The GSD Announces 2025–2026 Faculty Promotions

The Harvard Graduate School of Design announces four faculty promotions: Sean Canty to Associate Professor of Architecture, Jungyoon Kim to Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Pablo Pérez-Ramos to Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, and Sara Zewde to Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture.

Sean Canty (MArch ’14) is an architect and educator whose work explores the capacity of architectural form to reorganize spatial norms and forms of social life. He is the founder of Studio Sean Canty (SSC), a Cambridge-based, independent architecture practice that introduces novel geometries and materials to enrich the spaces of everyday life. Working across domestic, cultural, and civic programs, SSC’s design approach incorporates drawin­­­g, model-making, and immersive visualization to choreograph spatial adjacencies that balance solitude and collectivity. Canty is also a cofounder of Office III, a design collective with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Cambridge. The group was a finalist in the 2016 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program and designed the Governors Island Welcome Center. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and other venues. Canty has taught or coordinated Architecture Core design studios since his first appointment at the GSD in 2017 and offers courses in design media and techniques. His pedagogy emphasizes abstraction, representation, and typological invention, drawing connections between architectural form, spatial organization, and visual communication. Prior to the GSD, Canty held teaching appointments at the Cooper Union, UC Berkeley, and California College of the Arts. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, The Cooper Union, and A83 Gallery, and his writing has appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, Log, Domus, MAS Context, and several edited volumes. His accolades include the 2023 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2023 Architectural League Prize, and the 2020 Richard Rogers Fellowship from Harvard. He holds an MArch from the GSD and a BArch from California College of the Arts.

Jungyoon Kim (MLA ’00) is a practicing landscape architect, registered in the Netherlands and in Massachusetts. She founded PARKKIM with Yoonjin Park in Rotterdam in 2004 and relocated to Seoul in 2006. PARKKIM PLLC recently opened in Massachusetts with the goal of expanding its practice beyond Korea. PARKKIM has completed a wide variety of projects that range in scale and nature, including high-profile corporate landscapes and civic venues. Notable completed projects include the Seoul Museum of Craft Art (2021), Hyundai Motor Group Global Partnership Center and University Gyeongju Campus (2020), Plaza of Gyeonggi Provincial North Office (2018), CJ Blossom Park (2015), and Yanghwa Riverfront (2011). Their ongoing projects include Suseongmot Lake Floating Stage in Daegu, Korea, for which PARKKIM won the international invited competition in 2024 and is to be completed in 2026. She published the book Alternative Nature (2015), co-authored with Park, a compilation of articles written by the two principals since 2001. The term “alternative nature” was first presented in their essay “Gangnam Alternative Nature: the experience of nature without parks,” featured in the book Asian Alterity (2007), edited by William Lim, rethinking the concept of “natural” within the context of contemporary East Asian urbanism. Upon her GSD appointment, Kim has expanded PARKKIM’s design research into seminar courses and option studios, including “Lost and Alternative Nature: Vertical Mapping of Urban Subterrains for Climate Change Mitigation.” Kim was selected as “Design Leader of Next Generation” (2007) awarded by the Korean Ministry of Commerce and appointed to “Seoul Public Architect” (2011) by the Metropolitan Government Seoul. She received an MLA from the GSD and a BAgric in landscape architecture from Seoul National University with distinction.

Pablo Pérez-Ramos (MLA ’12, DDes ’18), is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM); he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core studio and teaches research seminars and lecture courses in landscape theory. Pérez-Ramos’s research explores the reciprocal relationship between design and the natural sciences, using landscape form as a medium to interpret both physical processes and abstract scientific concepts. With interests in material culture, the environmental humanities, and the philosophy of science, he has delved into the origins of ecological narratives in contemporary landscape architecture, and more recently expanded his focus to include thermodynamics, biological systematics, and evolutionary theory. His theoretical agenda underpins ongoing research on climate adaptation, traditional knowledge, and agroecological practices in conditions of extreme heat and aridity. His work is ultimately concerned with the formal tensions and interferences existing between human technology and the other physical forces and processes—tectonic, atmospheric, biological—that shape landscapes. Prior to his GSD appointment, Pérez-Ramos taught at the Northeastern University School of Architecture, Boston Architectural College, and Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as regional planning coordinator for the 2025 master plan for the Metropolitan District of Quito and previously practiced as a licensed architect in Madrid. His writings have been published in the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA), The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA), PLOT, MONU, Revista Arquitectura (COAM), Landscape Research Record (CELA), and in the edited volumes The Landscape as Union between Art and Science: The Legacy of Alexander von Humboldt and Ernst Haeckel (2023), and MedWays Open Atlas (2022), among others.

Sara Zewde (MLA ’15) is founding principal of Studio Zewde, a design firm practicing landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art. Recent and ongoing projects of the firm include the Dia Beacon Art Museum landscape in Beacon, New York; the Watts Towers Arts Center landscape in Watts, Los Angeles; Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Zewde’s practice and research start from her contention that the discipline of landscape architecture is tightly bound by precedents and typologies rooted in specific traditions that must be challenged. Without rigorous investigation, Zewde contends that these cultural assumptions will silently continue to constrict the practice of design and reinforce a quiet, cultural hegemony in the built form of cities and landscapes. Her projects exemplify how sensitivities to culture, ecology, and craft can serve as creative departures for expanding design traditions. Prior to joining the GSD in 2020, Zewde held faculty appointments at GSAPP, Columbia University, and the University of Texas School of Architecture. She holds an MLA from the GSD, an MCP from MIT, and a BA in sociology and statistics from Boston University. She regularly writes, lectures, and exhibits her work, and she is currently writing a manuscript based on her research of Frederick Law Olmsted’s travels through the Slave South and their impact on his practice. The book will be published in 2027 with Simon & Shuster.  Zewde was named the 2014 National Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, a 2016 Artist-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and a United States Artists Fellow in 2020. More recently, she was named to the 2024 TIME 100 Next and *Wallpaper’s 300 People Shaping Creative America.

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Department of Urban Planning and Design Resources

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MAUD/MLAUD Resources

Option Studio Resources

Commencement Exhibition 2025

This begets that.

This is a group of students who have spent years together, many first on Zoom, and then, happily, all here at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). That is the world out there. This is the always changing route our students have taken to get here. That is the compass each of them will set on their way forward. This is the kaleidoscope of our students’ potential. That is the change each of them will put in motion to change the world. We can’t wait to see their impact.

That begets this.

The GSD’s 2025 Commencement Exhibition, presented in the Druker Design Gallery and Frances Loeb Library, includes work from all of this year’s graduating students. Please take it all in and wish them well. We are sad to see them go, but our world needs their smarts.

—Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture

Harvard University Graduate School of Design: Studios & Seminars, Spring 2025

Regina Chen