“Sinking Gardens,” by Nikola Bojic (MDesS 13) and Alan Waxman (MLA 14), was installed in XiXi National Wetland Park in Hangzhou for the 2012 West Lake International Sculpture Exhibition. The work connects the history of families who lived for generations in XiXi with the contemporary building boom, and lays claim to public space for the future of China.
A team of Harvard students has won the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Planning Association 2012 Student Project Award. James Cody Birkey (MDesS ’13) and Jaemin Ha (MAUD ’12) collaborated with Mukul Bafana (HBS) and Laura Bishop (HLS) on the Mumbai Port Redevelopment project.
Jorge Silvetti (professor of architecture) presented the keynote speech at a celebration to launch the Elemental/Incremental Housing and Participatory Design Manual, in Santiago, Chile, on November 26. The book by architect Alejandro Aravena (design critic ‘00-04) and engineer Andrew Iacobelli details 12 years of extraordinary success engaging local communities in a novel program of social housing for the most disenfranchised sectors of the population.
Antoine Picon’s new book De la ville nouvelle à la vie durable: Marne-la Vallée offers a comprehensive look at the largest French postwar new town begun in the 1960s and still growing today.
Max Rohm (MArch/MLA ‘01 and visiting design critic in 2005) and Flavio Janches just published a new book, Urban Interrelations, proposing enhancing integration of informal settlements into the urban mainstream through community participation in the development of public spaces and facilities.
This semester urban planning and design students are investigating issues through option studios in New York, Jerusalem, Burkina Faso, China and closer to home.
On November 17, the GSD hosted the annual fall get together of the four accredited planning programs in Massachusetts, featuring a lecture by Susan Fainstein (senior research fellow), “The Argument for Just Outcomes.”
The Boston Foundation for Architecture recently announced the 2012 grantees, which include Danish Kurani (MAUD '13) and the Classroom Co-Creators Project. The project involves a participatory design process with Blackstone Elementary School in South Boston to engage students and teachers in the creation of their learning environment.
This year the GSD inaugurated a competition for the school’s first Pavilion Program. The jury has ruled, and “Simulated Panorama” was selected for installation in spring 2013 under the Gund Hall portico.
Common Frameworks: Rethinking the Developmental City, a studio taught by Chris Lee of Serie Architects, is part of a three-year research project to rethink the development of the megaplot through understanding what a city holds common: its housing.