Villa I Tatti Internship

Villa I Tatti Internship

An eight-week summer internship at Villa I Tatti near Florence, Italy, is available for returning MLA students in the Department of Landscape Architecture, focusing on documenting climate-related vulnerabilities in the historic gardens and pursuing a self-designed research project related to the gardens or farm.

About

Overview

The Villa I Tatti Internship is offered by the Department of Landscape Architecture in partnership with The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti . One graduate internship is available for eight weeks during June and July for a returning MLA student to reside at I Tatti, near Florence, Italy. The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, which is housed in historic buildings surrounded by a working farm and a 1909 garden by the architect Cecil Pinsent, is dedicated to the fruitful exchange of ideas and an atmosphere conducive to research and writing. 

The research for this internship is divided into two parts. The first is working with the IT and horticultural staff at I Tatti to further document conditions in the garden that demonstrate vulnerabilities due to the climate crisis, primarily concerning extended drought and varied insect and fungal threats to plant vigor.  

The second task is a research topic devised by the intern; applicants will propose a topic for study that is related to the gardens and farm but with projected outcomes related to their own academic trajectory. A GSD faculty advisor is required for this effort.

Eligibility

Returning MLA students in the Department of Landscape Architecture are invited to apply. Interns receive $5,000 to offset the cost of living and airfare. They are required to reside at I Tatti for a two month period from approximately June 1 through July 31 and are responsible for arranging their own travel. Housing is offered on the I Tatti estate. Interns are required to spend at least four full days a week at the Villa and to attend all academic events. Interns may not take on any other obligations, even part-time ones, during any part of their internship.

Application Instructions

For for deadline, selection criteria, project application, and deliverables information, please visit GSD Now.

Questions may be submitted to [email protected].

Selection Committee

Past Projects

Past recipient projects are listed below.

2025

Gemrisha Anantham (MLA I ’26): “The I Tatti Gardens as a Digital Twin: Archiving Histories and Simulating Potential Climate Futures”

2024

Caroline Brodeur (MLA I AP/ MUP ’27): “Preservation in a Changing Climate: Climate Resilience in the I Tatti Gardens”

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Rebecca Hallowell

LAF Olmsted Scholars Program

LAF Olmsted Scholars Program

Named for Frederick Law Olmsted, the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Olmsted Scholars Program recognizes one outstanding student from each accredited landscape architecture program in the U.S. and Canada, along with the jury-selected graduate and undergraduate national award winners and finalists. The LAF Olmsted Scholars Program recognizes and supports students with exceptional leadership potential who are using ideas, influence, communication, service, and leadership to advance sustainable design and foster human and societal benefits. Students are both honored for past achievements and recognized for their future potential to influence the landscape architecture discipline.

Each participating university may nominate one student from each of its LAAB or LAAC-accredited landscape architecture programs. Students do not apply directly.

This award is administered and awarded by LAF. The Department of Landscape Architecture nominates their student during an internal departmental selection process.

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CELA Fountain Scholar Program

CELA Fountain Scholar Program

The CELA Fountain Scholar Program is an endowed annual award to acknowledge Black, Indigenous, and persons (students) of color in landscape architecture with exceptional leadership and design skills, and who use their skills and ideas to influence, communicate, lead, and advance design solutions for contemporary issues in a manner aligned with the original goals of Dr. Charles Fountain, a leader and educator at North Carolina A&T.

The program recognizes outstanding students nominated from each landscape architecture program from CELA member institutions. Students are both honored for past achievements and recognized for their future potential to influence the landscape architecture profession. Students recognized by their programs are eligible to be named as a Fountain Scholar and compete for a $2,000.00 scholarship.

This award is administered and awarded by CELA. Participating institutions nominate their students. The Department of Landscape Architecture nominates their student during an internal departmental selection process.

For deadline and submission information, please visit GSD Now. LEARN MORE

Briana King

Landscape Architecture in A Changing Climate

Landscape Architecture in A Changing Climate

Living Urban Watershed, Reconfiguring Charlestown through the localized retention of urban stormwater, Lucas Dobbin

The Department of Landscape Architecture holds an abiding commitment to climate mitigation and adaptation through its curriculum, faculty research, and design culture. We stand at the frontier of carbon drawdown and the urgent demand for climate adaptation in all of our work together. Historically, we contend that existential demands for adapting threatened or damaged natural systems in cities propelled the emergence of landscape architecture practice as urban reform in the United States in the 19th century. Today, these demands remain crucial drivers in our work—but with ever greater urgency in the face of extreme aridity and heat, mega-fires, flooding, sea level rise, excessive carbon emissions, and other risks to life and prosperity. In response, we are educating a generation of activist practitioners, theorists, advocates, and more—a virtual army of climate warriors who will lead the charge for regenerative, adaptive ways of reimagining a just and sustainable world.

Climate by Design

Achieving these goals requires a community of learning committed to deeper analysis of the patterns of change and the role of design in reducing carbon emissions and adapting to climate risks. Climate by Design is the foundation of our commitment to building this community. It is a required course for MLA degree candidates and is open to other GSD and Harvard students interested in the climate crisis and design. The course is built around critical questions and interrogates existing systems of knowledge. What is climate change? What are the design strategies that respond to or anticipate these changes? How effective are they? Whom do they serve? And on what terms?

The effects and burdens of climatic change are unequal, contributing to increased social and economic disparity and often exacerbating historic patterns of inequity. The impacts are multiple and diverse, as are the many cultures and communities that must respond and adapt. To develop design tools that respond to these conditions, we need to understand not only the science but also the political, social, economic, and cultural contexts on the ground where design projects and movements are rooted.

Through a series of lectures by GSD faculty and external experts across various fields, this course introduces students to the science of climate change and explores the range of paradigmatic design responses. Throughout the semester, students work in teams to develop and analyze a case study, advancing methodologies for critical assessment and visual representation. The studies consider social, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions, environmental function, economic deployment, and political engagement. They are organized around 9 key themes and situated in different geographical, political, economic, social, historical, environmental, and climatic contexts. These exemplary cases are a means to understand and articulate the evolving role of landscape architecture in a changing climate.

Examples of these themes and student analysis of specific cases can be explored below.

Case Studies

Digital Design Prize

Digital Design Prize

Drawing showing the Blueprint into Machinery
Blueprint into Machinery

Established in 1974 by an anonymous donor, the Digital Design Prize (formerly named the Computer Graphics Prize) is presented by the Graduate School of Design to the student who has demonstrated the most creative and rigorous use of computation in relation to the design professions.

Recent recipients include:

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Peter Rice Prize

Peter Rice Prize

macro image of porous material
“NuBlock” by Erin Hunt (MDes Tech ’21) and Yaxuan Liu (MArch I ’21) – Recipients of the 2021 Peter Rice Prize

Established in 1993 by Moshe Safdie and family, friends, and colleagues, in memory of Peter Rice, the Peter Rice Prize honors students of exceptional promise in the school’s architecture and advanced degree programs who have proven their competence and innovation in advancing architecture and structural engineering.

Peter Rice (1935-1992) was an Irish structural engineer who collaborated with some of the most talented architects of the late 20th century, including I. M. Pei, Renzo Piano, and Richard Rogers, on buildings that became icons of contemporary design, including the Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre, and Lloyd’s of London. He was renowned for his innate ability to act as both an engineer and designer, bringing a uniquely poetic feeling to his work.

Recent recipients include:

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Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize

Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize

This award is given to students who have presented exemplary thesis work in Landscape Architecture.

Recent recipients include:

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GSD-Courances Design Residency Program

GSD-Courances Design Residency Program

A close-up of Domaine de Courances with surrounding gardens and canal.
Domaine de Courances, image courtesy of Anne Field (MLA I '25).

The GSD-Courances Design Residency Program is fully funded through the Penny White Project Fund and the generous support of the Château de Courances. The program affords students the chance to spend six weeks living and working in the certified organic farm, gardens, and park at the Château de Courances, a sixteenth-century estate located in the Île-de-France, fifty kilometers south of Paris. The residency will expose students to new modes of thought, discourse, and engagement on such topics as sustainable land management, agriculture, conservation, stories of place, and the role of historic sites in contemporary society.

About

Overview

The GSD-Courances Design Residency Program is fully funded through the Penny White Project Fund and the generous support of the Château de Courances. The program affords students the chance to spend six weeks living and working in the certified organic farm, gardens, and park at the Château de Courances, a sixteenth-century estate located in the Île-de-France, fifty kilometers south of Paris. The residency will expose students to new modes of thought, discourse, and engagement on such topics as sustainable land management, agriculture, conservation, stories of place, and the role of historic sites in contemporary society.

The structure of the residency is fundamentally hands-on. Students will work directly alongside farmers and landscaping crews, learning land management techniques and practices through direct experience. Students will also pursue an independent project or research topic depending on their own personal interests and explorations.

Two positions will be offered each year. The duration of the residency will be for six weeks from approximately the beginning of June to the middle of July. Project proposals open in the mid Fall semester and are due in the late Fall. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed as part of the application process. Winners are notified by Winter Break and are announced publicly with the Penny White Project Fund awardees in mid Spring.

Eligibility

All students enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Design are eligible to submit project proposals that address the objectives of the GSD-Courances program. Although all GSD students are eligible, it is expected that preference will be given to students in the Department of Landscape Architecture. The Committee looks favorably upon collaboration between students in Landscape Architecture with other design disciplines.

Students may work individually or in teams, and in conjunction with or independently from their coursework.

The program welcomes projects that promote research at the intersection of systemic inequity and social and environmental justice, and that focus on the advancement of the political agency of landscape architecture as an activist, collaborative, and participatory practice.

Application Instructions

For for deadline, selection criteria, project application, and deliverables information, please visit GSD Now.

Questions may be submitted to [email protected].

Selection Committee

Committee Chair

Past Projects

Past recipient projects are listed below. To review completed projects, please contact the Loeb Library Archives.

2017

Sophie Geller (MLA I ’17)

2018

Mariel Collard (MLA I AP/ MDES ’19)

Juan Davide Grisales (MLA I AP/ MDES ’21)

2019

Yoni Angelo Carnice (MLA I ’20), “The World Was My Garden: The GSD-Courances Design Residency”

Michael Cafiero (MLA I AP ’20), “I. Regenerative Connections”

2020

Caroline Craddock (MLA I ’21), “Balancing Historic Conservation and Climatic Adaptation at the Chateau de Courances”

Dominic Riolo (MLA I ’21), “Courances as Sustaining, Proto-Modernist Garden”

2021-22

Award not offered

2023

Anne Field (MLA I ’25), “Field to Forest”

2024

Garrett Craig-Lucas (MLA II ’25), “Currents: Documenting Connections Between Perception, Movement, and Water Flow in Courances”

Jie Zheng (MLA I ’24), “Whispers of Flow: An Ecology Odyssey Through the Water of Courances”

2025

Mara Basich-Pease (MLA I ’27), “Sensing Scent-Scapes”

Valentine Geze (MDES ’26), “Deposits of Memory: Sediment and Hydrology in the Courances Landscape”

Noam Baharav (MLA I ’27), “Garden:Farm”

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