Design for Real Estate: Contemporary Topics is a Course Report from the Fall 2024 semester at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, based on the course “Design for Real Estate” taught by Professor Timothy Love. The publication features student-led research at the intersection of real estate development and design, exploring how financing strategies, regulatory frameworks, and spatial thinking converge to shape projects and the contemporary city.

For one of the assignments of Design for Real Estate, students were asked to organize themselves into groups of three or four and propose a topic they would like to research at the intersection of real estate development and design. The open-ended nature of the assignment gave students agency to suggest relevant topics and themes, important for a class that is being developed and refined within the larger context of the now two-year old Master in Real Estate program.

As much as feasible, students with different disciplinary backgrounds, which included finance, planning and design, were encouraged to work together so they could bring their individual perspectives to their chosen topic. The compendium of essays that resulted provides a fascinating snapshot of the preoccupations of students who are, in many cases for the first time, learning about the many ways that financing strategies, regulations, and design considerations intersect to shape individual projects and the contemporary city.

Read this report on issuu.