Research

Students reading and working in a reading area.

Research at the Harvard Graduate School of Design is grounded in the belief that many of the key challenges and opportunities of our era require cooperation among the arts, humanities, and sciences and among the academy, industry, civil society, and the public sector.   

Unprecedented demands are affecting our cities and infrastructure, the environment, and our society as a whole. Today’s complex issues require an unconventional but cooperative approach that can transcend disciplines and produce change at all levels—not only for the spaces in which we live, but also for our approach to art, technology, business, education, and more. Our innovations are producing practical solutions to quandaries in urbanization, environment and technology—from geographic information systems to designing the future of cities. We hope you will visit the individual pages of our research units to learn about the ambitious and rapidly expanding research agenda of the GSD and its transformative power. 

GSD Research

  • Frances Loeb Library

    The Frances Loeb Library provides the GSD, the larger Harvard University community, and the public with resources and services for design research, teaching, and learning. 

  • Aga Khan Program at the GSD

    The Aga Khan Program is part of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and MIT, dedicated to the study of Islamic art and architecture, urbanism, landscape design and conservation. The GSD is invested in the application of that knowledge to contemporary design issues. 

  • Laboratory for Design Technologies

    Technology is accelerating profound changes throughout society, affecting everything we do—how we live, work, produce, build, and think. To advance our understanding of how design technologies can improve the human condition, the GSD has established the Laboratory for Design Technologies (LDT). 

  • Projects & Initiatives

    Our Programs and Initiatives are creating a critical mass of inquiry and research. Unique in their focus, each builds ties with experts in their fields, with implications for policy, practice, and society at large. 

Design Labs

Geometry Lab

The Geometry Lab researches the intersection of design and the science of shape and form, aided by computational tools and design intuition.  

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Book titled An Atlas of Urban Air Mobility.

Critical Landscapes Design Lab

A place for speculation on people and places. We engage with a myriad of pressing socio-ecological issues across the postcolonial and Islamic worlds where the design disciplines—and especially landscape architecture—can imagine better futures.  

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Outdoor sculptures.

Healthy Places Design Lab

The Healthy Places Design Lab links faculty and students at the GSD to other researchers focused on how to make places healthier in in the US and globally.  

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Groups walking down an outdoor sidewalk under trees and streetlights.

Just City Lab

The Just City Lab investigates the ways design and planning contribute to conditions of justice and injustice in our cities. We believe design can repair injustice. We believe design must restore justice, especially that produced by its own hand. We believe in justice for Black Americans. We believe in justice for all marginalized people. We believe in a just city.  

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Person working on a laptop on a desk marked with text reading 'The Just City Index'.

Material Processes and Systems Group

MaP+S is a research unit that advances knowledge about materials in the built environment.  

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Sculpture outdoors in front of GSD building.

Responsive Environments & Artifacts Lab

The Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab (REAL) is a research lab that pursues the design of digital, virtual, and physical worlds as an indivisible whole. It recognizes the all-pervasive nature of digital information and interaction at scales ranging from our bodies to the larger urban contexts we occupy and the infrastructures that support them.  

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Cryptoscope for a Cybernetic Future GSD VIS-2314: Responsive Environments: Poetics of Space (Spring 2021-22).

Research Groups

Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities

The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities  aims to transform the building industry through a commitment to design-centric strategy that directly links research outcomes to the development of new processes, systems, and products. 

A man walks in front of the Center for Green Cities and Buildings house.

Joint Center for Housing Studies

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies  advances understanding of housing issues and informs policy through research, education, and public outreach programs. 

The exterior of a row of houses on a residential street.

Office for Urbanization

The Office for Urbanization  draws upon the School’s history of design innovation to address societal and cultural conditions associated with contemporary urbanization. It develops speculative and projective urban scenarios through sponsored design research projects and imagines alternative and better futures through applied design research, aspiring to reduce the distance between design innovation and societal impact.  

Overhead schematic of a bridge in an urban environment.

Funding Opportunities

  • Loeb Fellowship

    Loeb Fellowship

    The Loeb Fellowship offers a transformative year of study and engagement at the GSD, and a powerful worldwide network of over 450 colleagues. Loeb Fellows are exceptional practitioners whose work is advancing positive social outcomes through the shaping of the built and natural environment in the US and around the world.  

  • Wheelwright Prize

    Wheelwright Prize

    The Wheelwright Prize is an international competition for early-career architects. Winners receive a $100,000 (USD) fellowship to foster intensive, innovative architectural research that is informed by cross-cultural engagement and can make a significant impact on architectural discourse. 

  • Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design

    Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design

    The Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design is the foremost award recognizing exemplary urban design projects. Projects from around the world are evaluated in terms of their contributions to the public realm and quality of urban life, and must demonstrate a humane and worthwhile direction for the design of urban environments.