The Health and Places Initiative—a joint project between the GSD and the Harvard School of Public Health—and a wide ranging project on housing policies in Mexico are 2 major research efforts moving forward under the leadership of UPD faculty with important contributions from MUP students.
Mayor de Blasio has selected an innovative leader in urban planning and design, Mitch Silver (lecturer in housing and urbanization), to be Commissioner of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.
The newest in a long-standing tradition of student-edited journals at the GSD is about to take flight. Simon Battisti (MArch II ’14), Etien Santiago (PhD ‘18, MArch II ‘11), Lukas Pauer (MAUD '14) and Patrick Boateng II (MPP ’13, MUP ‘14), in collaboration with award-winning designer Boy Vereecken, are the editors (and proud parents) of the first issue of Very Vary Veri.
Machado and Silvetti Associates (Jorge Silvetti’s firm) has been named general design planner for the new model campus of Vietnamese-German University in the Bình Duong province of Vietnam. MSA will be both master planner for the campus and design architect for 3.5 million square feet of laboratories, classrooms, food-courts, sports halls, administrative spaces and dormitories for 12 thousand students. The appointment is the result of an international competition held in 2013.
In the spirit of creating new forms of collaboration to address contemporary design issues, on March 7 the Aga Khan Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design celebrated its tenth anniversary by joining with academics and experts from MIT’s Aga Khan Program, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture to explore The Space Between Development and Conservation in the Muslim world.
Rahul Mehrotra (professor of urban planning, chairman of the Department of Urban Planning And Design and faculty of South Asia Institute) expected to give a lecture in Karachi, Pakistan, about regional affinities and mutual learning and engage in discussion with a modest audience. By the time of his talk, the event had grown to a 3-day conference, and countries throughout South Asia sent representatives. There’s a hunger for his message of shared history, culture and cooperation. Read “The Bright Side of Pakistan” in the Harvard Gazette. Photo by Justin Stern
A vision created by Chris Reed’s firm Stoss Landscape Urbanism in collaboration with SHoP Architects has been selected as the jury’s choice in the Dallas Connected City Design Challenge, initiated to reunite downtown Dallas and the Trinity River. GSD alums Amy Whitesides (MLA '12), Mariusz Klemens (MAUD '12) and Ellen Garrett (MLA '13) were on the Stoss team.
Five GSD students spent J-Term preparing their entry for the Urban Land Institute’s 2014 Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition and were rewarded with the news that they made it to the final round. The GSD team–Mikhail Thomas Grinwald (MArch), team leader Wajeha Qureshi (MDesS), PG-Human Smit (MUD), Aliza Sovani (MLA) and Sonja Vangjeli (MLA), advised by faculty adviser Richard Peiser– is 1 of four out of 163 in North America invited to compete for the grand prize.
Hashim Sarkis (Aga Khan professor of landscape architecture and urbanism in Muslim societies) hopes Beirut can learn from the experience of other cities in mediating between modernization and historic preservation for the city’s decision about constructing the Fouad Boutros Bridge in Ashrafieh. Engaging community and innovative problem solving are essential, he comments in the Daily Star. Read “Ashrafieh opposes a bridge too far.”
On February 28, GSD Career Services hosted the second annual Planning Careers Expo, where representatives from public, private, and nonprofit agencies—including GSD alums–met with students interested in jobs and summer internships in the planning fields.