an exciting range of studios and thesis reviews, and as the next class of graduates prepares to embark on new careers, launch new ventures, and drive new lines of research, I write to share highlights of the important work produced at the GSD over the past year.

I am also pleased to report that in the most recent DesignIntelligence ranking of America’s best architecture and landscape architecture programs, the GSD maintained its position at the top. As you know, the results of these rankings are referenced by prospective students and potential employers of our graduates, and as a result they have a material effect on the School and its community. The surveys for the next rankings in architecture and landscape architecture are now open, so if you are in a leadership or hiring position in a design-related field, I encourage you to submit a response and share your experience by the deadline, which is May 26th.

Our current ranking, I am proud to say, continues to be reflected in the outstanding quality of the School’s output. Its excellence and integrity are grounded in the School’s values and its direct engagement with the ethical dimension of what we do. As a School, we are committed to the transformative power of design and its capacity to create just and equitable cities. It is my pleasure to share with you a summary of what we have accomplished this year toward that end, and what we look forward to achieving in the semesters and years ahead.

A Leader on the Future of the City

Across departments, the GSD extended its deep analysis of global urbanization and the multitude of its effects. Indeed, we aspire to be the world’s intellectual leader on the future of the city, and we continue to develop and refine new studios, public programs, and a host of other research initiatives to make progress on this ambition.

In studio work completed over the past year, students and faculty investigated a series of specific urban contexts and produced substantive proposals aimed at bettering the lives of their residents. Our studios included site visits to 37 cities in the U.S. and around the world. In conjunction with AECOM, we organized a series of option studios themed geographically around Southeast Asia. In spring 2016, the series studied Jakarta, and this spring we turned our focus to Kuala Lumpur. The third installment, scheduled for next fall, will focus on Manila. In the Department of Landscape Architecture, faculty and students designed innovative renewal solutions for a section of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. Option studios in the Department of Urban Planning and Design covered specific sites from Savannah, Georgia, to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Palava City in Mumbai, India, and topics ranging from urban ecology to affordable housing and questions of shelter and displacement.

Working side-by-side with city leaders and local communities is an important part of equipping students with the skill and insight to make an immediate and positive impact on the world. This year, we hosted an impressive roster of policy makers and city leaders, who contributed to the School’s pedagogy as review panelists, speakers, and design critics. Among them, we welcomed the mayors of three major cities to address students and faculty: Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera , Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh . In addition, Stephen Ross and Richard Rogers , among others, spoke as part of our public program, and we organized conferences and exhibitions on Tokyo and Barcelona, examining these cities as case studies in designing the future city. Taken together, all of this activity provided a rich combination of formats, each of which connected to the School’s core pedagogy in a unique way, supplementing our studios and seminars with exposure to decision-making in urban policy at the highest levels.

Following the talk by Richard Rogers at the GSD, we launched a new fellowship program based in London at Rogers’ Wimbledon House, a home he designed in 1968 and that he and his wife, the celebrated chef Ruthie Rogers, donated to the GSD for this purpose. The fellowship serves as an international platform to convene experts and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines whose work is focused on the built environment and its capacity to advance the quality of human life. In March, we welcomed the inaugural fellows at the house. Located near some of the world’s finest resources for research in urbanism, the program represents both an international extension of the GSD’s physical footprint and a symbol of the School’s commitment to engaging issues faced by cities globally.

While the purview of the School’s work is global, it is important, however, to emphasize that our focus on the future of the city is buttressed by a clear framework for engagement with local communities, starting with our own here in Cambridge and neighboring Allston and Boston. Toward that end, a series of studios proposed solutions for Cambridge’s Central Square neighborhood and Boston’s Harbor Islands. In partnership with Harvard’s central administration, the GSD also led a design-build competition for a public commons in neighboring Allston , offering our students an opportunity to undertake a built project while considering its impact on the neighborhood. Throughout our work in Allston and other communities around Boston and Cambridge, close communication with residents remains an essential part of the design process.

Amid this constellation of new and developing projects, the Office for Urbanization extended its research on Miami Beach, and together with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health we are excited to enroll the first class in a new joint degree in health and urbanization. As the work we produce through our portfolio of city-focused initiatives continues to grow, we also look forward to formalizing a broad, institutional platform—Future of the American City—which will give institutional structure and support to the School’s energies focused on the future of urban America. I look forward to sharing further developments as we make progress.

Design Research for a Better World

As many of you know, the GSD’s commitment to design research has grown substantially in recent years. We aim to be deliberate and constructive with this growth, asking questions about which issues lend themselves best to our interdisciplinary approach, and how we can maximize opportunities for students and faculty alike.

Alongside the tradition of individual faculty research, our option studios have emerged as domains of collaborative investigation around specific themes, geographies, and strategies. We have been able to offer option studios that vary in scale, from the streetscape to the territorial; that engage with industry, technique, and social justice; and that examine sites located in the far reaches of the globe as well as our own local communities. Examples of this include the AECOM studios and a three-part studio series in collaboration with Knoll, examining professional work environments. The comprehensive approach of the option studio model is unmatched by any other school, and it is key in preparing our students as leaders and shapers of the built environment.

Innovation remains a cornerstone of our research agenda as well, and some of our most deeply interdisciplinary research has been focused on creating entirely new forms of knowledge. Soon, the Center for Green Buildings and Cities will break ground on its “House Zero,” an experiment in transforming existing buildings into energy-efficient, energy-producing structures. Our partnership with Peking University through the Ecological Urbanism Collaboration has continued with a series of research and summer study projects. Our Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program, offered in collaboration with Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, concluded its inaugural year with a series of design-driven innovations in global food systems. We also named the first two recipients of the John E. (Jack) Irving Innovation Fellowship, a new program intended to support outstanding, cutting-edge research conducted by select recent graduates.

Dynamic Public Programming 

The GSD’s public programs and exhibitions continue to offer opportunities to bring new ideas from a wide variety of disciplines into the life of the School, and they also offered valuable community-building moments. Talks by artists Christo and Jeff Koons and writer Jonathan Franzen—all made possible by the Rouse Visiting Artist Program—brought excitement and creative energy to Gund. They reaffirmed the GSD as a destination for rich conversations at the intersection of the humanities and design, both for the GSD community and for students and faculty across Harvard. This March, we held a special celebration for I.M. Pei (MArch ’46), marking his centennial birthday with personal reflections given by Henry Cobb (AB ’47, MArch ’49), Bart Voorsanger (MArch ’64), and others. This fall, we will host a conference intended to produce some of the first critical engagements with Pei’s prodigious career.

Our roster of talks and lectures made room for serious pedagogical discourse as well. Rem Koolhaas presented in October, touching on architecture’s role in the global political climate. This spring, we convened an exciting panel of experts, including Harvard Business School’s Rajiv Lal, Warby Parker CEO Neil Blumenthal, and DACRA CEO and President Craig Robins, for a discussion on the relationship between the physical and digital retail space. While much of our learning takes place in the classroom and in the studio, opportunities to hear from such leaders visiting from outside the School create unique learning moments that supplement our core pedagogy.

Our exhibition program extends this scope of interdisciplinarity. Exhibitions on contemporary Chinese architecture, Barcelona’s urban development, and the work of Atelier Bow-Wow reflect the GSD’s global focus. We were especially honored to mount an exhibition in collaboration with Harold Koda (MLA ’00), former Curator in Chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and landscape architect Ken Smith (MLA ’86). The exhibition, “Designing Planes and Seams,” explored the shared concerns of landscape architecture and clothing design, how surface materials and process engage with time, space, structure, and the environment. The exhibition serves as a poignant example of how much we stand to gain from thinking across fields and representing our work in dynamic and immersive ways. It represents a commitment to design, creativity, and imagination shared by our students as well, a commitment that was on full display in the ninth edition of our Platform exhibition. In organizing the show, the student-faculty curatorial team invoked the concept of the “still life” as a device to arrange compositional groupings of student work from across the School. Establishing spatial juxtapositions between projects from across disciplines, the exhibition made visible a multiplicity of contexts and perspectives. Through such relational techniques and exercises of the imagination, new ideas emerge.

Looking Forward

In closing, I want to share a few more exciting programs and initiatives coming up next year and beyond. In the fall, many GSD faculty and alumni will be participating in the second iteration of the Chicago Architecture Biennial , which will be curated by GSD alumni Sharon Johnston (MArch ’95) and Mark Lee (MArch ’95). As we look to the future of online education, we are also considering how design pedagogy might be reshaped in the digital era, calling on the expertise of our faculty who teach in both the degree and executive education programs. This year we took a bold step in this direction with Michael Hays’s online course, “The Architectural Imagination ,” which immediately became one of the most sought after courses at HarvardX, and which I encourage you to check out.

We are exploring possibilities for expanding our physical footprint to better respond to the School’s commitment to innovative teaching and research. Expansion will also enable us to address the spatial demands of our increased scope of activity and growing community.

Our faculty hiring has kept pace with our expanding student body. While the work of several search committees is still in progress, we have finalized appointments or promotions of 11 faculty. A number of exciting appointments are in the pipeline, about which we will send out a separate announcement this fall.

A few months from now, we will welcome another promising new class of students to Cambridge. Our most recent admissions cycle marks another successful round of recruitment with an exceptionally high yield rate. Our international yield rate remains very high despite widespread anxiety about U.S. immigration, a testament to the quality of our work and the impact our faculty, students, and alumni are making in the world.

As always, I look forward to visiting with many of you in the next year at a reunion on October 13–14 for classes ending in 2’s and 7’s, or at one of our many alumni events. It was a pleasure to see over 100 alumni visit Gund Hall last fall to celebrate their 5th to 50th reunions. In April, Martin Bechthold (DDes ’01) and the DDes program welcomed over a quarter of the 180 DDes alumni for the program’s 30th anniversary. With one year remaining for the Grounded Visionaries campaign, fundraising for student financial aid and fellowships remains a high priority for the School. Such support is crucial to the GSD’s ability to continue attracting the most talented students from around the world.

If you are in the Boston area next fall, I encourage you to visit Gund Hall and join the conversation at one of our public lectures. I am grateful for your committed support of the School and wish you an enjoyable and productive summer.

Best regards,

 

 

Mohsen Mostafavi

Gareth Doherty appointed Director of Master in Landscape Architecture program

Gareth Doherty (DDes ’10), assistant professor of landscape architecture and senior research associate, has been appointed the Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture program, assuming the role as of July 1, 2017. He succeeds Bradley Cantrell (MLA ’03) in the position. The department is chaired by Anita Berrizbeitia (MLA ’87).

Dr. Doherty’s research and teaching focus on the intersections between landscape architecture, urbanism, and anthropology. His newest book, Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State , was published in 2017 by the University of California Press. Previous publications include Is Landscape…? Essays on the Identity of Landscape , edited with Charles Waldheim (Routledge, 2016); and Ecological Urbanism , edited with Mohsen Mostafavi, (Lars Müller Publishers, 2010, and revised in 2016), which has been translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese, with Arabic and Persian editions in process. Doherty is a founding editor of the New Geographies journal and editor-in-chief of New Geographies 3: Urbanisms of Color .

Doherty received a Doctor of Design degree from the GSD in 2010 and received his Master of Landscape Architecture and Certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania. He earned masters and undergraduate degrees from University College Dublin.

Doherty’s recent studios and courses include the First Semester Core Landscape Architecture Studio, Design Anthropology: Objects, Landscapes, Cities; Proseminar in Landscape Architecture,  Preparation of Design Thesis Proposal for Master in Landscape Architecture, and the Ecological Urbanism Field Research Seminar. Doherty has a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University.

Remembering Eduard Sekler, 1920–2017

Eduard Franz Sekler, Harvard University’s Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Art Emeritus and Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, passed away last week at the age of 96. An architect and historian of architecture, Professor Sekler first came to Harvard in 1953, as a Fulbright Scholar. Two years later, Graduate School of Design Dean Josep Lluis Sert invited him to join the GSD faculty. From 1966 to 1976, he served as the first director of the Carpenter Center. He co-founded Harvard’s Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) department in 1968, alongside the late Albert Szabo. All told, Professor Sekler served on the Harvard University faculty for over 50 years.

A native of Vienna, Professor Sekler received professional training in architecture at the Vienna University of Technology before moving to London to study under Rudolf Wittkower at the School of Planning and Regional Research. He graduated with a PhD in the history of art from London University’s Warburg Institute in 1948, and came to the United States as a Fulbright Fellow in 1953. Among his many contributions to Harvard, Professor Sekler co-founded the University’s Visual and Environmental Studies department in 1968.

A prolific writer, Professor Sekler authored, among other publications, Wren and His Place in European Architecture (1956); Research and Criticism in Architecture (1957); and co-authored with William Curtis Le Corbusier at Work: The Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (1978). He was the recipient of numerous grants and awards throughout his career, including a Guggenheim Fellowship for the morphological study of selected historic urban spaces in Europe and Asia.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Professor Sekler was a passionate advocate for the preservation of cultural and architectural sites around the world, and worked with UNESCO on a number of projects. He was particularly dedicated to the conservation of Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley after first visiting the region in 1962. Ten years later he led the international UNESCO team for the “Masterplan for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Kathmandu Valley,” and in 1991 he founded the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), an organization dedicated to safeguarding the built heritage of the region.

A memorial service will be held this Saturday, May 13, at 10:00 a.m. at St. Paul’s Church.

 

Frank Gehry first architect to receive Harvard Arts Medal

Architect Frank Gehry has been named the recipient of the 2016 Harvard Arts Medal , which will be awarded by Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust at a ceremony on Thursday, April 28. The ceremony, presented by the Office for the Arts at Harvard and the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, will include a discussion with Gehry moderated by actor John Lithgow, who is host of the event.

This marks the first time that the Harvard Arts Medal has been awarded to an architect.

“Frank Gehry is a true original, a visionary artist whose work has revolutionized architecture and place-making in the 21st century,” said Lithgow. “He’s the first architect to receive the Arts Medal, and Harvard looks forward to celebrating his extraordinary achievements and risk-taking spirit.”

Gehry is the design principal of Frank O. Gehry & Associates Inc., which he founded in 1962. Born in Toronto, he studied urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design after receiving a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California. He has produced remarkable public and private buildings in America, Europe, and Asia, that powerfully express the dynamism of contemporary urban life, and he is celebrated for bold designs and dazzling metal structures. Among his many honors are the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal, and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal for Architecture.

To learn more, please read Harvard Magazine’s coverage of the 2016 award.

New Office for Urbanization focuses on research projects attendant to the contemporary city

The Harvard Graduate School of Design announces the formation of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Office for Urbanization, a trans-disciplinary initiative that will focus the intellectual and practical capabilities of the School on a range of applied design research projects attendant to the contemporary city. The Office will be led by founding director Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture.

The Office for Urbanization will build upon the GSD’s legacy of innovation in design research to address societal conditions associated with contemporary urbanization. Engaging faculty from the School’s three departments, the Office will draw upon the range of disciplinary and professional knowledge embodied in the GSD’s research advancement initiatives and design labs to extend the School’s impact on the future of cities around the world. Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, describes the initiative as “a continuation of the GSD’s historic leadership in applied project-based design research, and an exciting new initiative reconfirming the School’s commitment to impactful societal engagement through design. The Office will work to shorten the distance between innovation in design research and impact in the world.”

The Office will provide a venue for the advancement of knowledge on the role of design research in relation to the social and environmental challenges associated with ongoing urbanization. Collaborating with the Center for Green Buildings and Design, the Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Executive Education, and engaging government agencies, non-government organizations, philanthropic institutions, and community leadership, the Office will articulate and evaluate various scenarios for urbanization through a number of agendas for design research.

Global in its purview, the Office will engage partners on a diverse array of sites and subjects domestically and internationally. Its inaugural project will focus on municipal response to sea level in partnership with the City of Miami Beach. “This foundational project of the Office for Urbanization will examine the implications of rising sea levels and increased storm events on the economy and ecology, infrastructure and identity of Miami Beach in relation to its metropolitan and regional contexts,” Waldheim says. “The study will develop design strategies and scenarios to mitigate present threats and to anticipate future potentials facing one of the world’s most recognizable and singular cultural landscapes.”

Bradley Cantrell appointed Director of Master of Landscape Architecture Program

The Harvard Graduate School of Design announces the appointment of Bradley Cantrell (MLA ‘03) as director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program, commencing immediately.

Cantrell was appointed associate professor of landscape architecture at the GSD last July. His appointment as director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program follows the appointment of Anita Berrizbeitia (MLA ‘87) as chair of the department, announced earlier this summer.

Cantrell’s work as a landscape architect and scholar focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design. He served as the 2013–2014 recipient of the Garden Club of America Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and as Director and Associate Professor at Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. He has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Cantrell’s research and teaching focuses on digital film, simulation, and modeling techniques to represent landscape form, process, and phenomenology. His expertise in digital representation ranges from improving the workflow of digital media in the design process to providing a methodology for deconstructing landscape through compositing and film editing techniques.

Cantrell received his bachelor of science in landscape architecture from the University of Kentucky and his master of landscape architecture from the GSD.

Diane Davis appointed Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design

The GSD is pleased to announce the appointment of Diane Davis as chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design as of July 1, 2015. Davis is currently the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at the GSD.

Davis teaches courses and options studios that examine the role of politics in planning and design, relations between urbanization and development, and socio-spatial practice at the scale of the city. Her research focuses on urban transformations in the global south, particularly the urban social, spatial, and political conflicts that have emerged in response to globalization, informality, and political and economic violence. In her capacity as codirector of the Risk and Resilience track in the Master in Design Studies (MDes) program, Davis explores overlapping vulnerabilities in the built and natural environment and assesses their significance for planning theory and design practice.

Davis is a prior recipient of research fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the United States Institute for Peace, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Currently, she directs a project funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundation titled “Transforming Urban Transport—The Role of Political Leadership.”

Davis was named the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at the GSD in November 2014 and had served as professor of urbanism and development at the GSD since 2012.

Anita Berrizbeitia appointed Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture

The GSD is pleased to announce the appointment of Anita Berrizbeitia (MLA ’87) as chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture as of July 1, 2015. Berrizbeitia is currently professor of landscape architecture and director of the Master in Landscape Architecture degree programs at the GSD.

Berrizbeitia is a landscape architect specializing in theory and criticism of nineteenth and twentieth-century public landscapes in the United States and Europe, with particular interests in material culture, design expression, and the productive functions and roles of landscape in processes of urbanization. Her research on Latin American cities and landscapes centers on the creative hybridization of local and foreign cultural practices as a response to a centuries-old process of global cultural exchange; the role of large-scale infrastructural projects on territorial organization; and the interface between landscape and emerging urbanization.

At the GSD, Berrizbeitia has taught design studios and theory of contemporary practices, investigating innovative approaches to the conceptualization of public space, especially on sites where urbanism, globalization, and local cultural conditions intersect. She also leads seminars that focus on significant transformations in landscape discourse over the last three decades.

Editorially, Berrizbeitia is editor of Urban Landscape—Critical Concepts in Built Environment Series (Routledge, March 2015); editor of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes (Yale University Press, 2009), which received an ASLA Honor Award; author of Roberto Burle Marx in Caracas: Parque del Este, 1956–1961 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), awarded the J.B. Jackson Book Prize in 2007 from the Foundation for Landscape Studies; and co-author with Linda Pollak of Inside/Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape (Rockport, 1999), which won an ASLA Merit Award. Her essays have also been published in numerous books and journals, and she serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Landscape Architecture and on the advisory board of the South America Project. She has also served on major competition juries in Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Madrid.

A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Berrizbeitia studied architecture at the Universidad Simon Bolivar before receiving a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and a master in landscape architecture from the GSD in 1987. Since then, she has taught in various capacities at the GSD, including as assistant professor of landscape architecture from 1993 to 1998 and as professor of landscape architecture since 2009.

New PhD track in Architectural Technology

The PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning announces an additional track in Architectural Technology. Doctoral research undertaken in this area will have the aim of advancing the state of knowledge in green building, and will typically include issues related to computation and simulation, environmental concerns, and energy performance. A background in architecture and/or engineering-related fields is required. In addition to a highly interdisciplinary curriculum that includes theoretical and empirical approaches, especially the history and philosophy of technology, the student will be associated with the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities , which will provide the intellectual context for this research. 

“It is with great excitement that we inaugurate a new doctoral concentration in Architectural Technology, which will allow students to take advantage of the extraordinary resources in this area at Harvard University in the context of a program based in the humanities and social sciences,” said Erika Naginski, Professor of Architectural History and Director of the PhD program.

For more information, please visit the PhD Program page.