Projective Ecologies

Projective Ecologies takes stock of contemporary ecological research and speculates on potential paths forward for design. Where is ecological theory going? What do current research trajectories suggest for future practice? How can advances in ecological modeling, social theory, and digital visualization inform more robust design thinking and production? This volume presents a range of perspectives from architects, landscape architects, scientists, theorists, and planners. Published by Harvard Graduate School of Design and ACTAR. Hardcover 16.5 x 22 cm 288 pages $34.95 ISBN 978-1-940291-12-3 Available for purchase at Amazon.com

Platform 5

The Harvard Graduate School of Design has always recognized the indispensable importance and values of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design, yet has transcended their individual aspirations through intellectual cross-fertilization and collaboration. The material presented in this publication forms a small part of the incredible range and diversity of proposals and visions that our students and faculty have produced during the past academic year. This work is indicative of the School’s commitment, as a global leader in the field, to exploring and articulating transformative ideas through the power of design. It is as important for us to share and communicate the outcome of our research and design investigations as it is to show the fertile circumstances and conditions for the making of these projects. Harvard Graduate School of Design and Actar, 2012

New Geographies 03: Urbanisms of Color

Edited by Gareth Doherty Color is a ubiquitous yet essential part of the city, creating and shaping urban form. Who can forget the whites of modernist Brasilia? The greens of historic Cairo? The rosy reds of Petra? The terracottas of South America’s shantytowns? The color cacophonies of Times Square and Shinjuku? Colors have a presence over and beyond the objects—buildings, spaces, billboards, artifacts, and people—that make up the city. Not only does color give meaning to cities, cities give meaning to color. Whether carefully coordinated, clashing, or an expression of materials, color is a powerful cultural, economic, and political force in cities. Yet discussions on the city do not usually focus much on color, perhaps because urban colors are too often understood as being beyond any one authority or taste, or are simply dismissed as cosmetic, naïve, or intangible. Volume 3 of New Geographies brings together artists and designers, anthropologists, geographers, historians, and philosophers with the aim of challenging the status quo and exploring the potency, the interaction, and the neglected design possibilities of color at the scale of the city. Published by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2011; available through Harvard University Press.

Platform 3

Platform 3 considers the expanded boundaries of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. It features not only selections of work produced at the GSD during the 2009–2010 academic year, but also the potential of that work to address broader questions and inform global initiatives. The selected projects, research, and lectures expand the limits of design and invite us to reconsider the role of the architect , the landscape architect, the urban planner and designer in defining the world of the future. Available for purchase from Actar. Publisher: Actar, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2010

New Geographies 02: Landscapes of Energy

Edited by Rania Ghosn Energy infrastructures deploy space at a large scale, yet they remain invisible because the creation of value in the oil regime has long externalized spatial costs, sliding them out of sight and away from design’s agency. Contemporary environmental, political, and financial crises have brought energy once again to the forefront of design concerns. Rarely, however, do practices of sustainable design—efficient building skins, islands of self-sufficiency, positive-energy machines—address the spatiality of energy systems. Instead, they tend to emphasize a renewable/nonrenewable binary that associates environmental costs exclusively with the infrastructure of oil and overlooks the geographic imperative of all forms of energy. Volume 2 of New Geographies proposes to historicize and materialize the relations of energy and space, and map some of the physical, social, and representational geographies of oil, in particular. By making visible this infrastructure, Landscapes of Energy is an invitation to articulate design’s environmental agency and its appropriate scales of intervention. Contributors to New Geographies 2 include: Ivan Illich, John May, Carola Hein, Gavin Bridge, Abdellatif Benachenhou and El Hadi Jazairy, Santiago del Hierro and Gary Leggett, Andrew Barry, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Geoffrey Thün and Kathy Velikov, Martin Melosi, Maria Kaika, Geoff Manaugh, Pierre Bélanger, Kazys Varnelis and Robert Sumrell, Jean Robert, Mirko Zardini. Published by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2010; distributed by Harvard University Press.

Territories: Contemporary European Landscape Design

Edited by Joseph Disponzio Contemporary European Landscape Design is based on an exhibition and conference of the same name held at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The book is based on the landscape design projects of more than 50 European designers from nine countries. Spacemaker Press