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.
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.”
In August, Jeffrey Mansfield (MArch) was in the Brazilian Amazon with the Portable Light Project, when he realized that the remote areas are increasingly covered by 3G networks. Mansfield was inspired to develop “Taking Charge,” a project to provide tools and training to jungle residents to expand cell phone use and crowdsource knowledge for farming, fishing, trade, weather, banking, health and more. Read about his grand scheme in “Taking Charge with cellphones” in the Harvard Gazette.