Mohsen Mostafavi
Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
Mohsen Mostafavi, architect and educator, is the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and served as Dean of the GSD from 2008-2019. His work focuses on modes and processes of urbanization and on the interface between technology and aesthetics.
He was formerly the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University where he was also the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture. Previously, he was the Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He studied architecture at the AA, and undertook research on counter-reformation urban history at the Universities of Essex and Cambridge. He has been the Director of the Master of Architecture I Program at the GSD and has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge, and the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule).
Mostafavi is a Trustee of Smith College, an Honorary Trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation, and served on the Board of the Van Alen Institute as well as the Steering Committee and the Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. At Harvard, he co-chairs the Harvard University Committee for the Arts, serves on the Smith Campus Center Executive Committee, the Harvard Allston Steering Committee, and co-chaired the Steering Committee on Common Spaces. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Harvard Innovation Lab Advisory Board, the Executive Board of The Laboratory at Harvard, and the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies.
Mostafavi has chaired the jury of the Mies van der Rohe Prize for Architecture and the European, Global, and North American juries of the LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction. He served on the design committee of the London Development Agency (LDA), the juries for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Gold Medal and Annie Spink Award, and the advisory committee on campus planning of the Asian University for Women.
He is a consultant on a number of international architectural and urban projects. His research and design projects have been published in many journals, including The Architectural Review, AAFiles, Arquitectura, Bauwelt, Casabella, Centre, Daidalos, and El Croquis. His books include On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (co-authored 1993), which received the American Institute of Architects prize for writing on architectural theory; Delayed Space (co-authored 1994); Approximations (2002); Surface Architecture (2002); Logique Visuelle (2003); Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (2004); Structure as Space (2006); Ecological Urbanism (co-edited 2010 and recently translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish); Implicate & Explicate (2011); Louis Vuitton: Architecture and Interiors (2011); In the Life of Cities (2012); Instigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape and the City (co-edited 2012); Architecture is Life (2013); Nicholas Hawksmoor: The London Churches (2015); Architecture and Plurality (2016); Portman’s America & Other Speculations (2017); and Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political (2017).
Courses
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Option Studio 1316
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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
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Preparation of Doctoral Thesis Proposal
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The Project and the Territory: Japan Story
Publications
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Urbanismo ecológico en/na América Latina
Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty
October 2019
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Manila: Future Habitations
Edited by David Rubin, Rok Oman and Spela Videcnik
Mohsen Mostafavi, ContributorSeptember 2018
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Portman’s America & Other Speculations
Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi
May 2017
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Ethics of the Urban
Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi
April 2017
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Ecological Urbanism
Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty
September 2016
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Instigations: Engaging Architecture Landscape and the City
Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi
Farshid Moussavi, ContributorDecember 2012
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In the Life of Cities
Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi
September 2012
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Structure as Space: Engineering and Architecture in the Works of Jürg Conzett
By Mohsen Mostafavi
June 2006
Projects
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Future of the American City
Mohsen Mostafavi, Charles Waldheim and Jesse M. Keenan, Principal Investigators
Spring 2018
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A Sustainable Future for Exuma: Environmental Management, Design, and Planning
Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty, Principal Investigators
Spring 2016
Exhibitions
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Instigations: Engaging Architecture Landscape and the City
Mohsen Mostafavi, Curator
DEC 3, 2012 – JAN 25, 2013