Eugenio Simonetti
Eugenio Simonetti Toro is an Architect and Urban Designer living and working in Chile. Born in 1980 in Santiago de Chile, he holds a degree in Architecture at Universidad Finis Terrae (Summa cum laude 2004) after a year at the Scuola di Architettura Urbanistica in the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. In 2008, he received an MAUD degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Professor Simonetti has taught several studios and seminars related to architecture, urbanism and infrastructure at Universidad Finis Terrae, Universidad Andres Bello, and Universidad Mayor in Chile. In 2011, he was invited to teach at the Architectural Association Politic of Fabrication Laboratory and worked together with the School of Architecture of the University of Minnesota in 2013. While he was a student at Harvard he was an Urban Design Instructor at the 2007 Career Discovery Program.
Currently, he is a Professor at the Centro de Ecologia, Paisajismo y Urbanismo of Universidad Adolfo Ibañez in Chile. Some of his built work has been exhibited in the 14th Biennale di Architettura di Venezia in 2014, XVIII Chilean Bienal in 2012, XIX Chilean Bienal in 2015 and the XVIII Bienal Panamericana de Arquitectura. In 2016, he was nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago for his office building Costanera Lyon 2.
After his MAUD at Harvard in 2008 he become one of the founders of Almahue S.A. Architecture and Real Estate Company in Chile where he works until today as Principal Architect and a Board Member of the Construction Company since 2018.
For the past few years he has been leading a social oriented research about urban operative infrastructure in the most segregated areas of Santiago de Chile currently supported by Aguas Andinas S.A. (The biggest drinking water Company in Chile) and the Inter-American Development Bank. Today, he is building a 50-acre Masterplan with a Preservation zone designed together with the connoted Chilean Landscape Architect Teresa Moller.
Since 2005 he is married to the award winner children’s books author and artist Maya Hanisch Cerda.
Nicholas Nelson
Nick has over 18 years of experience as a fluvial geomorphologist and river restoration practitioner. Nick is the northeast regional director for Inter-Fluve, a river and wetland restoration firm working on projects throughout the country and internationally. His work with Inter-Fluve has focused on dam removal and channel restoration/rehabilitation planning and design, urban river restoration and renewal, the restoration of retired cranberry bogs to native stream and wetland ecosystems, geomorphic and habitat assessments, construction observation, and GIS analyses. At the GSD since 2016, Nick attempts to connect hydrologic and ecologic concepts with the typical landscape architecture background through actual designed and constructed examples and field excursions. Nick was an instructor at the CAUP International Design Summer School held at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, in 2017. Nick taught Applications of GIS in River Restoration at the University of Minnesota biennially between 2007 and 2014 and Environmental Planning at Northeastern University annually since 2014. He taught fluvial geomorphology to MA conservation commissioners at the annual conferences since 2012 and is currently on a task force to aid in developing geomorphic and stability assessment protocols for MA rivers.
Mark Mulligan
Mark Mulligan is Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture. From 2011 to 2014, he served as Program Director for the GSD’s Master in Architecture Degree. In academic year 2014-15 he led the Loeb Fellowship Program as Interim Curator. He is a registered architect in Massachusetts and has completed projects in the Boston area, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Japan. Prior to establishing his own Cambridge-based practice in 1998, Mulligan worked as project architect for Fumihiko Maki’s Pritzker Prize-winning practice in Tokyo. In 2008 he edited a book of Maki’s essays entitled Nurturing Dreams: Collected Essays on Architecture and the City. Mulligan has published numerous essays about modern and contemporary Japanese architecture as well as translating Japanese authors into English.
Mulligan’s research explores the relationship between constructive detail and meaning in architecture; he has taught a variety of studios and courses at the GSD since 1996, including a course on modern Japanese architecture, introductory and advanced courses on construction technology, architecture and urban design studios. Since 2010, he has led teams of students in producing digital reconstructions and CG animations of major landmarks of 20th century Japanese architecture, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (built 1923, demolished 1967), Kenzo Tange’s 1964 National Olympic Stadium at Yoyogi, and (currently in progress) Junzo Sakakura’s Japan Pavilion for the 1937 Paris World Expo. In winter 2014, he collaborated with FAS Professor Yukio Lippit to organize the exhibition “The Thinking Hand: Tools and Traditions of the Japanese Carpenter” at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.
Mulligan received his BA from Yale University and his MArch with distinction from the GSD.
Farshid Moussavi
Farshid Moussavi is Professor in Practice in the Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). Moussavi’s approach is characterised by an openness to change and a commitment to the intellectual and cultural life of architecture. Alongside leading an award-winning architectural practice, she lectures regularly at arts institutions and schools of architecture worldwide and is a published author. Moussavi was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to architecture. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2015 and Professor of Architecture at the RA Schools in 2017.
Moussavi trained at Harvard GSD, the Bartlett School of Architecture University College London and Dundee University. Recognized as an outstanding and committed teacher, she has been a visiting professor at UCLA, Columbia, Princeton, and at several architecture schools in Europe; she was also the Kenzo Tange Visiting Design Critic at the GSD in Spring 2005. She taught for eight years at the Architectural Association in London and was the head of the Institute of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she taught from 2002 until 2005.
At FMA, Moussavi’s completed projects include the acclaimed Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, USA; La Folie Divine, a residential complex in Montpellier; a multi-tenure residential complex in the La Défense district of Paris, flagship stores for Victoria Beckham in London and Hong Kong, and the Toys Department for Harrods in London. Her current projects include the Ismaili Center Houston and a primary school in Paris. Previously Moussavi was co-founder of the internationally renowned London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA) where she co-authored many award-winning international projects including the Yokohama International Cruise Terminal and the Spanish Pavilion at the Aichi International Expo, London’s Ravensbourne College of Media and Communication and the Leicester John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex. Prior to setting up FOA, Moussavi worked with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam.
A prolific writer and public speaker, Moussavi is a leading figure in contemporary architectural dialogue. Author of four books, her most recent Architecture and Micropolitics, Four Buildings 2011-2022, Farshid Moussavi Architecture (Park Books, 2022) sets out her vision for architecture as a form practice that is responsive rather than deterministic. Moussavi has pursued teaching in parallel to practice for more than 30 years, seeing it as the opportunity for developing new thinking on subjects including the design of social housing and approaches to adaptive reuse.
Moussavi has served on key design and architectural advisory panels and international design juries including for the British Council, the Mayor of London’s “Design for London” advisory group, the London Development Agency, the RIBA Gold and Presidential Medals and the Stirling Prize for Architecture.
Moussavi is deeply committed to art and culture. She has previously served as a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the London Architecture Foundation, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Currently, she is a trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation London and New Architecture Writers (NAW) which focuses on black and minority ethnic emerging writers who are under-represented across design journalism and curation.
In Moussavi’s latest book, Architecture & Micropolitics , she seeks to dispel two widely held misconceptions: first, that architects are no longer central to the making of buildings and, second, that design is a linear process which begins with a fully formed architectural vision. Moussavi argues that the temporality of architecture provides day-to-day practice with the potential to generate change. She proposes that we abandon determinism and embrace chance events and the subjective factors that influence practice in order to ground buildings in the micropolitics of everyday life.
Rafael Moneo
José Rafael Moneo is the first Josep Lluis Sert Professor of Architecture, Emeritus. He was chair of the Department of Architecture from 1985 until 1990 and teaches the lecture courses On Contemporary Architecture and Design Theories in Architecture.
Before joining the Graduate School of Design, Moneo was a fellow at the Spanish Academy in Rome and taught in Barcelona and Madrid. His scholarly work includes numerous articles and lectures published throughout the world. His projects include the Bankinter Building in Madrid, the Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, the L’Illa building in Barcelona, the Pilar and Joan Miró Museum in Palma de Mallorca, the “Kursaal” Auditorium and Congess Center in San Sebastián, the extension of the Prado Museum in Madrid, as well as the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Moneo has been awarded the Gold Medal by the Spanish government, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Prince of Viana Prize (Spain), the Swedish Schock Price for the Visual Arts and the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal. In 1996, he received the UIA Gold Medal and the Pritzker Prize.
Jeannette Kuo
Jeannette Kuo is a founding partner of KARAMUK KUO based in Zurich. Established in 2010 with Ünal Karamuk, the work of the office focuses on the intersection of spatial concepts and constructive technologies, recognizing architecture as a social and material discipline. The office works on projects of a range of scales, from schools and housing to complex cultural projects, and have been published in numerous international journals including Archithese, Werk, Bau + Wohnen, Metropolis, and Casabella. In 2018, KARAMUK KUO was documented in issue 196 of El Croquis monographs. Recent projects include the International Sports Sciences Institute in Lausanne, the Augusta Raurica Archaeological Center, Weiden Secondary School, and Cham Apartments. This year they were recognized by Domus as one of the 50 best architectural firms of 2020.
Beyond her practice, Kuo regularly contributes to the architectural discourse through her academic commitments and writings, as well as participation in conferences and symposia. Her publication, “A-Typical Plan: Projects and Essays on Identity, Flexibility and Atmosphere in the Office Building,” received the 2013 Most Beautiful Swiss Book award. This was followed by the critically acclaimed “Space of Production: Projects and Essays on Rationality, Atmosphere, and Expression in the Industrial Building” in 2015. She regularly serves on international competition juries and most recently was European jury president for the LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction.
In 2006, Kuo was the recipient of the competitive Maybeck Teaching Fellowship at UC Berkeley as well as a P/A award for her research project “(Infra)Structural Opportunism.” Since then, she has also taught at MIT, and from 2011 to 2014 held a visiting professorship at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) before joining the faculty at the GSD in 2016. In addition, she has lectured and been a guest critic at numerous institutions such as ETH Zurich, Columbia University, The Cooper Union, Rhode Island School of Design, Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio, Pratt Institute, Hong Kong University, and the University of Toronto.
Kuo received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley, a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard GSD, and a Master of Advanced Studies from the ETH Zurich.
www.karamukkuo.com / @karamukkuo
Niall Kirkwood
“My subject is technology in landscape architecture and its relationship to design.
A professional landscape architect makes a landscape through the natural and constructed landscape medium across the territorial scale to that of individual sites. Landscape architects act deliberately and imaginatively through tactile and material physical design, therefore technology (emerging and traditional) is the most important subject in the discipline of landscape architecture and central to education and professional practices.
The topics of my research, teaching, publishing and design practice include the global post-industrial landscape and innovations in regenerating brownfields, superfund sites, landfills, extraction and mining lands and remediation techniques for polluted air, water, soils and sediments. More recently this has focused on aspects of land retreat, urbanization, flooding, phytoremediation techniques, waste legacies and themes of community and environmental justice.”
I am engaged with landscapes and sites, domestically and internationally that most designers avoid because these places are too damaged, risky, polluted and ultimately too difficult. This is where the work of landscape architecture is most relevant in the 21st century and where true imagination and beauty can lie”.
Niall Kirkwood, FASLA, AAAS, is the Charles Eliot Research Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) where he has taught and carried out research, publishing and consulting since joining the faculty in 1991. He retired as a full-time faculty member in July 1, 2025, and moved to become a research professor at the GSD. He was educated and licensed as a professional landscape architect and architect in the United Kingdom and as a professional landscape architect in the United States. From 2003-2009, he was the thirteenth Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, the oldest such program in North America, founded in 1901 by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Arthur Shurcliff. From 1999-2003 and 2005-2007, he was Director of the Master’s in Landscape Architecture Degree Programs (MLA), and from 1999-2003, he was the coordinator of the “Design and Environment” track of the Master in Design Studies Program (MDes). He served as the GSD Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2019 to 2024 and was an elevated as member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) in 2024.
Kirkwood has served as Chairman of the GSD Faculty Review Board and Academic Misconduct Panel and has served as a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, the Harvard University Center for the Environment and a member of the faculty steering committee of The Harvard Global Health Institute. He served as the GSD representative on Harvard University’s Title IX Policy Review Advisory Committee and the Vice Provost for Advanced Learning’s (VPAL) Planning Council.
Externally, he has served as a member of the Advisory Board and External Examiner, Landscape Architecture Program, School of Architecture, Hong Kong University, External Examiner, Landscape Architecture Program, University of Toronto, a member of the On-Site External Examiners Review Committee to the School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China, a member of External Examiners, Landscape Architecture Program, School of Architecture, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, a member of Visiting Curriculum Committee to University of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico and is currently a Beijing Foreign High-Level Talent Scholar at Tsinghua University (2024- 2025)
Kirkwood holds courtesy academic appointments including Distinguished Visiting Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, Visiting Professor , International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, Founding Professorship and Dean of Landscape Architecture, School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing University (BUCEA), Beijing, China, and is a Member of Academic Advisory Board of Beijing Advanced Innovation Center of Urban Design for Future Cities, Beijing, China. During Spring 2010 he was on sabbatical at Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. During Fall 2017, he was on sabbatical at Smith College, Northampton, MA. in the Landscape Studies Program as the William Allen Neilson Visiting Professor and during Fall 2024, he was on sabbatical at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, International Program in Design and Architecture, (INDA) as a Visiting Professor.
Kirkwood is currently a Member of International Editorial Board of Landscape Architecture Journal (2025- 2029) Editor of Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning Bangkok, (2025-present), Deputy Editor in Chief of Landscape Architecture Journal (2020-2024), He was formerly Advisory Editor, (2015-2020, Beijing, China) was formerly Editor-in Chief of Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning (2015-2018, Bangkok, Thailand), Managing Editor, Worldscape Magazine, Chief Editor, RISE Journal (2015- present, Seoul, Korea). His essays and articles on design research, practice, and teaching have been published in Landscape Architecture Magazine (USA), Landscape (UK), Journal of Chinese Landscape Architecture, Landscape Architecture Korea, Business World India, City Planning Review: Journal of City Planning Institute of Japan, Landscape Architecture Journal (China), Eco City and Green Building Journal, Landscape Record, China, Worldscape (China),Environment and Landscape Architecture of Korea, Urban Space Design (China), and Harvard Design Magazine.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA) in 2009 and is an honorary Fellow of the Kew Guild, The Royal Gardens at Kew, England also in 2009. He was recognized for his global leadership in post-industrial regeneration and brownfields by an honorary Doctor of Science (DSc.) from the University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2009.
He was elected a Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Architectural Registration Council of the United Kingdom (ARCUK) in 1978, an Associate Member of the Institute of Landscape Architects, United Kingdom (ILA) in 1988, a Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1989 and was made a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA) in 2009.
The scope of Kirkwood’s teaching, research, publishing and landscape consulting practice all emphasize a broader understanding of current and emerging technologies from landscape and environmental engineering, and how this understanding can best result in more creative and progressive design work in the fields of landscape architecture and planning and urban planning and design.
Kirkwood teaches core and option landscape design studios and offers lecture courses, workshops and seminars about design and aspects of technology in Landscape Architecture, Planning and Design.
Option design studios include: GSD 1413 Bangkok Remade: Design to Enhance Social Dignity, Climate Resilience, and Inspire the Nation’s Imagination in the Contemporary Thai Landscape, (2023) co-taught with Kotchakorn Voraakhom, GSD 1408 Ottawa County Remade: Toxic Transformations, Environmental Justice and Design Imagination, Ottawa County, North-East Oklahoma, USA (2022), GSD 1409 Tar Creek Remade: Environmental Legacies and Re-Imagining the Future of the Tar Creek Superfund Site, Tri-State Mining District, Ottawa County, Oklahoma, USA (2021), GSD 1408 Thailand Remade: The Lower Chao Phraya Flood Plain, Pathum Thani and the Technological Imagination, (2020) co-taught with Kotchakorn Voraakhom, GSD 1407 Fieldwork: Brexit, Borders and Imagining a New City-Region for the Irish Northwest (2019), co-taught with Gareth Doherty, GSD 1407 Korea Remade: Alternate Nature, DMZ and Hinterlands (2018) co-taught with Jungyoon Kim and Yoonjin Park, GSD 1409 Ulsan Remade: Manufacturing the Modern Industrial City- The Case of Ulsan, Republic of Korea, (2017), co-taught with Francesca Benedetto, GSD 1406 Seoul Remade: Design of the ‘Kool’ and the Everyday- Regeneration of the EBS District, Gangnam, Seoul, Republic of Korea (2016), GSD 1401 Mumbai Metropolitan: Adapting the Township Lands, Mumbai, India (2008) co-taught with Nazneen Cooper, GSD 1402 Mumbai Margins: Rethinking the Island City, Mumbai, India (2007) co-taught with Nazneen Cooper, GSD1402 Maximum Mumbai, Minimum Mumbai: Repositioning the Cotton Textile Mill Lands, Girangaon, Central Mumbai, India (2006), co-taught with Nazneen Cooper, GSD 1404 Altered Faces: Reworking the Teheran Corridor, Seoul, Korea (2004), co-taught with Alistair McIntosh, and GSD 1403 Motor City Landscapes: Detroit Riverfront (1999) co-taught with Mary Margaret Jones.
Landscape Core studio courses have included: GSD 1211 Landscape Architecture III and GSD 1211 Planning and Design of Landscapes
Lecture courses have included:GSD 6242 Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV, GSD 6323 Brownfield Practicum: Regeneration and Reuse of Brownfield Lands, GSD 6219 Plants and Technology II, GSD 6206 Landscape Technology, GSD 6442 Rebuilding Devastated Environments: Sustainable Landscape Development in the 21st Century, GSD 6304 Site-works, GSD 6303 Site Planning and GSD 2103 Drawing the Landscape.
Seminar courses have included: GSD 6454 Poetics of Landscape Construction, GSD 9108PHYTO Remediation and Rebuilding Technologies in the Landscape, GSD 9206 Mumbai Matters: Assembling Urban India, GSD 9206 Reimagining India: A New Urban Enterprise? GSD 3501 MLA IAP/MLA II Landscape Architecture Professional Seminar, GSD 6323 Brownfields: Sustainable Redevelopment of Brownfield Sites in Dorchester and East Boston, MA, GSD 6400 Landfill Enduse: Freshkills Landfill Regeneration, Staten Island, NY, GSD 6440 Land Reclamation and Remediation Technologies, GSD 6323 Advanced Seminar on Landscape Technology: Brownfields, GSD 6323 Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape.
Professor Kirkwood studies technology and its relationship to landscape architecture through a series of research topics including the reuse of former industrial and polluted land, site remediation technologies, urban landscape planning and design, landscape reclamation, landscape detail design, traditional and emerging construction technologies and on-going weathering and durability of built landscapes related to climate change. He is a leading academic internationally in the field of site remediation, regeneration and recovery across a range of geographies, countries and scales of landscape. Areas of specific focus include mining extraction sites, urban and rural brownfields, waste landfills, the regeneration of superfund sites (USA), decommissioned military bases, closed manufacturing facilities and the invention and production of remade land using applied remediation technologies.
He is the co-founder with Professor Xiaodi Zheng of the Center for Brownfield Research at Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China. He was also the founder and director of the Center for Environment and Technology (CTE), a research, advisory and executive education initiative located at the GSD. The CTE (1997-2017) focused on site analysis, remediation, sustainable reclamation issues, emerging landscape materials and educational design outreach in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Research projects included: Expo 2106 ‘City and Nature’ Regeneration Site Design, Tangshan, China; Urban Ireland: The City of Belfast as a Laboratory of Change; Dongchun New Town Housing Landscape, Korea; Hanam Misa Housing Landscape, Seoul, Korea; Post-mining reclamation strategies for the Pingshuo Mining Company, Shanxi, China; Vertical and Horizontal Moss Panel Surface Technologies with Il Song Landscape Research, Seoul, Korea; Strategies for development of the DMZ National Forest- ‘Forest of Peace’ for Ministry of Forestry, Korea; Zinc Smelting Plants Reuse in Monterrey and Chihuahua, Mexico with Grupo Diseno Urbano, Mexico City; Hiriya Landfill Reuse and Ayalon Park, Tel Aviv for District Planning Office, Tel Aviv and Beracha Foundation; Research on the low carbon city for the Mayor’s Office, Metropolitan Region of Seoul, Korea, an analysis and report on U-Eco Cities, for the Korea Institute of Construction & Transportation Technology Evaluation and Planning (KICTEP) and collaboration with MK Singh, (Delhi) and Samsung C&T Corporation, Engineering and Construction Group on sustainable design and development in Mumbai.
Prior to joining the Harvard faculty Kirkwood worked in private design offices in Scotland, UK, London, England, UK and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA carrying out urban land reclamation, landscape architectural design, urban architecture, and development projects in Europe, Middle East, and the U.S.A. These included Ardeer Quarry Restoration, and Saltcoats Landfill Reclamation, Ayrshire, Scotland, Canary Wharf, Phases 1- 3, London Docklands UK, Hotel del Artes, Vila Olimpica, Barcelona, Spain, Parc de le Draga, Banyoles, Spain, Kings Cross Redevelopment, London, UK. Chiswick Park, London, UK, Royal Albert Docks, London Docklands, Bishopsgate and Ludgate Developments, City of London, UK, Wexner Center, OSU Campus, Columbus, Ohio, the British Embassy and Chancellery, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Colfes School Arts Center, Barnes, London, UK.
He was a project architect with the Office of Derek Lovejoy & Partners, Landscape Architects and Planners (now DLP), Edinburgh, Scotland and Trevor Dannatt & Partners, London, UK. He also worked as a senior associate of the landscape architecture office, Hanna/Olin Ltd, Philadelphia (now The Olin Studio, Inc.) consulting with the design offices of Eisenman and Robertson, New York, Foster Associates, London, UK, Richard Rogers Partnership, London, UK, Ove Arup & Partners, London, UK. Office of Frank O. Gehry, Los Angeles, Aldo Rossi, Milan. Italy, David Chipperfield, London, UK, Eric Parry, London, SOM, Chicago and London UK.
In addition Kirkwood has consulted for Weston & Sampson, Boston, MA (2016), Group Han, Seoul, Republic of Korea, (2014- present), Eastwood Design Company, Beijing, P.R. China (2006-2010), the Clean Land Fund, Rhode Island (2005-2012), District Planning Office, Tel Aviv and Beracha Foundation on Hiriya Landfill, (2001), Fresh Kills Regeneration Professional Advisory Forum, (2001), City of New York Department of City Planning on Freshkills Landfill (1999-2001), and US EPA Region 1, New England (2000).
Hanif Kara
Professor Hanif Kara is a practicing Structural Engineer and Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard. He is recognized for constructing integrated narratives design, technology, research, education and practice. He co-tutored a Diploma Unit at the Architecture Association, London from 2000 to 2004 and was a Visiting Professor of Architectural Technology at KTH Stockholm from 2007 to 2012.
As Design Director and co-founder of AKT II (est. 1996), his particular ‘design-led’ approach and interest in innovative form, pushing material uses, sustainable construction and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on numerous pioneering projects at the forefront of many challenges facing the built environment.
The practice has won over 400 Design awards including the RIBA Stirling Award for the Peckham Library, London in 2000, for the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge in 2012, and for the Bloomberg European HQ, London in 2018 as well as the RIBA Lubetkin Prize for the UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo in 2010. The practice also was awarded by Building Magazine as ‘Engineering Consultant of the Year 2019’.
Hanif’s career extends into wider areas of design beyond the structural engineering disciplines. This led to him receiving the UK ACE Engineering Ambassador Award in 2011. He is also the first engineer to be appointed on the Steering Committee for the highly regarded international AKAA (Aga Khan Award for Architecture) where he continues today and was on the AKAA Master Jury for the 2004. He is a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Institute of Civil Engineers, Royal Academy of Engineering, Institute of Structural Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts, and on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation. Formerly he was a CABE (a National Watchdog commission for architecture and built environment) Commissioner and served as a member of the Design for London Advisory Group to the Mayor of London. Since 2015 he has served as a review panel member of the National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR) (Digital Fabrication) at ETH Zurich and currently sits on the UK National Infrastructure Commission’s Design Task Force and Expert Advisory Group and is a member of the HS2 design review panel.
He was awarded the Officer of British Empire (OBE) in 2022. For services to engineering Architecture and Education.
Hanif was awarded the London Design Medal (2023) The Fazlur Khan lifetime achievement award for tall buildings (CTUBH 2022) and is the first engineer to receive the Soane Medal (2024)
He has also contributed to several widely published works including ‘Design Engineering’, 2008, a retrospective of AKT’s first decade, and ‘Interdisciplinary Design: New Lessons from Architecture and Engineering’, 2012, co-published with Harvard. Recently he edited ‘Deliverance of Design – making, mending and revitalizing structures’, a look at the works of AKT II from 1996 – 2016. His most recent publications are” Matters of Engineering Design 2022” ‘Design Engineering Refocused’ and the ‘Architecture of Waste’.
Qualifications
Officer of British Empire (OBE)
Bachelor of Science Honours (BSc (Hons))
Fellow of the Institute of Structural Engineers (FIStructE)
Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FAE)
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon FRIBA)
Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA)
Fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineers (FICE)
Chartered Engineer (CEng)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanif_Kara
Florian Idenburg
Florian Idenburg is founding partner of SO – IL, an internationally acclaimed architecture studio based in New York. Founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu envisioned their studio in 2008 as a creative catalyst involved in all scales and stages of the architectural process. Operating between academia and practice, the firm consistently strives for progressive architecture beyond the cultural and economic constraints facing the discipline. It is this optimistic position that guides SO – IL’s experiments in a range of media from temporary installations to large-scale built works. Recent projects include the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in Davis, California, a cultural center in Meisenthal, France, and an installation for the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. Prizes such as the 2010 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program and AIA NY Young Practices Award have acknowledged the intellectual and artistic rigor that unifies SO – IL’s projects. Idenburg was the 2010 recipient of the Charlotte Köhler Prize of the Prince Bernhard Royal Cultural Fund and a 2014 finalist for the Prix de Rome. His writings include Relations (2010) and To Be Determined (forthcoming) as well as frequent essays and reviews in Abitare, Domus, Metropolis, and other publications. SO – IL’s work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, Storefront for Art & Architecture, the LA Forum for Architecture and Urbanism, the Benaki Museum in Athens, the Center for Architecture in New York and Studio-X Beijing in China.
Eric Höweler
Eric Höweler, FAIA, LEED AP, is a Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he has taught lecture courses and design studios with a focus on building technologies/integration since 2008.
Eric’s advanced design studios, which bring together students from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and urban planning, cover such topics as housing and urban architecture, climate adaptability and transit-oriented development. Eric has also coordinated the Third Semester Core Design Studio in Architecture for several semesters, working to integrate environmental and structural systems into the curriculum. He also teaches a required lecture course in the Building Technology sequence called Cases in Contemporary Construction, which focuses on advanced topics in construction and building systems. Eric was formerly the Area Head for Masters of Design Studies: Energy and Environment program (with Holly Samuelson), where he advised students on topics around energy modeling and simulations as well as environmental control systems.
Eric is co-founding Principal of Höweler + Yoon, a research-driven, multidisciplinary design studio working between architecture, art, and media. H+Y has a reputation for work that is technologically and formally innovative, and deeply informed by human experience and a sensitivity to tectonics. One of the firm’s celebrated projects is the MIT Collier Memorial, a milled granite compression structure that commemorates the life of Officer Sean Collier, who was killed in action after the Boston Marathon Bombing. The Collier Memorial has been honored with the BSA Honor Award, the American Architecture Prize, the AIA Religious Architecture Award, and has four times been a finalist for the Harleston Parker Medal. H+Y’s courtyard-exhibition hall in Chengdu, SkyCourts, has been honored by Architect Magazine, Archdaily, the Boston Society of Architects, and the European Centre for Architecture. Other recent projects include the UVA Memorial, a landform structure dedicated to enslaved laborers at the University of Virginia, 212 Stuart Street, a multi-family residential tower on Stuart Street in Boston, MA, the new MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA. Current projects include the Living Village at the Yale Divinity School, a residence hall adjacent to the historic Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, as well as the Karch Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia.
Höweler + Yoon’s work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the 2006 Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt in New York, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and has been published and reviewed in publications including Architect Magazine, Architectural Record, Metropolis, Domus, Arch +, Detail, Architectural Review, Architectural Digest, Interior Design Magazine, Architectural Lighting and I.D. Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times.
Eric has authored two monographs with H+Y co-founder J. Meejin Yoon: Verify In Field: Projects and Conversations Höweler + Yoon (Park Books, 2021) and Expanded Practice (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009). Other books include Skyscraper: Vertical Now (Rizzoli/Universe Publishers, 2003); Public Works, Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig with J. Meejin Yoon and Meredith Miller (MAP Book Publishers, 2009); and 1001 Skyscrapers with J. Meejin Yoon (Princeton Architectural Press, 2000). Eric has published essays and articles in Log, Perspecta, Archis, The Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Record, Architectural Lighting, and Praxis.
Prior to forming H+Y, Eric was a Senior Designer at Diller Scofidio + Renfro and an Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. He is LEED AP, and a registered architect in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia.
Born in Cali, Colombia, Eric received his Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture from Cornell University. He gained teaching and research experience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was previously a Lecturer in Architecture.