Paola Sturla

Paola Sturla is a lecturer in Landscape Architecture and the 2018/2019 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Planning, Design, and Policy at Politecnico di Milano in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Born and raised in Italy, Paola is a registered “architetto” and “paesaggista.” She is currently a full-time researcher working on the designer’s creative agency to address open-ended problems through the hermeneutic design process, and the potentials and limits of Artificial Intelligence-based tools in such a practice. Before entering academia, she had been practicing internationally in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry in the framework of large scale infrastructure projects. Paola holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture (Politecnico di Milano, 2004), a Master in Architecture (Politecnico di Milano, 2007), and a Master in Landscape Architecture (Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2011).

Robert Pietrusko

Robert Gerard Pietrusko is an Associate Professor in the department of Landscape Architecture, where his teaching and research focus on geographic representation, simulation, narrative cartography, and the history of spatial data sets.

His design work is part of the permanent collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and has been exhibited in over ten countries at venues such the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), ZKM Center for Art & Media, and the Venice Architecture Biennale, among others.

Prior to joining the junior faculty of the GSD, Pietrusko worked as a designer with Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York, and held research positions at Parsons Institute for Information Mapping at the New School and at Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab.

Pietrusko holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Synthesis (with honors) from the Berklee College of Music; a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Villanova University; and a Master of Architecture (with distinction) from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

 

Danielle Choi

Danielle Narae Choi is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a licensed landscape architect. Her research examines landscape design as a cultural practice that synthesizes broader concerns of science, technology, and infrastructure.

Choi’s current research is an environmental study of 20th-century interior landscapes. A subset of public projects were volatile sites of negotiation between plant vitality and human comfort; colonial botany and situated traditional knowledge; new aesthetic agendas and entrenched urban crisis. Ongoing research investigates infrastructural breaches of continental divides in North America and their implications for the concept of genius loci in landscape architecture.

Choi’s writing has been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, Harvard Design Magazine, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and in the volume Fresh Water, edited by Mary Pat McGuire and Jessica Henson. A forthcoming essay, Landscape is. . . Labor will appear in the volume Landscape Is. . .!, edited by Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim.

Before her appointment at the GSD, Choi practiced professionally with Topotek in Berlin and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) in New York. As a senior associate at MVVA, she led the strategy and design of complex projects ranging in scale from gardens to parks to urban framework plans, leading large, multi-disciplinary teams. Choi draws upon this experience to examine the realms of knowledge, social relations, and labor required to produce (and that are produced by) living landscapes.

Choi holds a degree in art history from the University of Chicago and a Master in Landscape Architecture degree from the GSD, where she received the Jacob Weidenman award for excellence in design.

Jennifer Bonner

Jennifer Bonner is Associate Professor of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Bonner founded MALL in 2009, a creative practice that stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility.

 Born in Alabama, Bonner is a recipient of the 2021 United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Emerging Voices Award (AIA/ Young Architects Forum), Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award and Next Progressives (Architect Magazine). Her creative work has been published in architectural trade publications including Architectural Review, Metropolis, Gray, Azure and Wallpaper*, as well as, more experimental journals including a+t , DAMN, PLAT, Offramp, Room One Thousand, Flat Out and MAS Context. She is the co-editor of Blank: Speculations on CLT (with H.Kara), author of A Guide to the Dirty South: Atlanta, faculty editor of Platform: Still Life, and guest editor for ART PAPERS special issue on architecture and design of Los Angeles. Bonner has exhibited work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, National Building Museum, WUHO gallery, HistoryMIAMI, Yve YANG gallery, pinkcomma gallery, Armstrong Gallery at Kent State, Yale Architecture Gallery, Istanbul Modern Museum, Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

 Bonner received a Bachelor of Architecture from Auburn University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the James Templeton Kelley Prize for her project Assemblage of Twins. Her undergraduate thesis project, the Cedar Pavilion, was designed and constructed at the Rural Studio in Perry County, Alabama and received an AR Award for Emerging Architecture (2005).

Bonner was the first recipient of an annual teaching fellowship at Woodbury University in Los Angeles and held the position of TVSDesign Distinguished Studio Critic at Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, she has also taught design studios and seminars at Auburn University, the Architectural Association, and Lund University. Bonner worked in the office of Foster + Partners in London and Istanbul on the Palace of Peace in Astana, Kazakhstan. Later as Project Architect at David Chipperfield Architects she worked on design proposals for Melnikov’s Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage in Moscow and the Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK.

 

Silvia Benedito

Sílvia Benedito is a registered landscape architect and architect from Portugal. She has been teaching in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design since 2011. Benedito teaches graduate core design studios in landscape architecture and urbanism dedicated to vulnerable territories and communities subject to climatic degradation. She also develops advanced research seminars on micro-climatic simulations and bioclimatic design strategies for integrated built environments, including active collaborations with communities, local governments, and NGOs. Committed to the production and reception of atmosphere, Benedito’s research and practice simultaneously examines the making of micro-climates for human and environmental health under the current challenges of anthropogenic disturbances.

In her methods for landscape architecture and urbanism the concept and space of atmosphere claim the body in multiple scopes and scales—from large ecological networks to smaller open space interventions; from urban neighborhoods to rural territories. Claiming that landscape is as much about air and atmosphere as it is about land and water offers a stimulating dimension to these disciplines, reconciling ecological imperatives with community delight and well-being. Her last book Atmosphere Anatomies: On Design, Weather, and Sensation (Lars Müller, 2021) examines weather as design substance at the disciplinary intersection of landscape, architecture, and planning. Here, she examines paradigmatic design examples and corresponding thermodynamic phenomena operating at micro and macro scales for thermal delight and energy optimization. This book received the inaugural Book Prize for Architectural innovation and Sustainability by the Portuguese League of Architects and the Minister for the Environment and Climate Action. Her previous co-edited book Thermodynamic Interactions: An Exploration into Physiological, Material, and Territorial Atmospheres (ACTAR, 2016) was awarded the III Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism Prize in the Research Category, Spain. Benedito’s design work and research has been recognized by various institutions, including the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies, MacDowell Colony for the Arts, Foundation of Science and Technology, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Portuguese League of Architects with the Fernando Távora Prize. Benedito Benedito was a Guest Professor at the Technische Universität München, in the Department of Landscape Architecture (Fakultät für Architektur). She also held a Guest Professorship at the Technische Universität Graz, at the Institute of Architecture and Landscape, and, more recently, she was the Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Waterloo, Canada

Benedito received a degree in Architecture from the University of Coimbra, a degree in Music from the Conservatory of Coimbra, and a master’s degree in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A former Senior Associate at James Corner Field Operations (NYC), where she led many public and private urban design and small-scale public projects, Benedito co-founded OFICINAA, an architecture, landscape and urban design practice based in Ingolstadt, Germany. OFICINAA has received several international awards and mentions: finalist for the PS1 MoMA Young Architects Program (2018, USA), first prize for Peterborough’s Riverfront Park (2017, USA), third prize for the Riverfront re-naturalization competition, Ingolstadt (2016, Germany), Finalist for Europan 11 Competition (2013, Germany), First prize for Ingobräu Landscape Masterplan and Housing Development (2011, Germany), Olympic Village Landscape Masterplan competition pre-selected entry for Munich’s 2018 Olympic Winter Games Bid (2010, Germany), First Prize for Europan 10 competition (2010, Portugal), and First prize for Europan 9 (2008, Portugal). The work has been published and recognized in various venues and institutions, including the Architekturgalerie München, the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, the Museum of Moderna Art in NYC (MoMA), Drucker Design Gallery at Harvard GSD, and at the Venice Architecture Biennial.