“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.
Edwin Chan (MArch '85) and Burak Pekoglu (MArch '11) led a seminar in Istanbul, Turkey at the Yildiz Teknik University.
For anyone to whom the similarity between a building and a French pastry is not evident, Pierre Herme’s presentation, “The Architecture of Taste,” at the GSD last week was a revelation. Herme’s approach to designing unique tastes through a combination of flavors and textures “is analogous to the programmatic construction that takes place in architecture,” observes Savinien Caracostea (MArch ’13), the event organizer. Read more about it in “Constructing the Perfect Bite” in Harvard Magazine.
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.
French 2D (Jenny French, MArch ‘11) is not the only homegrown firm to be selected as a finalist for the 2013 MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Program. Leena Cho (MLA ‘09) and Matthew Jull (MArch ‘08) of Kotonotuk have collaborated with mcdowellespinosa to form TempAgency, which has also been invited to submit a proposal for the 2013 award.
Associate professor of architecture Timothy Hyde will be a residential fellow at the MacDowell Colony, where he will work on his current book project examining the persistence of accusations of ugliness in aesthetic debates in Great Britain.
“Reconsidering Architecture,” the Rotterdam-based studio led by Rem Koolhaas (professor in practice of architecture and urban design) and Stephan Trüby (lecturer in architecture) approaches architecture from 40 thousand feet and ground level simultaneously. Recently faculty and students invited the Rotterdam public in for an exhibition and evening of debate about their research at the Dependance at the Schieblock. Read Jaakko van ‘t Spijker's account of the event in Archinect.
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.