Environmental Adaptions

Event Description

As the keynote speaker for the Center for Green Buildings and Cities symposium, “Environmental Adaptions/Adaptive Environments,” Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, co-founder of Snøhetta, will provide insights into the firm’s work, highlighting the relationship between people, nature, and built environments. Established in Oslo, Norway, in 1989, Snøhetta was inspired by the Brundtland Commission’s report on sustainability, Our Common Future, published by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) two years earlier. Today, Snøhetta is a transdisciplinary practice with studios in eight locations worldwide.

As the building industry accounts for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, Thorsen believes designers and architects must take significant responsibility while recognizing the opportunities to drive the industry toward a greener transition. He will discuss how social and environmental sensitivity can inform design, showcasing notable projects globally, including the Library of Alexandria, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, the firm’s material exploration, the Powerhouse series—buildings that generate more energy than they consume— as well as Harvard HouseZero, an energy-positive prototype and Vertikal Nydalen, Norway’s first naturally climatized mixed-use building.

Speaker

Kjetil Trædal Thorsen is a Norwegian architect educated in Graz, Austria, who co-founded Snøhetta in Oslo in 1989. He has played a crucial role in shaping the firm’s philosophy and its evolution into a transdisciplinary, global architecture and design practice. Thorsen has been involved in several notable projects, including the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, and the Le Monde Group Headquarters in Paris. Before establishing Snøhetta, he practiced architecture in Scandinavia for several years and co-founded Norway’s leading architecture gallery, Galleri Rom, in 1986. His work has earned him numerous awards, including the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – the Mies van der Rohe Award and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Thorsen is a frequent lecturer and served as a Professor of Architecture at the Institute of Experimental Architecture at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, from 2004 to 2008. He also frequently acts as a jury member for various international design and architecture competitions and awards, including the Obel Award, the Zumtobel Group Award, the Frederick Kiesler Prize, and the Holcim Awards.

The Evolving Landscape of Social Housing in New England

Please RSVP to receive reminders about the event. RSVP does not guarantee entry, which is filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Doors open 15 minutes before the event begins, so be sure to arrive early.

Event Description

In response to persistent and worsening housing affordability challenges, the idea of “social housing” has been gaining momentum across the US. While the details differ, social housing proposals all call for creating permanently affordable housing while also expanding the public sector’s direct role in financing, developing, and/or managing projects; emphasizing broad inclusion by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status; and giving residents more control over their homes. In this half-day event, practitioners, policymakers, advocates, and researchers will discuss both existing models of social housing in New England and new efforts to create affordable, high-quality homes.

Agenda

1:00 p.m.  Welcome and Overview

• Chris Herbert , Managing Director, Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Susanne Schindler , Research Fellow, Joint Center for Housing Studies

1:15 p.m.  Keynote: Why Social Housing?

• The Hon. Mike Connolly , Massachusetts State Representative, 26th Middlesex District

1:30 p.m.  Panel 1: Enabling Public Development  

• Kenzie Bok , Administrator, Boston Housing Authority
• Margaret Donnelly Moran , Deputy Director of Development, Cambridge Housing Authority
• Deborah Goddard , Secretary, Rhode Island Department of Housing
• Susanne Schindler , Research Fellow, Joint Center for Housing Studies (moderator)

2:30 p.m.  Break 

2:45 p.m.  Panel 2: Empowering Residents  

• Peter Fousek , Secretary-Treasurer, Connecticut Tenants Union
• Michael Monte , Chief Executive Officer, Champlain Housing Trust
• Mary O’Hara , Executive Vice President, ROC Movement
• Dana McKinney White, Assistant Professor of Urban Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design (moderator)

3:45 p.m.  Panel 3: Expanding Financial Supports

• Tanya Hahnel , Project Manager, East Boston CDC
• Chrystal Kornegay , Chief Executive Officer, MassHousing
• Craig Saddlemire , Cooperative Development Organizer, Raise-Op Housing Cooperative
• Rachel Weber, Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design (moderator)

4:45 p.m.  Wrap-Up: Responses and Reflections  

• Rachel Bratt , Professor Emerita, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University
• The Hon. Mike Connolly , Massachusetts State Representative, 26th Middlesex District
• Chris Herbert , Managing Director, Joint Center for Housing Studies (moderator)

5:15 p.m.  Reception 

View the Full Agenda

Loeb Fellowship Symposium, “A Round Table – Makers and Users”

Join us for a symposium celebrating the past decade of the Loeb Fellowship and a farewell toast with the outgoing Curator of the Loeb Fellowship, John Peterson

Event Description

A round table has been the symbol and a spatial device of equality, exchange, and dialogue. It is also an apt metaphor for the ethos of the Loeb Fellowship and its commitment to the value of knowledge-sharing, relationships, community, and the impact these have on the agency of our work. A round table is where Loeb Fellows gather in Doebele House for their long-standing invitation dinners, and at the kitchen of the Fellowship’s Curator in Strobel House. Both are places where food and drink are elevated beyond sustenance, where human interaction seeks to change and enrich lives and transform each Fellow’s ability to make a difference in the world. These round tables have been witness to hundreds of hours of engagement by Fellows, faculty, students, friends, families, and guests.

This symposium brings five Loeb Fellows from the 10 years of John Peterson’s curatorship to share stories of how interdependence and collaboration have been instrumental to the success of their work, exemplifying and extending the Loeb Fellowship’s vision and reach. This program positions interdependence as a multiplier in a chain of influences through projects, collaborations, ideas, policies, activism, commitment, and tenacity. It also recognizes that our work and well-being require us to be dependent beings.

The five Loeb storytellers will delve into the value of dialogue, fellowship, and sharing as acts of care that broaden the intellectual and human horizons of the shapers of our environment. These practices not only cultivate networks of support and personal growth but also challenge the conventional values of authorship and exclusivity.

Food, drink, discourse, and fellowship will be the mediums for the program’s intellectual enrichment and the advancement of social good. Join us for this symposium featuring stories of collaborative efforts for social change, a round table discourse, and a cocktail reception with a farewell toast with John Peterson.

Program

Friday, November 15
Harvard GSD, Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Stories of Interdependence
2:00 p.m. — 4:00 p.m.

The Loeb Fellowship positions collaboration and interdependence as not only enriching but also critical to the work of shaping the built and natural environments. Five Loeb Fellows from John Peterson’s tenure as Curator will share stories of collective and inclusionary practice. Creating within and through community, each will demonstrate the craft of engaging others in generating positive social outcomes.

• Alejandro Echeverri, Loeb Fellow ’16
• Stephanie Hankey, Loeb Fellow ’22
• Andrea Reimer, Loeb Fellow ’19
• Jordan Weber, Loeb Fellow ’22
• Eric Williams, Leob Fellow ’18

Break
4:30 p.m. — 5:00 p.m.

A Round Table: Fellowship as a State of Dependence
5:00 p.m. — 6:00 p.m.

Using a round table as the vehicle of discourse, this “roundtable” discussion will focus on how—both in practice and pedagogy—the breaking down of hierarchies, challenging models of singular authorship, and using truly collaborative engagement are fundamental tools for a relevant design practice.

• John Peterson, Loeb Fellow ’06, Curator of the Loeb Fellowship
• Alejandro Echeverri, Loeb Fellow ’16
• Stephanie Hankey, Loeb Fellow ’22
• Andrea Reimer, Loeb Fellow ’19
• Jordan Weber, Loeb Fellow ’22
• Eric Williams, Leob Fellow ’18

Break
6:00 p.m. — 6:30 p.m.

Closing Presentation and Farewell toast with John Peterson
6:30 p.m. — 7:15 p.m.

Exploring symposium themes of interdependence, dialogue, equity, and leadership—and their embeddedness in the ethos and history of the Loeb Fellowship—John Peterson will reflect on his tenure as Curator and speak to the current state of the design professions as well as pressures to evolve to address the larger, complex social conditions that shape our world.

• John Peterson, Loeb Fellow ’06, Curator of the Loeb Fellowship

Reception
7:15 p.m. — 9:00 p.m.

Speakers

John Peterson, LF ’06, is Curator of the Loeb Fellowship. Peterson is the founder of Public Architecture, a national nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. The organization’s work has been showcased at the Venice Architecture Biennale, MoMA, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Benaki Museum in Athens, and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Public Architecture’s 1+ program challenges architecture and design firms to pledge a minimum of 1% of their time in pro bono services to nonprofits in need and has attracted participation from over 1500 firms nationwide. Public Architecture’s projects have been covered by national and international media; its ScrapHouse, a house built from only salvaged materials, was the subject of a National Geographic Channel documentary. The organization was a Harvard Business School case study in 2010 and has been supported by a long list of major funders.

Peterson’s work has appeared in several books and publications, including The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong, The New York Times, Architectural Record, Architect, Metropolis, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He has contributed to books such as Expanding Design, Urban Interventions, and The Power of Pro Bono. Peterson led the architectural practice Peterson Architects from 1993 to 2010 and has taught at the University of Texas at Austin and California College of the Arts. A recipient of numerous design and social innovation awards, Peterson has played an important part in defining the concept of “public interest design.” He holds degrees in fine arts and architecture from Rhode Island School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow in 2006.

 

Maurice D. Cox LF’05 is Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to joining the GSD faculty, Cox was Director of Planning and Development for the City of Detroit between 2015-2019 and Commissioner of Planning and Development for the City of Chicago between 2019-2023, where he focused on the adaptive challenges facing contemporary urban revitalization.

In his public sector leadership roles, Cox is known for his design-centered approach to urban planning, incorporating active citizen participation into the public process while simultaneously achieving the highest quality of design excellence. In Detroit, Cox built a new interdisciplinary Planning Department that co-authored a series of awarding-winning neighborhood framework plans to grow Detroit’s population for the first time in 70 years. In Chicago, Cox developed a groundbreaking approach to neighborhood revitalization, INVEST South/West, which seeks to reimagine the public realm and civic life of 10 neighborhoods on the South and West sides by commissioning catalytic mixed-use affordable housing developments to fill vacant gaps in disinvested commercial corridors.

Cox has taught at Syracuse University, the University of Virginia, Tulane University, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, in addition to having held visiting professorships at University of Maryland and Harvard GSD. His pedagogical approach marshals the rigor of academic learning and a pursuit of design excellence to foster productive dialogues among the public and private sectors, universities and non-profits, developers, and the public. The goal is to build non-traditional, mutually beneficial partnerships with communities where the city is a living laboratory for participatory design. This often requires the integration of different voices and cultural influences and necessitates crossing socioeconomic and institutional boundaries into marginalized communities.

 

Alejandro Echeverri, LF ’16,

Professor Alejandro Echeverri is an architect, urbanist, and Colombian academic. He is co-founder and director of URBAM, a center for urban and environmental studies at EAFIT University in Medellín, Colombia. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor in Urbanism at TEC Monterrey in Mexico and a Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) Loeb Fellow. Between 2004 and 2008 as Director of EDU The Urban Development Institute, and as the city’s director of urban projects of Medellín, he led the Social Urbanism strategy making the city a blueprint for the future for other distressed cities worldwide.

Echeverri has collaborated as a professor, lecturer, and jury member with various international institutions, and has been a design critic at the Harvard GSD. A lecturer at the LSE Cities Master program at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he has been a researcher and professor at LUB, Barcelona Urban Lab at the ETSAB, and in other academic centers and urban labs worldwide. Echeverri’s experience combines architecture, environmental urban planning processes, and social issues especially in countries with weak political and institutional structures.

Echeverri’s work has earned the Obayashi Prize 2016 in Japan, the 10th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design from Harvard GSD in 2013, the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2009, the Colombian National Architectural Award and the Pan-American Biennale in Urban Design, among others. He is a member of multiple international advisory boards of institutions and centers related to urban issues. Echeverri’s intellectual production includes publications and articles focused on architecture, urbanism, and environment, and he is active in design through his studio, which focuses on projects with low environmental impact for tropic regions.

 

Natalia García Dopazo LF’23 is an Argentinian feminist born in Buenos Aires. She has been the infrastructure of care program coordinator at the National Ministry of Infrastructure and professor of urban planning at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism in the University of Buenos Aires.

Natalia is a senior advisor on gender affairs for urban design, management and procedures in projects, public tenders and participatory methodologies for governments and multilateral agencies.

With a background in anthropology, Natalia co-founded the feminist collective City of Desire and the Spatial Cooperative Project and has been an activist for urban rights in vulnerable neighborhoods for the last 10 years. She has written articles and is a popularizer of feminist urbanism in academic and professional settings and local media.

 

Stephanie Hankey, LF ’22, has pioneered work at the intersection of design, diigtal technologies, social justice, and environmental advocacy, with a career spanning over 25 years. As the co-founder of Tactical Tech in 2003, she served as Executive Director for 18 years, creating impactful, award-winning public engagement initiatives that have reached audiences in more than 70 countries. Stephanie has built expertise in guiding decision-makers on ethics, technology, and societal impact, building the capacity of organisations and insitutions, from working with designers at Google to politicians in the UK House of Lords.

Stephanie’s recognitions include being a 2022 Loeb Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow and a visiting industry associate at Oxford University. She has contributed to high-level panels, including the European expert panel on Digitalisation for Sustainability, and led strategic development for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2030 vision.

Today, Stephanie continues her work with Tactical Tech, now leading its climate and technology initiatives with a particular focus on Climate and AI. She also holds a dual professorship in the Design School at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, serves as an expert on sustainable design for the UK Design Council, and mentors projects within the EU’s New European Bauhaus initiative.

 

Jordan Weber, LF ’22, is a regenerative land sculptor and environmental activist who works at the cross section of social justice and environmental racism. Most recently, Jordan was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to create an urban farm in North Minneapolis called Prototype for poetry vs. rhetoric (deep roots), which acts as a counter tactic to industrial violence upon biodiverse lands and racially diverse communities. The project was produced in collaboration with North Minneapolis community members during the height of the George Floyd protests in late May 2020. He is currently in residence at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Washington University’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity and Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. Jordan’s two-year project residency centers on social and environmental justice, incarceration, and healing, with a specific focus on the Close the Workhouse campaign—a collaborative project that is dedicated to the closure of St. Louis’ Medium Security Institute, known locally as the Workhouse.

Awards and fellowships include the Joan Mitchell Award for Sculptors, Creative Capital NYC Award, A Blade of Grass fellowship NYC, Tanne Foundation Award, and the African American Leadership Forum Award.

 

Eric Williams, LF ’18, is the founder and creative director of the Silver Room, an innovative retail, arts, education and community events space opened in 1997. The Silver Room intersects the worlds of fashion, music and visual art, and acts as a boutique, gallery, and community arts center. Williams is committed to creating spaces and curating events that strengthen communities and fuel positive economic impact.

The Silver Room has hosted a number of large-scale events, most notably the Sound System Block Party, which attracted more than 15,000 attendees in 2016. The 3 day CONNECT Hyde Park Arts Festival, a collaboration with the University of Chicago, activates empty storefronts near the university with pop-up art exhibits and speakers organized by some of Chicago’s leading curators. For the past two decades, Williams has shaped his practice to be responsive to the core needs of the creative urban community he serves. To address the systems that create disenfranchisement, his work provides space, support, and programming designed to foster equity for people of color and other marginalized communities.

During his Loeb Fellowship, Williams will focus on conducting research to create a practical model based on The Silver Room’s success as a for-profit, people centered art and community enterprise. He will leverage the expertise of the Loeb Fellowship community to strengthen his leadership and ability to identify and employ proven best practices that solidify the linkage of art and retail as a successful community and economic development model. Williams’ intention is to implement and replicate his model in the broader community of Chicago and nationwide.

Symposium in Honor of Giuliana Bruno: With Keynotes by Isaac Julien and Emanuele Coccia

Event Description

Scholars and artists working at the forefront of visual culture and design come together for this symposium inspired by Giuliana Bruno’s career researching the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, film, and media. Bruno is the Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and a GSD Faculty Affiliate.

Registration is required to attend the keynote event at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.

Update: The keynote event at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is now at capacity. Panel discussions in Piper Auditorium will be livestreamed, however the keynote event will not be. A recording of the keynote will be posted on this page in the days following the event. 

Program

Thursday, November 21

Harvard GSD, Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Panels at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

Panel 1: Elements of Media Matter
1:00 p.m. — 2:30 p.m.
Moderated by Samira Daneshvar, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

• On Bare Metal, Zach Furste, Lecturer in New Media and Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam
• For Whom the Air Waves, Olivia Naoise Crough, PhD candidate, Harvard University
• The Shape of Time, Xavier Nueno, Post-Doctoral Researcher, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Panel 2: Sensing Place, Thinking Space
3:00 p.m. — 4:30 p.m.
Moderated by Emilio Vavarella, Assistant Professor of Media and Film Studies, Skidmore College

• Classroom Lessons, Dan D’Amore, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Filmuniversität Babelsberg
• Landscape Portraits, Becca Voelcker, Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
• Predation: More (and Less) than Human Bodies, Martín Cobas Sosa, Professor of Architectural History and Design, Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
• Atmospheric Thinking and Sentipensar, Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Affiliate Faculty, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Reception
4:30 p.m. — 5:30 p.m.

Keynote Event at the Carpenter Center*
6:00 p.m. — 8:00 p.m.

*Registration required through this link.

Introduction

• Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, GSD.

Keynotes

• Isaac Julien, Artist, Filmmaker, Distinguished Professor of the Arts, University of California Santa Cruz
• Emanuele Coccia, Philosopher, Author, Curator, Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Discussion
Moderated by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts, HAA

• Giuliana Bruno
• Isaac Julien
• Emanuele Coccia

Keynote Speakers

Giuliana Bruno is Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a GSD Faculty Affiliate. She is internationally known for her research on intersections of the visual arts, architecture, the environment and media. Bruno has published eight award-winning books and two hundred essays, translated in fifteen languages. Her books include Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media; Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media; Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, winner of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies book award; Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts; and Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film, winner of the Kraszna-Krausz prize for best moving image book and named by the Guardian among its Books of the Year. Forthcoming is her co-authored book Isaac Julien. Lina Bo Bardi—A Marvellous Entanglement. She has been honored with a Doctorate honoris causa.

Isaac Julien is a critically acclaimed British artist and filmmaker, who has exhibited his work internationally in museums and art biennials for over four decades. At the University of California Santa Cruz, he is Distinguished Professor of the Arts. His most recent multiscreen installations include Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement; Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass; and Once Again… Statues Never Die. In 2023, Tate Britain, London, organized the career-length retrospective Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is to Me, which has since traveled to the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K21), Düsseldorf. In 2017, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, awarded Julien its Charles Wollaston Award. He received the 2022 Kaiserring Goslar Award for distinguished achievement by an international contemporary artist.

Emanuele Coccia is a renowned philosopher, who writes and curates exhibitions on the arts, the environment, design, and fashion. He teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Columbia and Harvard. Coccia is the author of La Vie sensible, The Life of Plants, Métamorphoses, and Philosophie de la maison. He recently participated in the making of animated videos, such as Quercus (2020, with Formafantasma), Heaven in Matter (2021, with Faye Formisano) and The Portal of Mysteries (2022, with Dotdotdot). In 2019 he took part in the Trees exhibition held at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, and has edited the catalogue for the 23rd Triennale di Milano on art and design, Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries. He is working alongside Alessandro Michele, Creative Director of Gucci, on a publication on the relationships between fashion and philosophy.

 

This event is co-presented by the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Department of History of Art and Architecture.

The 2024 Ivory Prize Housing Innovation Summit

Event Description

What are the most promising, impactful, and innovative solutions to address housing affordability in the US? What are the challenges and opportunities in scaling those solutions? The Ivory Prize Housing Innovation Summit will feature finalists from the 2024 Ivory Prize in Housing Affordability in the areas of construction and design, policy and regulatory reform, and finance. The summit will bring together entrepreneurs, public sector innovators, policymakers, researchers, and industry practitioners to discuss the best ideas for housing innovation and will be an opportunity to challenge how we think about disruptive innovation, learn from the leading entrepreneurs, and network with others in housing affordability.

This event is hosted by the Joint Center for Housing Studies and Co-sponsored by Ivory Innovations

Register here to attend in person. No registration is required to view the live stream.

Event Schedule

Friday, October 25, 2024
Harvard GSD, Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Doors open at 12:00 p.m.

Introduction and Ivory Prize Winner Recognition
12:30 p.m.

• Chris Herbert, Managing Director, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Clark Ivory, CEO, Ivory Homes

Summit co-sponsors discuss the mission, vision, and impact of Ivory Innovations and introduce the four 2024 Ivory Prize winners: City of San Diego’s ADU Bonus Program (Policy & Regulatory Reform co-winner), FirstRepair (Policy & Regulatory Reform co-winner), the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County’s Housing Production Fund (Finance winner), and Villa (Construction & Design winner).

Hack-A-House Grand Prize Pitches
12:50 p.m.

Hack-A-House is a virtual hackathon-style competition for undergraduate and graduate students to formulate and pitch innovative ideas to improve housing affordability. For the first time, finalist teams from this year’s virtual competition, held on September 27-28, will travel to Cambridge to present their ideas in person. After the teams present, the audience will vote to select the $5,000 Grand Prize winner.

Hack-A-House 2024 was hosted by Ivory Innovations in partnership with the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, the University of Arizona, the University of Denver, and the University of Utah.

Break
1:20 p.m.

Hack-A-House Grand Prize Winner Announcement
1:30 p.m.

Panel 1: Challenges and Opportunities to Innovate Within Local Government
1:35 p.m.

Housing is inherently local; making an impact requires local action. Innovators working within their respective cities and counties will discuss the barriers they faced in getting buy-in for their initiatives, as well as the exciting efforts to come.

• Jenny Schuetz, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
• Gary Geiler, Assistant Director, City of San Diego Development Services Department
• Chelsea Andrews, President, Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County
• Robin Rue Simmons, Founder and Executive Director, FirstRepair

Panel 2: Construction Innovations to Address the Labor Shortage
2:25 p.m.

The construction industry is facing a massive labor shortage. On-site training solutions, modular construction, and robotic automation present compelling areas for opportunity in upskilling existing workers while decreasing the reliance on human labor.

• Chris Herbert, Managing Director, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Chad Bowker, CEO, Capsule
• Kevin Albert, Founder and CEO, Canvas
• Paul Cardis, CEO, On3
• Sean Roberts, CEO, Villa

Panel 3: Increasing Access and Impact Across Federal and State Housing Programs
3:15 p.m.

Government-funded programs provide financial subsidies to renters and homeowners who require it most, meeting an important need that the private sector is unable to address. However, those programs can be complex to navigate, difficult to access, and in some cases, underutilized. Both nonprofit and for-profit models are transforming how vulnerable populations access, engage with, and benefit from decades-old government subsidy programs.

• Laurie Goodman, Institute Fellow, Urban Institute
• Jimmy Stuart, Chief External Affairs Officer, Compass Working Capital
• Landy Liu, Founder, Foyer
• Andrew Ludwig, Principal, HON Partners
• Kate Poor, Housing Strategy Specialist, HIAS

Reception
4:00 p.m.

 

Material Time

Event Description

Currently, the relationship of building to time is fixed, with weathering and material transformations only superficially accounted for through necessary repairs.  The frozen-in-time relationship we have with the built environment relies on materials from a nearly exhausted supply chain, prompting a shift towards local and regenerative sources. While bio-based materials are possible sustainable alternatives, their susceptibility to weathering and shorter lifespan compared to mineral-based counterparts invites thinking about temporality through observable material transformations.
This symposium examines bio-based materials, including their growth, assemblies, maintenance, and experimentation practices. It explores their current and potential applications across different design scales, while also discussing strategies for thinking, teaching, and design approaches. Central to the gathering is the question, how can we reconsider our relationship to the built environment through materials of various temporalities?

The event will not be live-streamed, but the recordings will be archived on the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Material Order web pages.

Register here for the symposium.

Symposium Program

Friday, April 12
Harvard GSD, Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Registration
10:00 a.m.

Welcome
10:30 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.
Sebastian Schmidt Dalzon, Assistant Dean for Academic and Strategic Planning, GSD
Ann Whiteside, Assistant Dean for Information Services, GSD
Margot Nishimura, Dean of Libraries, RISD

Introduction 
10:40 a.m.–10:50 a.m.
Amelia Gan, Irving Innovation Fellow, GSD

Panel 1: Experimentation  
10:50 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Moderated by Daniel Tish

Lola Ben-Alon, Material Kitchens: Recipes and Processes
Laura Maria Gonzalez, Bacterial Biocement: Micro Agents Macro Scale
Laia Mogas-Soldevila, Reviving Matter for Regenerative Architecture

Field Notes 
12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Joseph Kennedy, Perennial Projects: Ecologically Responsive Biopolymer Materials
Maroula Zacharias, Thermo-Chromo-Myco-Synthetic: An Experiment on Biomaterials, Albedo and Heat
Hugh Taylor, A Hut and a Bench
Nicky Rhodes, Ian Erickson & Vincent Jackow, COBI: Collective Organic Building Initiative

Lunch Break 
12:30 p.m. – 1:10 p.m.

Panel 2: Translation 
1:10 p.m. – 2:20 p.m.
Moderated by John May

Lina Ghotmeh, Belonging
Leonard Palmer, Pipecycle: A Heated Exchange between Systems and Space-Making
Paul Lewis, Biogenic Building Sections: Straw

Panel 3: Integration 
2:25 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Moderated by Amelia Gan

Martin Bechthold, Parallels and Paradoxes: Science, Design, and Biomaterials
Pablo Perez-Ramos, A World of Events
Jennifer Bissonnette, Can we Create a Culture of Care?

Closing Remarks

 

Speakers

Martin Bechthold is the founding Co-Director of the Master in Design Engineering Program and the Kumagai Professor of Architectural Technology in the GSD’s Department of Architecture. He is also an Affiliate in Materials Science & Mechanical Engineering at the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard, and has long been affiliated with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He teaches courses in design and research methods, material systems, and building structures. At the GSD Bechthold founded the Material Processes and Systems (MaP+S) Group, a research unit at the intersection of science and design. The group focusses on interdisciplinary topics such as multi-material 3D printing, structural innovation through post-tensioning, carbon negative building materials, and the quantitative perception of buildings.

 

Lola Ben-Alon is an Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she directs the Natural Materials Lab and the Building Science and Technology curriculum. She specializes in earth- and fiber-based building materials, their life cycles, supply chains, fabrication techniques, and policy. Ben-Alon received her PhD from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, and she holds a B.S. in Structural Engineering and M.S. in Construction Management from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. At the Technion, Ben-Alon also majored in Critical Curatorial Practices and co-founded the Experimental Art and Architecture Lab. Her work has been exhibited at the 2024 Indian Ceramics Triennial, 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale, 1014 Space for Ideas in NYC, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and published in Building and Environment, Journal of Green Building, and Automation in Construction. Ben-Alon serves on the board of ACSA’s Technology | Architecture + Design, and Elsevier’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

 

Jennifer Bissonnette is an ecologist and marine scientist whose work engages techniques of transdisciplinary inquiry to merge natural sciences knowledge, techniques and methods of inquiry with art and design thinking and studio practices. With a BS in biology from Eckerd College and a PhD in marine science from the College of William and Mary/Virginia Institute of Marine Science, she focuses broadly on human-nature connections and systems thinking to help innovate design solutions to environmental and societal challenges. Her past experience includes working on Capitol Hill as a natural resources legislative assistant, conducting coastal resource management work for the state of Virginia and teaching college classes. She is also responsible for overseeing the design, construction and programming of the Nature Lab’s new BioDesign Makerspace.

 

Amelia Gan is an architectural designer and researcher. She is currently the Irving Innovation Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design. She holds a Master in Design Studies (Mediums) from Harvard GSD, where her Open Project, Place-Time: From Waste to 3D CAD was awarded the Digital Design Prize. She also holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University, where she received the Dean’s Citation for Excellence and Crown & Wise-Marcus Award for her architectural thesis, titled Speculative Spoliation: Instrument of Locus Making and Identity-Mediation. Her works have been published in ACADIA, eCAADe, ACII and various others. Amelia previously completed a design-build residency at Ragdale, where she contributed to the creation of Echo–an outdoor performance venue for Ragdale Ring 2022.

 

Lina Ghotmeh leads her practice Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture in Paris. Echoing her lived experience in Beirut–a palimpsest of unrest– her designs are orchestrated as an “Archeology of the Future” where every project emerges materially sensitive and in symbiosis with nature.  Her work includes Stone Garden tower in Beirut, Dezeen Award ‘Project of the Year’ (2021), exhibited at the 17th Biennale in Venice, at MAXXI in Rome and in Cooper Hewitt in New York; the Estonian National Museum, Mies Van der Rohe nominee; Ateliers Hermès the first energy-positive, low carbon manufacturing building in France; Serpentine Pavilion in London and the future AlUla Contemporary Art Museum.  Lina Ghotmeh was Louis I Khan professor at Yale, Gehry Chair at Toronto University (2021-2022) and currently holds the Kenzo Tange professorship at GSD Harvard. She has been awarded the Schelling Architecture Prize (2020) and the Great Arab Minds Award (2023) among other prizes and nominations.

 

Laura Maria Gonzalez is a researcher specializing in computational design, 3D printing, and synthetic biology. Holding a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon, Laura’s work blends science, technology and design. Her research has been published in Nature Biotechnology, Designboom, STIRpad, and Casa Vogue. With experience as a teaching fellow at MIT, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, and an architectural designer at SOM, Laura is committed to pioneering interdisciplinary design and technology. She continues to explore new frontiers in Architecture and material science, finding new ways to make in the future.

 

John May is founding partner, with Zeina Koreitem, of MILLIØNS, an award winning Los Angeles-based architecture practice. He is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Harvard GSD, and the author of Signal. Image. Architecture. (Everything is Already an Image) (Columbia, 2019).

 

Laia Mogas-Soldevila is an Assistant Professor of Graduate Architecture and Director of DumoLab Research at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Laia’s research focuses on new sustainable material practices bridging science, engineering, and the arts. Her pedagogy supports novel theory and applied methods understanding biomaterials and bio-based fabrication in product design and architecture. She has built scholarship over the past ten years reconsidering matter as a fundamental design driver and partnering with scientists to redesign it towards unprecedented environmentally attuned capabilities. Laia holds an interdisciplinary doctorate bridging materials science, biomedical engineering, and arts and crafts from Tufts University School of Engineering, two master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a licensed architect with a minor in Fine Arts by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia School of Architecture in Barcelona and the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris.

 

Margot McIlwain Nishimura is a historian of medieval art and dean of libraries at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has taught at the University of Cape Town, Smith College, Brown University and RISD and served in other leadership roles at RISD, the John Carter Brown Library (Brown University) and the Newport Restoration Foundation. With many publications and presentations in the areas of illuminated manuscripts, historic preservation, history of collecting and art and design school library management, she is most recently co-author of The State of Art and Design School Libraries 2021 (ARLIS/NA, 2022) and two articles for the Art Libraries Journal, including “Material Order: a discovery group and shared catalogue for materials collections” (with Mark Pompelia; January 2024).

 

Leonard Palmer is a designer and researcher at the intersection of Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Graduate School of Design (GSD). His interdisciplinary approach challenges conventional architectural paradigms, advocating for the intrinsic integration of technology and systems into the design of spaces. In particular, he is interested in harnessing thermal systems in creating and intensifying spatial experiences. With an affinity to fabrication, he explores material assemblies that seamlessly blend geometry and thermal performance within architecture, and his work was most recently exhibited in Our Artificial Nature at Harvard GSD’s Druker Gallery. He is currently involved in radiative sky cooling research and its potential architectural applications. Leonard received his Master of Architecture with distinction and the Alpha Rho Chi Medal from Harvard GSD, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Studio Arts with High Honors from Wesleyan University.

 

Pablo Pérez-Ramos is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). He is a licensed architect from the ETSA Madrid, with Doctor of Design and Master in Landscape Architecture degrees from the GSD. His work focuses on establishing theoretical relations between the disciplines of design and the natural sciences. He has investigated the origins of contemporary ecological views in landscape architecture through an examination of the central debates of ecological theory. Recently, he has been looking at agricultural landscapes in extremely hot and arid conditions, as part of an attempt to formulate a thermodynamic theory of landscape architecture, which looks at the orders produced by design as an interference with the energy flows that shape the environment.

 

Paul Lewis, FAIA, is a Principal at LTL Architects based in New York City and Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture. LTL are the 2019 NY State AIA firm of the year, have received a National Design Award, and were inducted into the ID Hall of Fame. The firm’s recent work includes Poster House, The Helen R. Walton Children’s Enrichment Center, and a new residence hall at Carnegie Mellon University. Their current focus is on the architectural potentials of plant and earth-based materials which is explicated in their recently published book Manual of Biogenic House Section (2022). LTL Architects are also the authors of Intensities (2013), Opportunistic Architecture (2008) and Situation Normal….Pamphlet Architecture #21 (1998) and Manual of Section (2016) which has been translated into six languages. Paul received a BA from Wesleyan University and a MArch from Princeton University, and is a recent past president of The Architectural League of New York.

 

Daniel Tish is a designer and researcher whose work lies at the intersection of digital fabrication, computation, material science, and sustainability, investigating new design opportunities through the lens of bespoke materiality. At Harvard, Daniel is a Lecturer in Architecture at the GSD and a Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed by the MaP+S Group (GSD) and the Lewis Lab (SEAS). Working in collaboration with material scientists, his research develops robotic fabrication techniques for a new class of carbon-negative biocomposites. The Salata Institute, Wyss Institute, Center for Green Buildings and Cities, and Joint Center for Housing Studies have all generously supported his research. Daniel holds a Doctor of Design from the GSD, a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis with a self-guided special major in Sustainable Design.

 

Ann Whiteside is Assistant Dean for Information Services at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her expertise is in libraries and expanding use of digital resources in close collaboration with scholars and the use of technology to support teaching and research. She is a co-founder of Material Order the leading resource for design materials collections at academic and cultural institutions.  She is an administrative lead for the African American Design Nexus, a resource that highlights the important contributions of African American design leaders. She participates in professional organizations that shape approaches to the changing needs and opportunities faced by higher education and research libraries. Whiteside has held leadership roles in the development Society of Architectural Historians’s SAHARA, and on the CAA-SAH Task Force that authored Guidelines for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in Art and Architectural History, 2016. She was also PI for a grant focused on digital design files.

 

Sebastian Schmidt Dalzon is the Assistant Dean for Academic and Strategic Planning at HGSD. Sebastian is an urban and architectural historian focusing on issues of war, race, and memory in the United States, Germany, and Japan in the 20th and 21st centuries. He holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture (MIT), an MSc in Urban Studies (The University of Edinburgh), and a BA in Cultural Studies (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf). With a guiding interest in global and antihegemonic historiography, Sebastian’s work uses interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the urban environment as a meeting place of ideological, economic, and governmental powers, paying special attention to the social construction of narratives around ethnicity, race, and gender. As assistant dean for academic and strategic planning, Sebastian oversees curriculum planning, academic technology, institutional research, teaching and learning policies, and special projects.

Credits

This symposium is convened by Amelia Gan for the Irving Innovation Fellowship, in collaboration with Ann Whiteside, Assistant Dean for Information Studies at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Margot Nishimura, Dean of Libraries at Rhode Island School of Design. This symposium is guided by advisors Eve Blau, Martin Bechthold, Niall Kirkwood, Allen Sayegh, and Sebastian Schmidt Dalzon, and is administratively supported by Nico Hayes-Huer, with graphic design by Hugh Taylor MArch ‘24.

This event is jointly funded by the Irving Innovation Fellowship, the GSD Frances Loeb Library, the Fleet Library at Rhode Island School of Design, and the GSD Development/Alumni Relations Office.

Register here for the symposium.

Mayors Imagining the Just City: Volume 4

 

Event Description

Concluding the fourth annual Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) Just City Mayoral Fellowship–a collaboration between MICD and Harvard GSD’s Just City Lab –the Fellows discuss strategies for using planning and design interventions to address racial, social, and environmental injustice in each of their cities.

Speakers

Mayor Matt Tuerk, Allentown, PA As Allentown’s 43rd Mayor and its inaugural Latino leader, Matt Tuerk, armed with an International Business degree and an MBA, leverages his expertise in economic development. His governance emphasizes strategic planning, budget management, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, resulting in notable enhancements to public safety, public works, and public health. Beyond leadership, Tuerk, an enthusiastic runner, language lover, and family man, truly embodies the commitment of a leader devoted to shaping his community’s future.

 

Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud, Dearborn, MI Abdullah H. Hammoud, serving as Dearborn, MI’s seventh Mayor since January 2021, prioritizes co-governance with the public to foster a multiethnic democracy. As an epidemiologist deeply engaged in environmental advocacy, he passionately safeguards Michigan’s land, air, and water, advocating for healthier environments for children. A three-time University of Michigan graduate with MBA, MPH, and Bachelor of Science degrees, Hammoud, a proud son of immigrants, alongside his wife, Dr. Fatima Beydoun, is dedicated to raising their family in Dearborn while advocating for families citywide.

 

Mayor Sharetta Smith, Lima, OH Sharetta Smith, Lima’s 59th Mayor and the first woman and African American in the role, previously served as Chief of Staff, focusing on housing, afterschool programs, and modernizing city operations. In her mayoral role, she prioritizes citizen engagement, supports small businesses, promotes homeownership, and tackles crime comprehensively. With degrees from the University of Toledo and Ohio Northern University, Smith actively contributes to community betterment through involvement in various boards and committees.

 

Mayor Rex Richardson, Long Beach, CA Rex Richardson, Long Beach’s 29th Mayor, is dedicated to community empowerment. The first African American Mayor in the city’s history and a former City Councilmember, he advocates positive change, collaborating with neighborhood leaders on public safety, economic, and community investments. Nationally, he advises the United States Conference of Mayors, while regionally, he serves on the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency. As the leader of the 42nd most populous city, Richardson focuses on his “Opportunity Beach” Agenda, addressing homelessness, economic recovery, public safety, youth development, and environmental sustainability.

 

Mayor Remy Drabkin, McMinnville, Oregon Mayor Remy Drabkin of McMinnville, Oregon, a dedicated public servant for over 12 years, is the city’s first female, Jewish, and queer-identified Mayor. Serving on the City Council and Planning Commission, she established the Affordable Housing Commission and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) Advisory Committee. As a housing advocate, her policies have provided shelter and aided in transitioning people out of homelessness. Remy actively engages in state-level advocacy, appointed by Governor Brown as a Director on the Oregon Wine Board. Co-founder of Wine Country Pride, she promotes LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations and established the world’s first Queer Wine Fest through her winery, Remy Wines, emphasizing sustainability and carbon sequestration.

 

Mayor Cory Mason, Racine, WI Cory Mason, a fifth-generation Racine, Wisconsin resident, has dedicated over 17 years to serving his hometown as both a Wisconsin State Legislature member and its 61st Mayor. Re-elected six times to the State Assembly, he secured the Mayor’s office in a 2017 special election. Focused on rebuilding the middle class and promoting economic growth through technology and public-private partnerships, Mayor Mason recently started his second full four-year term. A Racine Case High School graduate, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and is a devoted family man.

 

Mayor Kate Colin, San Rafael, CA In 2020, Kate Colin made history as the first female Mayor of San Rafael since its incorporation in 1847. Serving on the City Council since 2013 and previously as a Planning Commissioner for 8 years, she has repositioned city goals to prioritize economic growth, homelessness/housing, sustainability, and social justice. Mayor Kate fosters community engagement through initiatives like the Public Arts Review Board and Police Advisory Accountability Committee. As Chair of the San Rafael Sanitation Agency, she represents the city on various regional boards, advocating for gun safety and leading the city’s first Economic Strategic Plan.

 

 

Moderator

Toni L. Griffin is Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and the founder of Urban Planning and Design for the American City , based in New York.  Through the practice, Toni served as Project Director the long-range planning initiative of the Detroit Work Project, and in 2013 completed and released Detroit Future City, a comprehensive citywide framework plan for urban transformation. Most recent clients include working with the cities of Memphis, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh.

Ms. Griffin was recently a Professor of Architecture and the founding Director of the J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York.  Founded in 2011, the Bond Center is dedicated to the advancement of design practice, education, research, and advocacy in ways that build and sustain resilient and just communities, cities, and regions. Currently, the Center is focused on several design research initiatives including the Legacy City Design Initiative, that explores innovative design solutions for cities that have lost greater than 20% population lost since their peak;  “Just City Design Indicators Project” that seeks to define the core values of a just city and offer a performance measure tool to assist cities and communities with evaluating how design facilitates urban justice in the built environment; and “Inclusion in Architecture” that examines the participation of people of color in architecture and related design fields.

 

 

 

Partners

The Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors. Since 1986, the Mayors’ Institute has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities.

 

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is the independent federal agency, established by Congress in 1965, whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the NEA supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America.

 

The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. USCM promotes effective national urban/suburban policy, strengthens federal/city relationships, ensures that federal policy meets urban needs, provides mayors with leadership and management tools, and creates a forum in which mayors can share ideas and information.

 

At the Just City Lab, we ask: Would we design better places if we put the values of equality, inclusion or equity first? If a community articulated what it stood for, what it believed in, what it aspired to be — as a city, as a neighborhood — would it have a better chance of creating and sustaining more healthy, vibrant place with positive, economic, health, civic, cultural and environmental conditions? Imagine that the issues of race, income, education and unemployment inequality, and the resulting segregation, isolation and fear, could be addressed by planning and designing for greater access, agency, ownership, beauty, diversity or empowerment. Now imagine the Just City: the cities, neighborhoods and public spaces that thrive using a value-based approach to urban stabilization, revitalization and transformation. Imagine a set of values that would define a community’s aspiration for the Just City. Imagine we can assign metrics to measure design’s impact on justice. Imagine we can use these findings to deploy interventions that minimize conditions of injustice.

 

Our North is the South: Thinking Architectural History From the South

Event Description

In 1935, Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García reversed the map of South America to argue for the point of view of artists working “from the south,” claiming: “Our north is the south.” Thinking with Torres-García, this gathering of academics thinks about the history of architecture and cities from the point of view of the South and Latin America. Our North is the South (Nuestro Norte es el Sur) is a group of architecture and urban historians working and teaching on Latin America, first convened in Quito in 2018 and with periodical meetings since. This conference builds on a series of teaching lectures produced collaboratively by members of the group for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), but turns to our work as historians and researchers, invested in local histories and their global scope. 

Researching the history of buildings, landscapes, and cities in Latin America presents opportunities and challenges for a transnational approach. From the first inhabitants of the Americas to the contemporary work of historicizing our present, we propose the architecture of the region has always been interconnected. However, understanding the scope of its transnational character has been limited by nationalist ideologies, extended periods of political isolation, and lack of resources. Recent research has addressed these challenges by questioning narratives centered on power and privilege, and turned to the networks that come together in the production of the built environment: the politics of memory and institutions in the preservation of cities and landscapes, the intersection of race and labor in territorial extraction, the role of gender and class in the production of inequality, and the formation of the design disciplines. 

What can Latin America contribute to a more global understanding of the processes of our discipline, and what is the contribution of thinking the history of architecture from the South as both a geographic and conceptual position?

Please note: The content of this event will be spoken primarily in Spanish. Machine translation to English will be displayed on-screen in Piper Auditorium. Machine translation to English and Portuguese is also available at this link . Use the “Languages” drop-down menu to select a language.

Program

Friday, December 1, 2023

Preservation Dilemmas
9:00am – 10:30am

Introduction
José Carlos Fernández (Harvard GSD) 

The traditional landscape of the Azuero region in Panama (16th century onwards)
Silvia Arroyo (Universidad de Panamá)

El Vedado: Memorialization and Conservation Strategies
Claudia Felipe Torres (Universidad de La Habana/UNESCO)

El Panecillo: World Heritage and 1970s Baroque
Cristina Bueno (Universidad San Francisco de Quito)

Think twice: 20th-century heritage valuation criteria through the case of Colombia
María del Pilar Sánchez Beltrán (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)

Respondent: Ana Esteban Maluenda (ETSAM)

 

Race, Labor, and Territorial Extraction
10:45am­ – 12:15pm

Introduction
Catarina Flaksman (Harvard HAA)

Unearthing Histories: The Intersection of Race and Labor in Colonial Andean Architecture
Francisco Mamani Fuentes (Thoma Foundation)

The Pan-American Highway: From extraction to exploitation
Reina Loredo Cansino (Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro)

From Oil to Food: Fantasies of Abundance and Nelson Rockefeller’s Architectures of Development in Venezuela, 1940s–1960s
Fabiola López Durán (Rice University)

Cultural Urbanism, Symbolic Gentrification, and Labor in the Peripheries of São Paulo, 1980–2020
Daniela Sandler (University at Buffalo)

Respondent: Bruno Carvalho (Mahindra, RLL, AAAS)

 

Gender and Class in the Built Environment
1:15pm­­ – 2:45pm 

Introduction
Carolina Sepulveda (Harvard GSD)

Dolores Veintimilla’s Necrology: Experience, Public Space and the Death Penalty Debate in Ecuador
Christian Parreño (Universidad San Francisco de Quito)

Popular tourism, working class and women: “Balnearios Populares” in Chile 1971-1973
Macarena Cortés (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Architects’ Perceptions of Professional Regression and Gender Inequality in Pinochet’s Chile
Amarí Peliowski (Universidad de Chile)

Family Housing & Feminized Bodies: Dragging Domestic Space, examples from Mexico
Diana Maldonado (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León)

Respondent: Valentina Rozas-Krause (2023–24 Radcliffe Fellow and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez)

 

Rethinking Pedagogies
3:00pm – 4:30pm

Introduction
Yazmín Crespo Claudio (Harvard GSD)

Lucio Costa and the Cidade Universitária do Brasil
Leandro Manenti (U Federal do Rio Grande do Sul)

Reverberated Bauhaus: an experience from / towards singular pedagogies
Ingrid Quintana-Guerrero (Universidad de los Andes Colombia)

No commitment: Addressing architectural Education in Peru
Sharif Kahatt (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú / Arquitectura PUCP)

Education as the Center
Jorge Nudelman (UDELAR)

Respondent: Patricio del Real (Harvard HAA)

 

Closing Remarks and Conversation
4:45 pm – 5:45 pm 

Closing remarks by Fernando Luiz Lara (University of Pennsylvania) and round table conversation between Lara, José Carlos Fernandez (Harvard GSD), Yazmín Crespo Claudio (Harvard GSD), Catarina Flaksman (Harvard HAA) and Carolina Sepulveda, (Harvard GSD)

 

Saturday, December 2, 2023

Teacher-to-teacher workshop on research and pedagogy (closed)

Full Program and Participant Bios Available at this link

Our North is the South is convened and organized by Ana María León (Harvard GSD) and Fernando Luis Martínez Nespral (FADU–UBA)

The conference is made possible thanks to the generous funding of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Harvard University Office of the Provost, the Harvard University Mellon Initiative, and the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative.

 

 

The State of Housing Design 2023

Event Description

What is the state of housing design in the US? In particular, how are architects of new single- and multi-family housing responding to issues such as the warming climate, the affordability crisis, increasing regulations and construction costs, and the demand for new unit types that better reflect today’s demographic realities? These questions will be the focus of a half-day event marking the release of The State of Housing Design 2023 , a new book that examines themes in housing design, explored through over 100 recent buildings in the US.

The event will feature panels with the book’s editors, authors, practitioners, journalists, academics, and others, including:

Nate Berg, Staff Writer, Fast Company
Elizabeth Christoforetti, Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture, GSD; Founding Principal, Supernormal
Daniel D’Oca, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning, GSD; Principal and Co-Founder, Interboro Partners
Roy Decker, FAIA, Principal, Duvall Decker
Jenny French, Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture, GSD; Co-Founder, French 2D
Alexandra Gauzza, AIA, LEED AP BD + C, Principal/Studio Director, ISA
Chris Herbert, Managing Director, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
Ken Johnson, Partner, Michael Hsu Office of Architecture
Anna Kodé, Real Estate Reporter, The New York Times
Tim Love, Lecturer in Real Estate, GSD; Founding Principal, Utile Architecture and Planning
Sam Naylor, Project Architect, Utile; Druker Fellow, GSD
Marc Norman, Associate Dean, NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate
Chandra Robinson, Principal, LEVER Architecture
Inga Saffron, Architecture Critic, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Timothy A. Schuler, Contributing Editor, Landscape Architecture Magazine
Patrick Sisson, Journalist, Bloomberg CityLab, The New York Times, and others
Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, GSD; Design Principal and Co-Founder, WW Architecture
Stephen Zacks, Journalist and Critic, Dwell, Architects’s Newspaper, and others
Mimi Zeiger, Critic and Editor, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, and others

 

This hybrid event will be held in person and online; register here to attend in person . No registration is needed to watch online.

Pre-order  The State of Housing Design 2023  through Harvard University Press.

Harvard Saturday of Symposia

Harvard alumni were invited to the Harvard Alumni Association’s Saturday of Symposia.

Saturday of Symposia showcased Harvard faculty members doing research across the University in fields ranging from the social and natural sciences to the humanities. The 2023 program of the University’s 43rd Saturday of Symposia featured two-morning lectures followed by lunch and a keynote address given by Dean Sarah M. Whiting, Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture.