Shaping and Promoting Activism Around Cultural Landscapes

Cultural landscapes bear the imprint of human interaction with the physical environment, and when interrogated deeply, they reveal our evolving relationships with the natural world. How can cultural landscapes inform and shape our shared public memory?

How do our collective planning, design, education, interpretation, advocacy, and public engagement decisions affect how we make visible, assign value and promote holistic stewardship and sympathetic change?

Once a project is built, is our work done? How does an activist landscape practice ensure faithful and imaginative stewardship during the management of change in built projects?
What about those cultural landscapes that have been forgotten, malnourished, subject to neglect or worse, purposefully erased, whose histories and cultural lifeways are waiting to be made visible?

Do we stand by while these cultural landscapes lay dormant, decline further, and accept that perhaps they were even the targets of a palimpsest of abuse and disregard?

Students and practitioners must prepare themselves and develop advocacy tools to assume leadership positions to effectively prescribe change in the public realm, address historical (and purposeful) erasure, past memorialization, and the rigidity of antiquated and historic government standards that are building- and object-oriented. For activists and advocates this is essential when commemorating the past in our shared public realm and in authentically engaging, empowering, and amplifying community voices.  These core values are necessary to foster trust with the goal of cultural landscapes helping us to collectively come together to find ways to heal.

In addressing these challenges, what role can — and should — landscape architecture (as well as allied disciplines in history, planning, design and conservation), play as collaborative participants in advocating for this legacy as part of our collective national reckoning?

Speakers throughout the semester, including advocate and social entrepreneur Angela Kyle, will represent a diversity of disciplines, sectors, and perspectives including: from non-profits with missions focused on public education and advocacy; cultural resource consultants who adopted tireless and research-driven advocacy and design positions; landscape architects, planners, and architects who built advocacy into their public engagement efforts to inform form giving, design, and placemaking; community activists who through their tenacity and doggedness have affected or driven the conversation in charting a collective way forward; and urban strategists who inform their development approaches through authentic community engagement and design when promoting lost and forgotten histories.

Taken together, this seminar will examine the planning, design, and stewardship opportunities — and constraints — frequently encountered when advocating for cultural landscapes and their lost or forgotten histories. This seminar will also address how we may develop a personal ethic when bridging the artificial, often segmented divides between design and historic preservation as well as nature and culture.

Given the scale of contemporary challenges, from climate change and biodiversity loss to racial and social equity, the need for activist approaches to inform planning and design decisions is greater than ever. This seminar will showcase those perspectives where advocacy leadership has been essential to guiding change and future stewardship of the often invisible and forgotten cultural landscape legacy.

Type and the Idea of the City: Architecture’s Search for what is Common

Open to all students, the seminars will equip students with the theoretical and historical understanding of type as a heuristic device in the discourse of the city as a project. Taking Anthony Vidler’s Third Typology as a starting point, the seminar proposes the fourth typology as a common framework for the production of an architecture of the city in today’s globalized context. Unlike the first three typologies that found their justification for sociality from nature, the machine and the historical city respectively; the fourth typology is rooted in the developmental city. The first half of the seminar will begin with the understanding of type from Quatremère de Quincy and J.N.L Durand through the dialectics of idea and model. This renewed understanding of type and typology will offer an alternative reading of the writings and projects of Aldo Rossi and Rem Koolhaas as attempts to revalidate architecture’s societal and political role through the redefinition of the idea of the city. This idea of the city will be discussed through Aristotle’s polis, Schmitt’s ‘homogenous demos’, Mouffe’s ‘agonistic pluralism’, Rossi’s ‘collective memory’, Agamben’s ‘dispositif’ and Koolhaas’ ‘heterogeneous containments’.

The second half of the seminar will be focused on the history and theory behind the emergence of the developmental city and its corresponding dominant types. This discussion will cover the various urban and typological outcomes instigated by the rapid transformation of cities, its peripheries and countryside, following this developmental model – examples will be drawn from China, London, and Singapore. The reading and understanding of these emerging conceptions of the city will be guided by the concepts and theories offered in the first half of the course. Finally, the seminar will speculate on the possibility of conceiving alternative ideas of the city through its dominant type in these newfound conditions.   

 

Up to five seats will be held for MDes students.

Master in Real Estate Practicum Prep

The Master in Real Estate Practicum is a three-part academic experience that enables students to apply the knowledge and skills acquired during their time in-residence at Harvard to a practice-based institutional environment that makes a meaningful contribution to their education as well as to the host organization.

The Practicum begins with the 0-unit Prep Seminar in the Fall and Spring terms, where students are introduced to participating organizations, explore emerging trends in professional practice, and prepare for a productive summer placement.

During the Summer term, students complete a two-month, full-time Practicum with a private, public, or non-profit real estate organization, participating in ongoing real estate projects or initiatives that advance cutting-edge practices, including those promoting social and environmental best practices. The experience concludes with a final paper and participation in two days of presentations and discussion at the GSD during Orientation Week.

Together, these components comprise 12 course units, equivalent to three term-long courses. Participation is limited to students in the Master in Real Estate program at the GSD.

Discourse and Methods II

The objective of the seminar is to examine and discuss in depth some of the main methodological issues that students enrolled in the PhD program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning may encounter in their studies and research. The seminar will be based on extensive reading as well as presentations by the instructor and other faculty members involved in the PhD program.

Discourse and Research Methods

This pro-seminar is a core requirement for successful completion of the Doctor of Design program. Primarily, it will focus on various thematic areas that range across various topics and the methods and skills that might be involved in each area. Generally, these will include: historical thinking, critical thinking, thinking about technologies, analysis of social settings, theorizing landscapes, and theorizing aspects of urban form, as well as analyzing its environmental performance. Each seminar will be of two or more hours in duration and comprised of presentation by an invited faculty member on a theme of their research and scholarly interest, followed by discussion among the class. The seminar will meet on Thursdays between 3:00pm and 5:45pm at 20 Sumner Road, House Zero’s lower floor conference room.

Products of Practice: A Critical History and Uncertain Present

This research seminar traces the dynamic dance between the shape of design practice and the society it serves through the lens of the defining media and practical instruments of our time, the “products of practice.” Through an engagement with history, theory, and the mechanics of everyday practice, the course aims to frame structural change within practice and for the role of the architect in society in order to prepare students to innovate, define, and lead future design practice.

Within the cacophony of contemporary media, under the pressures of financial instruments, and with an expectation of artificial intelligence, this practice seminar looks to the past to explore the product of the architect as an artifact of circumstance, framing and projecting practice potentials now and into the future. Critically tracking the development of our practice, we will research design context, instruments of service, and the media of production as cultural and temporal constructs that limit or expand the role of the architect in practice. Our collective goal is an exploration of the relationship between — and the limits of — discipline, practice, and profession to better understand their structural potentials.

Course content will be organized thematically, exploring the origins of contemporary practice and its products at any given moment — from built form to model to drawing to code — as the architect evolved from master builder to author to project manager. Legal and technical issues, client types, and structures of fee and control will be considered alongside cultural impact. Students will develop critical positions on the renewed debate between empirical vs. cultural practice, on mediatic production and instruments of service for single projects vs. systems of design deployment, and rapid technological change as it intersects with changing structures of labor.

Class time will include framing lecture content as well as group discussion around evolving student research, media, and readings. Guests from practice and related sectors will be assembled to add perspective to specific topics, particularly around the issue of emerging modes of production and instrumentation. Guest speakers with perspectives on the history and theory of architectural practice will also join the class to assist in framing essential questions relevant to the topic at hand.

Plants and Placemaking – New Ecologies for a Rapidly Changing World

In the face of crises spanning pandemics, political turmoil, and the rapid degradation of the planet’s natural systems—all within a backdrop of myriad inequalities—the power of plants in shaping human experience has been proven. Erosive pressures associated with changes to climate have placed global ecologies and plant communities under assault, yet abundant and resilient life still adapts and flourishes in most places. This course will encourage students to observe these patterns and to learn from context so that we can place the healing and restorative qualities of plants, essential to sustaining life on this planet, in the foreground of our work as landscape architects.

To reimagine the revegetation of a place after catastrophe or amidst the pressures of development and the complexities of human movement, we must first understand context by digging into the past to examine what ecologies were there before the present state occurred. With these informed perspectives, we can begin to repair fragmented natural systems, preserve (and create) habitat, sequester carbon, and buffer communities from destructive weather and climate—all while embracing the realities of how people gather, work, and live. Plants define the character of place; they shape who we are and who we become. We must get this right or the same patterns in more chaotic contexts will simply reemerge.

This course is open to those who crave a creative and interpretive, yet pragmatic, approach toward utilizing plants to create landscapes that actively rebuild systems stretching far beyond site boundaries. Expressive and iterative weekly exercises will encourage rapid design that inspires students to explore natural and designed plant communities. Conventional and non-conventional planting typologies will be examined.

Together we will seek new and innovative ideas for how to restore biological function to the land. This course will not be a comprehensive botanical overview of the history of plants; however, it will reinforce important methodologies for how to learn and research plants that can be translated to any locale, by studying individual vegetative features and characteristics. We will translate these investigations into design languages that can be applied in future design work.

Shaping Chinese Megacity Regions: Design, Policy, and Planning

This seminar examines the upsurge of megacity regions in China since the early 21st century, with a focus on how spatial planning, policy, and urban design have shaped this phenomenal process amid evolving state-market relations and growing global integration. We will analyze the development trajectories of select regions–including the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, and the China–Vietnam Red River Development Corridor–while examining their distinctive planning approaches and design strategies.

The course situates these case studies within broader political traditions and institutional frameworks, revealing the social, economic, cultural, and environmental forces at play. Students will also be introduced to key tools and methods of spatial planning and design that apply to city-region planning worldwide.

Through guest lectures and seminar discussions, students will engage with current debates and contribute their own perspectives, drawing on their academic and professional backgrounds to enrich a critical understanding of Chinese megacity regionalization.

Strategic Sustainability: Building Resilient and Responsible Enterprises (Module 1)

As enterprise-level activities are increasingly scrutinized for their role in ecological degradation, social inequities, and economic disruptions, organizations must navigate a landscape where accountability extends well beyond financial performance. Students will examine how businesses can address material risks — from climate shocks and regulatory pressures to stakeholder expectations — while identifying opportunities to build resilience and competitive advantage through sustainability.

This module course goes beyond exploring why sustainability matters, focusing on how to enact effective sustainable strategies. Students will learn to identify and evaluate material environmental and social risks for organizations, measure and assess current sustainability efforts, and determine an organization’s existing strategy for addressing environmental and social risks. Students will develop an understanding of the institutional forces and systemic issues that shape organizational behavior, enabling them to design strategies that both mitigate risk and create long-term value. By emphasizing the intersection of strategic decision-making and sustainable leadership, this course equips students to build competitive advantage and drive measurable positive outcomes for both business and society.

BACKGROUND AND APPROACH
The is an elective, specially designed for Master in Real Estate students, yet open to students in other programs. There are no prerequisites.

This course takes a broad, cross-industry approach to sustainability rather than focusing solely on real estate. By examining the impacts and drivers of sustainability as they may impact organizations that are tenants, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders, the course provides insights that are relevant across multiple sectors. This approach ensures that the content is accessible and valuable for students with interests both within and beyond real estate.
 

Creating Environmental Markets

There is a way out of the climate box we have created, though resistance to the necessary ecological transformation remains intense. Sunk investments in existing infrastructure, broadly accepted design and economic theory, and the lifelong operations employment it has provided make the foundation of such resistance. Creating Environmental Markets will examine alternative capital markets based in regulatory requirements but offering opportunities to use credit trades and new approaches to old systems to restore ecology while providing economic incentives and jobs.

The climate problems we once anticipated have become a connected series of current crises: intense heat, extended drought, potable water shortages, almost spontaneous fires, floods, food shortages, enormous tornadoes and hurricanes, acute cold…. The prognosis for the coming decades is that these phenomena will get worse, yet our responses remain mostly mundane. We repair, rebuild, extend, and expand essentially the same 19th Century energy and water infrastructure that put us in this climate box, evidently expecting a different outcome.

If we are to meet and overcome the climate challenges we have created, incentivizing environmental restoration over broad landscapes, from individual site designs to entire cityscapes, is essential. The law as currently interpreted will not save us, but some combination of law and regulation together with markets creating economic incentives favoring ecological restoration of natural systems could. In addition to recognizing the damage we have done we need a clear conception of required ecological repair. Students will be introduced to that clear conception while examining a regulation-based market to incentivize ecological repair at scale, fostering the necessary energy and water infrastructure change.  

This class is intended for MLA, Planning, and Design students. Their skills provide them the insights necessary to make such markets work. Students will investigate, in small teams, whether a developing credit market based on phosphorus trading would also help up to four cities in Massachusetts meet their regulatory obligations to control Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4s). Intended to incentivize the restoration of natural systems, the market would also lead to enhanced flood control, resilience to drought, and restored habitat. Students will also work with city officials, producing a report on their findings and recommendations. Using Blue Cities/Stratifyx, a developing market platform, they will assess the damage existing infrastructure has caused while examining the benefits and potential for restorative change.