Alex Krieger on the History of Harvard’s Allston Enterprise Research Campus

For nearly 50 years, Alex Krieger, professor in practice of urban design, emeritus, taught at the Graduate School of Design (GSD). For about half of those years, he was committed to helping Harvard in the development of the Allston campus , serving on work groups, task forces, and design review committees focused on the project. First working with Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers and his administration in the early 2000s, Krieger helped to initiate a master planning process that, through various iterations over the years, ushered in the Allston campus. The first phase of the Enterprise Research Campus is now nearing completion. 

In addition to his scholarship, he’s well-known for his “iconic tour” of Boston that focuses on how the city, which was originally settled on an island, created land to accommodate its growth. He dedicated his career to the study of urbanism, with books including City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present (2019), Urban Design (with William Saunders, 2009), and Mapping Boston (with David Cobb and Amy Turner, 1999).

Here, he recounts the history of the Allston campus and how he’s witnessed—and helped shape—its evolution into the landscape we see today, with the opening of the David Rubenstein Treehouse conference center , the “front door to the Enterprise Research Campus.”

How did the idea for a campus expansion originate?
 
Upon assuming the presidency, and with the then-recent public acknowledgment by the university that it had been acquiring land in Allston, Larry Summers announced the need for an ambitious master plan to prepare Harvard for its next decades of growth. He would reveal his own ambition that Allston would enable Harvard to establish “the Silicon Valley of the East,” given the university’s leadership in the sciences, and its researchers’ role in the mapping of the human genome that had just been completed by the International Human Genome Project. At the president’s direction, an international search for architects and planners ensued. 
 
My first significant role was advising on the start of the overall planning process and becoming a member of the architect/planner selection committee for the master plan. I worked with Harvard Vice President for Administration Sally Zeckhauser, who directed the search process. We visited firms around the world, and in 2005, selected Cooper Robertson, Frank Gehry, and the Olin Partnership. At Sally Zeckhauser’s request, I began to serve on the design advisory committee as the master plan commenced and proceeded. 
 
Concurrently, I was asked to develop initial programming guidelines for the future campus, which, late in 2005 was released as Programming for the Public Realm of the Harvard Allston Campus. The Cooper Robertson plan was made public in 2007. It gained much attention and publicity, even as we all knew that it would evolve significantly over the years. Several subsequent planning efforts with other planners followed.

 
When did construction in Allston begin?

The next significant event, in my memory, was the commissioning of the firm Behnisch Architeken, from Germany, to design what, in nine long years, would become the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. However, it was initially planned to be a research and teaching facility for continuing stem cell, genome and life/health sciences innovation. Again, I served on the architect selection committee and on the design review committee that followed. 
 
The “Great Recession” of 2008-10 led to a substantial decline in Harvard’s endowment, and construction had slowed during 2009 and halted in 2010. Three underground levels had been built, intended for a large garage and a district energy facility. The District Energy Facility (DEF), was later built separately, designed by Andrea Leers of Leers Weinzapfel Associates, a frequent visiting faculty at the GSD. For much of the next five years, only the roof of those underground levels was visible, with four humongous construction cranes left idle and visible from afar. This was great fodder for The Boston Globe.
 

I remember; it was infamous. How long did it take for construction to get back on track?

 Drew Galpin Faust became Harvard’s President in 2007. Because of the national economic downturn, she became less concerned with expanding Harvard and focused on projects such as the adaptation of Holyoke Center to a student union. In Allston, President Faust focused on the reuse of some of the properties left vacant by Harvard’s earlier acquisitions, helping to attract new tenants to provide neighborhood services and amenities. 
 
Katie Lapp who became the Executive Vice President for Administration shortly following Zekhouser’s retirement in 2009, began to encourage President Faust to restart planning for Allston. I was part of various informal conversations about what to do with the unfinished project. A science facility had in the interim been built in Cambridge and so different uses needed to be identified before construction could resume. 
 
There were various ideas. One thought was that one of the Longwood Medical Area (LMA) hospitals, or the School of Public Health might relocate to sit on top of the “shortest building,” since there was little space for additional growth at the LMA. Some might find that idea unlikely, but, at the time Chan Krieger & Associates was planning in the LMA, and I heard such conversations there, not just in Cambridge. Ultimately, of course, the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) , home of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), was the result.
 
There was also some discussion about a long-term future for Harvard’s acquisition of the Beacon Rail Yards and adjacent land under the Mass Pike, slated for eventual reconstruction. President Faust and Harvard leadership were becoming aware of just how much land was under Harvard’s control and cognizant that not all of it would be needed for Harvard’s academics.

How did the university decide they’d manage that land, and shift towards a new vision for the ERC?
 
 These informal conversations and brainstorming sessions culminated in the formation of a new Allston planning committee, the Allston Work Team in 2010. I became one of the three co-chairs of that committee, along with Bill Purcell, former Mayor of Nashville, then at the Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School Professor Peter Tufano. The Work Team included the participation of most of Harvard’s Deans, Drew Faust herself, invited urban development experts, and of course, Katie Lapp. 
 
Notions about a new kind of research campus, perhaps to compete with booming Kendall Square (which was beginning to be referred to as “the smartest square mile on the planet”) were already in the air. In Boston, Mayor Menino began to develop the concept of the Seaport Innovation Center. Underway were early phases of what, a decade later, would become the Cambridge Crossing innovation district, under the leadership of former Harvard planner Mark Johnson (MLAUD ’82). Harvard realized they’d better get into this game. 

How did they balance community and university needs in the final design?
 
The Allston Work Team commenced serious discussion about what an Enterprise Research Campus (ERC) might become; supported the resumption of construction for what would become the Engineering School; initiated plans for graduate student and faculty housing, which led in 2015 to the Continuum Residences in Barry’s Corner, with Trader Joe’s at the base; explored how a needed hotel and conference center might become part of early phases; and continued exploring how to revive retail and community facilities around Barry’s Corner and along Western Avenue. 
 
What can you tell us about the selection of Tishman Speyer  as the developer, and Jeanne Gang as the architect of the David Rubenstein Treehouse conference center ?
 
In 2018, Tom Glynn became the founding CEO of the Harvard Alston Land Company, and I helped Tom get up to speed on prior Allston planning efforts. We knew each other, as Chan Krieger had served Massport and earlier Partners Healthcare, both institutions he had led. We also had informal conversations about the Boston area development community, as, under his leadership, Harvard was getting closer and closer to proceeding with the selection of a development team for the ERC. I was not involved in that selection process but was quite pleased when Tishman Speyer announced that Jeanne Gang would play a major design role, including, of course, in the design of the Treehouse conference facility. 
 
So, the Allston Work Team helped shape today’s Allston campus, with the November 2025 opening of the David Rubenstein Treehouse conference center, and the ERC now well underway ?
 
Yes, right now, Phase One is nearing completion, which encompasses nine acres. This first mixed-use cluster includes space for research, housing, a hotel, and the conference center. It will form “the prow” or “beacon” for future phases of the ERC, as the economy allows.
 
In 2010, the ERC  was just emerging as an idea, and seemed like a way to complement the future Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) , once construction resumed. Behnisch Architekten , the architect for the initial construction, had made the brilliant decision to maintain construction liability during those years. Without a building mass on top there was the possibility that those three unfinished levels would begin rising out of the ground due to groundwater hydrostatic pressure. So, it made sense to bring Behnisch Architekten back, though some at Harvard felt that the design was too modern and unlike Harvard. The building has acquired iconic status, and as Stefan Behnisch promised, is one of the world’s most energy efficient science facilities.
 
I remained on the design review committee for the project, alongside former GSD Dean Mohsen Mostavi, and later Jeanne Gang, as well. 
 
How would you characterize Harvard’s relationship with the Allston community?
  
The relationship  has improved over time, beginning rather badlywhen it was first revealed that Harvard had secretly bought 52.6 acres of Allston land in the late 1980s and 1990s . Harvard has since substantially invested in Allston especially along the Western Avenue corridor. As I mentioned, President Faust and Katie Lapp began to focus more attention on neighborhood concerns and needs, and this has continued under Presidents Bacow and Garber. 
 
Of course, expressions of impatience on the part of the Allston community remain, citizens always asking Harvard to reveal any additional plans, plus deliver on some now-old promises. For example, mention the Greenway, and residents will say, ‘Those Harvard people, they promised that to us two decades ago.’ Indeed, a greenway was identified in the initial Cooper Robertson master plan, a continuous pedestrian park-like corridor from the Allston Public Library to the Charles River. Parts of it have been realized, but one long segment remains missing.  
 
The ERC is adding a segment at its center; it is beautifully designed. The trouble is, this segment is separated from the portions of the Greenway that exist, by those not yet built.  As the ERC fills with users and tenants, it may make this space seem like it’s proprietary to the ERC. Allston folks may not understand that it’s part of the long-promised Greenway, until Harvard builds the rest of it. I’ve been very vocal about this issue, to the point where everyone was sick of hearing it. Harvard will soon, I hope, complete the missing segments and it will all turn out okay.
 
Harvard deserves more credit than it sometimes gets from Allston neighbors. As far as I know, Harvard has committed something like $50 million at least three times—once for the Beacon Yards transit station . The current ten-year Allston plan promises an additional $53 million in community benefits. Another large sum is slated towards the reconstruction of the Turnpike. Finally, less publicly so far, another $50 million-or-so has been quietly promised for the eventual realignment of a portion of Storrow Drive to enable the widening of the Esplanade along the Charles River. 

How do you feel about handing off the Allston project, now that you’ve stepped back from the planning process?
 
Well, I still get to offer opinions, such as pressing the Business School to do something with its huge parking lot right across the street from the ERC, and cajoling Harvard to complete the Greenway. My last role was to serve on the design review committee for the A.R.T. project. This will be a truly wonderful addition to North Harvard Street and Barry’s Corner. The Allston Campus and the revitalization of the Allston neighborhood are progressing well.
 

 

Gund Hall Receives 2025 Modernism in America Award From DOCOMOMO US

In 2024, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) undertook an ambitious renovation to upgrade Gund Hall’s energy performance, sustainability, and accessibility while conserving the building’s original design. This week, Docomomo US —a non-profit organization dedicated to the documentation and conservation of works of the twentieth-century modern movement—announced Gund Hall as the recipient of the 2025 Modernism in America Award for excellence in the civic design category. 

“This year’s Modernism in America Awards highlight the enduring power of excellence in design and the ability of historic preservation to respond to the evolving needs of society,” Docomomo explained . Designed by John Andrews (MArch ’58) as a home for the GSD, Gund Hall opened in 1972. Fifty years later, a design team led by Bruner/Cott Architects  harnessed innovative technology to renew Gund Hall’s distinctive glass curtain wall. By improving the building’s energy efficiency, thermal performance, and light quality, the renovation created a more functional and comfortable environment for the school’s occupants while offering a model for the stewardship of mid-twentieth-century architecture. As the award announcement noted, “The restoration of Gund Hall’s curtain wall demonstrates how modern landmarks can improve usability and extend building life while meeting the urgent demands of climate responsibility through thoughtful, sustainable interventions.”

Other structures to receive Modernism in America Awards of Excellence this year include Boston City Hall  (Kallman, McKinnell, and Knowles, 1968; advocacy award); and Harlem River Houses  (by Archibald Manning Brown and funded by the Public Works Administration, 1937; residential design award) in New York City; and the Transamerica Pyramid Center  (William Pereria, 1972; commercial design award) in San Francisco, California. The award ceremony will take place on November 6, 2025, in Chicago.

In addition to the 2025 Modernism in America Award of Excellence bestowed by Docomomo US, since the completion of its renovation Gund Hall has also received the 2025 Robert H. Kuehn Award  from Preservation Massachusetts and a Preservation Award from the Cambridge Historical Commission .  

A New Life Offered

In 1970, Peter Smithson made the lofty promise that, at Robin Hood Gardens , the social housing complex he and his wife, Alison, designed, “you’ll be able to smell, feel, and experience the new life that’s being offered .” Two years later, the complex was complete, spanning two city blocks, with so-called “streets in the sky” that gave residents access to community, expansive views, and sunlit apartments—at least, that was the hope. 

The detailed documentation the pair made of the site, with early sketches and photographs, as well as drawings and plans made throughout the design and construction process, can be viewed in the Frances Loeb Library’s Smithson Collection , the only publicly-accessible repository of the couples’ life work. Selections from the collection have been utilized for a wide range of scholarship activities, from books to exhibitions, including, last fall at the GSD, “Towards a Newer Brutalism: Solar Pavilions, Appliance Houses, and Other Topologies of Contemporary Life,” curated by Emmett Zeifman, a former GSD faculty member. Zeifman writes that the Smithsons understood new brutalism as “an ethic, not a style,” and hoped to “meet the changing needs and desires of postwar society through an architecture that directly expressed the material conditions of its time.”  

In addition to offering a historical framework for understanding architecture today, the Smithson collection holds never-before-published drawings, photographs, sketches, and ephemera that bear testimony to more than fifty years of their vocation, including their philosophy of seamlessly integrating family life with work. There’s a landscape design by their twelve year old daughter, Soltana, for example, and childrens’ book manuscripts the couple co-wrote, along with pedagogical materials about the historical significance of Christmas imagery. “Innocent imagination, children’s books, and the responsibility of the architect,” writes M. Christine Boyer in Not Quite Architecture: Writing Around Alison and Peter Smithson , which draws from the library’s collection, “are continuously intermeshed in the Smithson’s writings…” 

The Smithsons’ utopian design of Robin Hood Gardens, with its central hill created for children’s play, protected by a building made to support families in community, ended in controversy. While some residents advocated for the rich sense of connection facilitated by the “streets in the sky,” others argued that they became ideal tucked-away passages for crime. After decades of neglect, the dilapidated building was demolished starting in 2017, with the final portion completed in March of this year, though the V&A Museum preserved a small portion  for its collection.

The Smithsons’ legacy, however, and their dreams of the benefits of social housing, helped propel forward the conversation around how to best ensure safe, affordable housing for all. The GSD, in partnership with the Joint Center for Housing Studies , has long addressed issues around social housing, expanding affordable housing access in the face of the climate crisis, and centering care in housing—some of the same threads of thought that led the Smithsons to build the iconic, if ultimately flawed, Robin Hood Gardens.  

How a Collaboration Between Design and Real Estate Advances Equity in Mumbai

Students in Rahul Mehrotra’s “Extreme Urbanism Mumbai” Graduate School of Design (GSD) Spring 2025 option studio faced a challenge that was intended to take them “completely outside their comfort level,” said Mehrotra. “We set a wicked problem that exposes them to an unfolding of interconnected issues.”  

Mumbai, set on a peninsula on the northwest coast of India, is one of the largest and densest cities in the world, with a population of about 21.3 million residents and more than 36,200 people per square kilometer—most of whom face a stark housing crisis. Approximately 57 percent of Mumbai’s population lives in informal homes, many of whom work in nearby housing complexes where they’re employed by the upper-class residents. Most of the students in the studio had never been exposed to what Mehrotra describes as “extreme conditions, in terms of density, poverty, and the juxtaposition of different worlds in the same space.”

“Mumbai is like nothing I’d ever seen before,” said Enrique Lozano (MAUD ’26), who had previously traveled to other parts of India. “There’s no designed urban form; skyscrapers are scattered throughout the city. It’s on a former wetland, so there are issues with water, one of my research areas.”

He and his classmates were introduced to Mumbai’s coastal Elphinstone Estate neighborhood and a site owned by the Port Authoritiy of Mumbai  that includes 40 acres of warehouses as well as iron and steel shipping offices, bounded on one side by a rail line and on the other by the harbor and P D’Mello Road, a major city street. “The Eastern Waterfront will be one of the city’s most contested land parcels to be opened for urban development in the next few years,” writes Mehrotra. “It plays a catalytic role in connecting the city back to the metropolitan hinterland….” The 900 or so people who work in this area and live in sidewalk tenements stand to be displaced once development progresses.

Students were tasked with working at three scales: regional, district (the “superblock”), and site (urban development policy). Rather than displacing workers whose lives are strongly rooted in the neighborhood, students were asked to invent schemes that would newly house those 900 families in tenements by “cross-subsidizing from market-value housing.” The studio offered a counterpoint to the government’s designation of the site as a commercial district. Students’ proposals served what Mehrotra terms in reference to his research, “instruments of advocacy,” creating a way to keep the city’s most vulnerable residents where they have always lived, while also offering needed market-value homes.

This studio differs from many others at the GSD, in that it involves collaboration between the studio and a Master in Real Estate course titled “The Development Project.” Jerold Kayden, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design and founding director of the Master in Real Estate Program, and Mehrotra brainstormed about the idea of such a collaboration and launched the idea in spring 2024. David Hamilton, a real estate faculty member at the GSD, co-instructed this year’s version in the spring 2025 semester.

“I think of real estate as the physical vessel in which people live, work, and play,” Kayden explained. “And if we can apply our multidisciplinary skills and knowledge to shape real estate in ways that create a more productive, sustainable, equitable, and pleasing world, then I can’t think of a more noble cause than that.”

The magic of the combined studio and real estate class, as Kayden, Mehrotra, and Hamilton saw it, was that students from the two programs would be interdependent and could only solve the on-site housing challenges by working together. “The real estate students couldn’t own the problem because the designers didn’t design it in a way that would work in terms of real estate sense,” said Mehrotra. “And the designers couldn’t think of the design unless the real estate folks came up with a model of financing for that cross-subsidy.”

              
Hamilton concurred that the studio set up a collaborative tension that replicated real-world challenges: “We can imagine a path that gets us from having bright ideas and a beautiful piece of land, to a proposed future that’s both appealing and realistic enough to attract investment capital to be built. Then, we get to what we call stabilization, where the new neighborhood is working physically and financially in a sustainable way. Getting there involves a million different variables, from government action and public subsidies, to the needs of the market and investors and other financial considerations.”

Lozano saw the benefits of designing in Mumbai, where “the street is an even playing ground. Everybody takes the metro, walks the Plaza, buys street food in the markets.” At the same time, like most collaborators, his group had their share of challenges as they moved through the design process. “The entire studio was a negotiation between the students—of judging our values and understanding that the real estate students want to make a return on investment, but the subversion is the social mission, and the designers had to convince them that social space is an asset.”

He described a beautiful 19th-century clock tower on the Elphinstone site, which one of his real estate group members wanted to demolish, and how they negotiated the “iterative design process” and “pushed against the blank slate idea.” They kept the clock tower, which they saw as a cultural asset, and “turned it into an incredible public amenity with restrooms, civic spaces, and movie screenings. It’s an anchor and memory of the site itself, with the maritime history and labor organizing that occurred there.” Through the collaborative process, building trust by drawing and talking through their design plans, the design students developed a final project of which they’re proud.

“As we become surrounded by the madness and complexities of the world we inhabit,” said Mehrotra, “it’s important to have multiple perspectives on the same problem, and to synthesize those multiple perspectives into a proposition.”

The final review mirrored the lively discourse the students experienced all semester, as critics discussed the merits of each proposal and the possibilities for the Elphinstone Estate. Sujata Saunik, Chief Secretary of the Government of Maharashtra, participated throughout the final review and helped bring to the conversation a sense of Mumbai’s realities. As the student groups together advocated for shared public access to the site and investing in dignified housing for people living in tenements, they presented to the government a more equitable approach to developing a site that’s unique as well as profitable.

“It’s not the solution,” said Mehrotra, “but it’s a conversation changer.”

Student Propositions

Whispered Stories: Le Corbusier in Chandigarh

In 1950, the Indian government commissioned Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier to design the city of Chandigarh. The project is often seen as marking a new era of modern architecture in South Asia. Records housed in the Frances Loeb Library at the GSD reveal the challenges of the monumental project as well as its influence and legacy. This semester, Graduate School of Design students Rishita Sen (MArch II 2025) and Neha Harish (MArch II 2025) organized a conversation on India’s rich history in modernist architecture, inspired by the Le Corbusier collection in the Frances Loeb Library Archives and Le Corbusier’s design of Chandigharh.

In collaboration with Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, and Ines Zalduendo , Special Collections Curator, the group met one evening to view historic objects and share stories that Mehrotra gathered as a result of his proximity to Le Corbusier’s community in India. The gathering is part of a series of “Archives Parties” that Zalduendo offers to the GSD community in collaboration with professors, student groups, and others interested in focusing on a particular theme or subject within the library’s collections.

“We represent a group of South Asian nations at the GSD,” said Sen, “and, because Neha and I are both so familiar with how modernism came to India, we wanted to pay homage to what we know, while setting the stage for future conversations focused on a range of South Asian nations and themes.”

The story of modernism in India starts with its independence from Britain in 1947, when the nation embraced the opportunity to define its identity through architecture and design. While “revivalists” attempted to reinvigorate older forms of Indian architecture to signify this new moment, Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation’s first prime minister, “embraced modernism as the appropriate vehicle for representing India’s future agenda,” writes Mehrotra in Architecture in India Since 1990. Modernism was free of associations with the British Empire and symbolized the pluralistic nation’s desire to be “progressive” and globally connected. Earlier in the century, Art Deco had become popular, introducing the use of reinforced concrete by the Maharajas, explained Mehrotra, and aligning Art Deco with opulence. At the same time, starting in about 1915, Gandhi constructed ashrams with a an aesthetic that grew out of frugality, creating an association between modernism and Gandhi’s ethics of  “minimalism,” and the ethos of today’s environmentalism and sustainability.

In 1950, Nehru commissioned Le Corbusier to design Chandigarh, setting in motion the country’s nascent development program and national identity under the era’s premise that, writes Mehrotra, “architects could shape the form not only of the physical environment but of social life.” A culture could be determined by its design.

At the Frances Loeb Library Archives, Harish, Sen, Mehrotra, and Zalduendo gathered with staff, faculty, and students to discuss a range of objects from the university archives as well as Mehrotra’s personal collection. Mehrotra noted how refreshing it was to be able to speak conversationally about these histories, within the context of the typically more formal archives at an institution.

“We were interested in engaging with oral histories,” said Harish, “which have been reiterated over the years.”

“Having grown up in Bombay,” said Mehrotra, “and having known architects who worked in that time, I heard many stories about who went to receive Corbusier at the airport when he travelled from Paris to make his connections to Delhi, or for his projects in Ahmedabad, etc.. Also how in his stays in Mumbai, Doshi and Correa walked with him on Juhu Beach, discussing architecture.” Some of the “whispered accounts” that circulated in the community between Le Corbusier and other architects and contractors in India from the 1950s to 1970s were evident in letters Mehrotra shared. In one, from Le Corbusier to the Indian government, the architect stridently requests an overdue payment. “Everyone believes that Le Corbu received incredible patronage in India,” said Mehrotra, “but, in fact, it was an uphill task, and, as was evident in the letter I shared, the man was going to go bankrupt.”

In other correspondence, notes Harish, “we saw the concept of jugaad,” a Hindi word meaning “make do with what you have,” as Le Corbusier had to “mend and mold the concrete every step of the way. Once he’d had this experience with the concrete looking so handcrafted in India, he could never replicate it anywhere else.” Le Corbusier used concrete for the construction of Harvard’s Carpenter Center , the only building he designed in North America , completed in 1963.

Mehrotra’s revised and updated Bombay Deco (Pictor Publishing), written with the late Sharada Dwivedi, was released in December 2024, and speaks to the history of Art Deco in India. In 2018, Mumbai’s collection of Art Deco buildings, the second largest in the world, was named a UNESCO World Heritage site. Le Corbusier’s use of concrete in Chandigarh rose out of that Art Deco tradition in Mumbai.

“Art Deco resulted in the creation of a whole industry that could produce reinforced concrete,” Mehrotra explained. “So, for Le Corbusier, the technology developed over 30 years. If Art Deco hadn’t happened [in Mumbai], and we weren’t using reinforced concrete, he couldn’t have built Chandigarh—because that’s the material he knew.”

The group also discussed Le Corbusier’s relationship with other key figures, including his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, who collaborated with him on building Chandigarh. Jeanneret and Le Corbusier had practiced together in France for over a decade, until 1937, and then, alongside the couple Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, reunited to design and construct Chandigarh.

Finally, the group celebrated the role that British urban planner Jacqueline Tyrwhitt played in developing architectural projects and discourse in South Asia in the 1940s and ’50s. Trywhitt worked with urban planner Patrick Geddes, editing Patrick Geddes in India, published in 1947, and was a United Nations technical assistance advisor to India and member of the 6^th Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in 1947. She served as a professor at the GSD from 1955 to 1969, and, as Dean Sarah Whiting explained, “helped establish and fortify the urban design program in its founding years.” An urban design lectureship named in her honor continues to support visiting scholars at the GSD today.

Dong-Ping Wong in Conversation with Emily Hsee, on the Chinese Merchants Building

Pairs is a student-run journal at the GSD, which centers conversations between GSD students and guests, about an archive at Harvard or beyond. In this excerpt from Pairs 05, editor Emily Hsee speaks with architect Dong-Ping Wong about the history of the Chinese Merchants Association Building in Boston, which was designed by Edwin Chin-Park and completed in 1949. The building was funded by local neighborhood associations and represented Chinatown’s economic and social progress since World War II. It was partially demolished in 1954 during construction of the Fitzgerald Expressway. Hsee and Wong address the history of the building, the culture of Chinatown in Boston and New York, and recent shifts in the perception of Chinese American culture in the United States.

Dong-Ping Wong is the founding director of Food New York , a design firm specializing in transforming environments, from structures to landscapes. Current and past projects have included a Cayman Islands garden and +POOL, the world’s first floating water-filtering pool . Previously, he co-founded Family New York, designing for Off-White, Kanye West, and contemporary art museums.

Emily Hsee is a 2024 graduate of the GSD Master of Architecture I program. She is originally from Chicago and has worked between New York City and Shanghai. Her research and interests focus on multi-family affordable housing design solutions.

Emily Hsee
Historically, Chinatowns across the United States were viewed as filthy slums filled with illicit activity. After World War II, however, there was a kind of rebranding effort. The US adopted the image of the new democratic leader, and China had been an important ally during World War II. As a result, there were efforts to financially invest in Chinatowns and to extend legal rights to Chinese immigrants. This was most clear in the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. There were also social investments as the media began portraying Chinatowns more positively, highlighting them as great tourist destinations. That’s the backdrop for the construction of the Chinese Merchants Association in Boston in 1949, which housed the headquarters of the association and a community recreation center….

It’s the first building in Chinatown that was “self-funded,” which means it was funded through neighborhood associations….Tragically, five years after its construction, a third of the building was torn down to make way for the Fitzgerald Expressway, leaving behind this not-quite-whole building that’s rife with memory, symbolism, and more.

…I’m curious about your reaction to the building. In some ways it’s very Chinatown: a patchwork of aesthetics, an obvious grafting of oriental ornament onto an otherwise Western building.

Dong-Ping Wong
Right now I’m on Google Maps, staring at the facade that got chopped off and replaced and laughing. It’s a weird way to finish off a truncated building. The new facade is very blank, with just one modernist strip window. It’s more modernist than any other building facade in the immediate vicinity. Its blankness is especially surprising because it makes the facade feel like the back of the building, but it faces a lot of traffic and a significant intersection. It feels like it’s waiting for something else to be built next to it.

On the front facade, I didn’t notice that they closed off those balconies until you mentioned it. I originally thought that there was nothing about the architecture itself, except for the pagoda, that felt immediately Chinese or Asian to me. In fact, it actually felt quite German. But when I zoom in on the enclosed balconies, I can see that there are columns inside and also that at some point the balconies were open to the street, to the outside. You see that balcony condition often in Manhattan Chinatown, and it feels much more contextual and part of the neighborhood.

I’m guessing that openness reflected the Chinese Merchants Association’s goals to be a part of the community, so closing it off feels not just like an aesthetic abandonment but also like an abandonment of community connectivity. Otherwise, the decorative elements, like the “Welcome to Chinatown” sign in that chop suey font and the planted pagoda on top, are what stand out to me. It’s funny because it feels like all of the remaining decoration exists from the roofline up, and my read is that the point of the ornamentation is to announce itself to people further away. After the renovation, the building itself became backgrounded.

It must have been so brutal to finish a building and then five years later have it cut off like that.

EH
It’s so brutal.

DPW
I’m sure it was a huge deal in Chinatown at the time. There was probably a lot of pride in the building’s construction. Then five years later, the association lost half of it.

I appreciate how you used the word rebrand to open this conversation. I’ve never thought of the shift in the US view of Asian Americanness after World War II in those terms before. I’m aware of it, but I think rebrand is a perfect way to describe it. The word is so concise, yet it also captures the treatment of Asian Americanness as a kind of product or service. This building is a good example of that. The Asian American community had a little bit of agency to create something for itself, until it was in the way of something that the city wanted. Once the product of Asian Americanness was no longer useful, the city took a bunch of it away.

EH
Chinatowns everywhere have always been vulnerable, and to some extent, their existence always feels conditional. You mentioned agency, though, which is important to talk about. Despite Chinatowns’ precarity, Chinatown does have some agency, and I wonder where you think that is and how it can be leveraged.

DPW
If I had a good answer to this, I would solve the problems in Chinatown. I will say that one of the nice things I’ve learned about Manhattan Chinatown over the last years is how community members of all ages are drawn to activism. Of course, it’s not always effective. For example, there’s a big new jail coming into Chinatown that the neighborhood has been protesting nonstop for years, and still, there’s a point where it feels like a losing battle.^[1] But there are other city projects that the community has been more effective in blocking.

This was surprising to me, given my incorrect assumption that Asian Americans are not that vocal. I’ve come to realize that there’s a lot of internal vocalness, but it’s very rarely broadcast outside of the community. Within the neighborhood, it’s amazing to see so many organizations, associations, and nonprofits being loud. Chinatowns across the US have always been relatively low-income neighborhoods, so I don’t think there’s much of a financial lever to pull. But there is a political lever that I think stops bad things from happening. I wonder whether the community can use that same political leverage to push for changes that benefit Chinatown….

EH
…I want to talk about the role of memory and symbolism within Chinatown. As with the Chinese Merchants Association building, the built environment contains markers of both joy and pain. How central are those symbols to a community or a neighborhood?

DPW
We’re working with two young Asian American clients on a diner project and one of the first conversations we had was about the question “What does Asian American architecture look like?” We were going to different Asian American restaurants as reference points, and we found two examples. One type of architecture resembles the Chinese Merchants Association building: East Asian design elements are clearly translated and grafted onto Western structures. Many classic Chinese restaurants fall into this category: they have very cute, tongue-in-cheek, Asian-like neon signs or calendars and waving cats, but without the ornament, the space and architecture could be anything. There’s really nothing inherently Asian or Asian American.

The other is an architecture that leans heavily toward the exaggerated orientalized architecture that almost becomes a caricature. Both are using this Asian aesthetic for survival’s sake, appealing to what the city wants, but I wonder if the second kind might be more difficult to tear apart or demolish because it has more romanticized Chinese elements. Whether superficially or not, cultural identity is infused into it. I’m thinking about our restaurant design and whether it’s possible to weave Asian Americanness into the bones of the architecture itself, through material, structure, or aesthetics, without the “oriental” look that’s only catering to tourists.

When I was growing up, I hated Panda Express. Actually, I really liked it, but I was never proud of Panda Express. I was ashamed when I went to the mall, because I thought, This is not real Chinese food. Only recently, maybe in the last 10 years, I realized it isn’t supposed to be real Chinese food. It’s Chinese American food.

I’ve been seeing a generation of younger Asian American chefs in the past few years making Chinese American food their own. I imagine something similar happening architecturally: we take an aesthetic that was done for survival’s sake, for tourists, and own it. Can we make it a genuine Chinatown culture aesthetic, which in this case would be referencing not purely American or Chinese aesthetics but a sweet spot that’s somewhere between kitsch, authenticity, and progressivism? I’m particularly interested in kitsch because it’s been very helpful to the survival of Chinatowns. I don’t think an Asian American style necessarily needs to have that tired oriental look, but I think the kitsch aesthetic is a useful tool. It’s like, “Look, we know this is appealing to you, so we’re going to use it. You won’t want to fuck with this building, but we’re going to make it our own.”

EH
It’s almost like an inside joke. While the architecture doesn’t actually reference cliched images of China, we play to our advantage on the assumption that it does. I was at dinner with a friend who’s Chinese, from China, and he told me that he loves going to Chinatowns when he’s in other countries. It’s not because he misses China or because Chinatowns feel anything like China but because they’re their own worlds. That sentiment is useful when we talk about what it means to preserve Chinatown and what exactly makes Chinatown Chinatown.

DPW
Maybe there’s a way to frame these shifts in three phases. I can imagine that when Chinatowns first emerged Chinese Associations were established to protect the neighborhoods. At that point, there were huge vulnerable workforces from China that were being villainized. It makes sense that Chinese Associations had reputations for being involved in illicit business dealings, because Chinese immigrants had few legal rights or protections. After the “rebrand,” after World War II, it feels like Chinatowns became marketing opportunities and started catering to tourists. This shift involved creating a version of Chinatown that was palatable and acceptable to outsiders. I think Chinatowns now are still in this second phase.

One of the reasons we’re having this conversation is because that phase is ending and there’s a new phase that has to—and hopefully already is—happening. To the question about aesthetics, I think my generation felt embarrassed about the kitschy overexaggerated oriental aesthetic, but it is true to how we grew up. Orange chicken, as much as it might not be authentic Chinese food or relate to where our parents came from, belongs to the world we grew up in. It’s just now becoming a source of pride, still with a slight tongue-in-cheek quality, but it’s becoming a source of pride. I want to believe that this shift in psychology means that we’re beginning to own the aesthetic that was originally made for others, and even use that to set some new aesthetics.

This new phase parallels the emergence of Asian American creatives within Chinatown who are integrating that cultural identity we grew up with into fashion, architecture, design, and food. I don’t know what you’d label that third phase, but I hope it’s happening.

 

Yen-Ting Cho on Transdisciplinary Practice: Interweaving the Human and the Digital

“Video installation, sculpture, ceramic, printmaking, textile—our work spans various media,” explains Yen-Ting Cho (MDes ’09) of his design studio’s creations, which range from luxury scarves to vast public artworks, the most recent for the new Terminal 3 in Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport. Despite the diversity in type and scale, these projects all derive from a singular underlying notion: human-computer interaction. “I always focus on combining human and computer-based thoughts,” says Cho. “For me, it’s a dialogue between the two, not an either-or question.” Cho’s blurring of boundaries integrates techniques from architecture, computer science, and other fields, exemplifying the transdisciplinary outlook he developed during his time at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD).

From a young age, Cho cultivated multiple disciplinary interests. He naturally embraced technology and engineering, having been raised near Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park (an environment akin to California’s Silicon Valley). Simultaneously, Cho gravitated toward artistic creation; encouraged by his family and high school curriculum, he explored sketching, painting, traditional paper cutting, and calligraphy, as well as package design and music. Cho then studied architecture at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), becoming well versed in analog and digital design tools while earning his bachelor of science degree (completed in 2005) and interning with architectural firms. “By this point,” he recalls, “I wanted to explore additional types of media, which I hoped could be more expressive and engage with a wider audience.” Thus, after completing his mandatory military service, in 2007 Cho entered the GSD’s Master of Design (MDes) program focusing on design and technology, eager to delve into alternative methods of creation.

“Crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries is never easy,” Cho declares. “Most training prepares students to fit into the so-called real world, which does not tend to favor disruption.” Fortunately, Cho found that the MDes program challenged this trend by encouraging multidisciplinary exploration. During his two years at the GSD, he took advantage of Gund Hall’s rich offerings as well as those at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the neighboring Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Cho began by learning parametric design and computer programming, and then moved on to human-computer interaction courses at both the GSD and the MIT Media Lab. Within Harvard’s Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (now known as the Department of Arts, Film, and Visual Studies), Cho received fellowships to explore animation. He took photography courses, built his first robot, worked on an interactive installation for the Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward exhibition (2009) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and won several international awards for his experimental films.

In retrospect, Cho characterizes his time as an MDes student as truly formative. He found “Sculpting in Motion,” a course taught by then associate professor of practice Allen Sayegh, to be particularly impactful. “The tools used in the course were similar to those used for architectural design, but for different artistic expressions. I started to see the grey areas between design and art,” Cho says. By graduation, Cho had expanded his “interests from spatial design to temporal creation and had started to seriously think about, and tentatively build, creative digital tools.”

Inspired by Sayegh’s mentorship as well as a course at the MIT Media Lab called “New Paradigms for Human-Computer Interaction” (taught by Hiroshi Ishii ), Cho decided to explore creations arising from human-computer interaction. Following his graduation from the GSD, Cho enrolled in London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) to pursue a PhD in Innovation Design Engineering. This program foregrounded practice-based research, and a diverse group of advisors—a cybernetician/design theorist, a film theorist, and an aeronautical engineer/design—helped Cho integrate his assorted interests.[1]

While a doctoral student, Cho collaborated with two Taiwanese researchers to develop mov.i.see , a digital software that “uses body movement to reconstruct inputted digital data.” This software would become integral for Cho; after completing his PhD in 2009, he started YEN TING CHO , a studio that uses mov.i.see to generate unique patterns, initially for textiles. Cho also began teaching at the Institute of Creative Design at NCKU, where he is now a professor.

With offices in London and Taipei, YEN TING CHO now describes itself as a digital design studio and consultancy that produces unique artworks, public installations, and contemporary designs for fashion accessories, interiors, and exteriors. Their creations feature colorful patterns that arise from running images through mov.i.see. The resulting designs are finished by hand, playing with color, space, and form, and are ultimately digitally printed onto a given surface, such as textiles or ceramics. With his studio, Cho intentionally fosters “an open and dynamic environment for creatives interested in transdisciplinary and practice-based research.” This breadth and experimentation allow the studio to tackle projects in a unique way, as is the case for its current focus: Gateway to Taiwan: Island Tales, a public installation for the north hall of the Richard Rogers–designed Terminal 3 at Taoyuan International Airport.

Cho fashioned Gateway to highlight aspects of Taiwan beyond its technological renown. To comprise the installation, he created seven artworks, each representing a different theme within Taiwanese history and culture—for example, spiritual life, the natural world, or the cityscape. The works, which collectively total over 300 meters, “show Taiwan’s creativity, interweaving technology and culture,” Cho explains. This interweaving plays out in both the process and products of creation. Following a phase of in-depth research, Cho manipulates his human reflections with his software to generate the semi-abstract thematic patterns. The abstraction encourages travelers of all cultures—visitors and locals—to engage with the works, to develop their own interpretations of Gateway and the island of Taiwan.

When Gateway opens in late 2025, the project will showcase the potential inherent in transdisciplinarity, which Cho initially encountered during his time as an MDes student at the GSD. “Perhaps that’s the beauty of the MDes program,” Cho says. “It’s not just architecture. It’s not just landscape. It’s not just urban design. It’s everything everywhere.”

[1] Aligning with these specialties, Ranulph Glanville, Al Rees, and Neil Barron were Cho’s advisors at RCA.

Kengo Kuma Urges a Return to Nature

In early April, nearly a decade after his previous speaking engagement at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Kengo Kuma delivered this year’s John Hejduk Soundings Lecture to a full Piper Auditorium. With an address titled “Return to Nature,” Kuma guided the audience through a selection of his prolific work, dynamic compositions that bridge tradition and innovation, the artisanal and the computational, ranging in scale from wooden toy blocks to a 68,000-seat stadium . Nature provides the logic, and often the materials, that comprise these designs. Indeed, welcoming Kuma to the podium, Grace La—professor of architecture and chair of the Architecture Department—noted that “Kuma composes forms and materials to appear as nature itself.” As Kuma encouraged architects to reconnect with nature, three themes rose to the fore: the connection between forest and city, the use of the small particle, and the value of experimentation.

Kuma began his discussion by highlighting an historical shift in focus from the forest to the city; whereas for centuries people turned to the forest for food, fuel, and construction materials, the twentieth century witnessed an increasing reliance on the city as sustaining force. Proposing a reversal of this trend, Kuma positioned the Hiroshige Museum in Bato, Japan, as a literal and figurative gateway between town and satoyama (village mountain). Sourced from this forest, the building’s materials—cedar planks, artisan-made paper, and quarry stones—forge an indelible link with the surrounding environment. These materials, produced by area craftspeople, tie the museum to the local culture and economy, refashioning a bond between residents and the natural world.

In the case of the Hiroshige Museum, Kuma’s “return to nature” encompasses several contextually specific elements, which change in other projects depending on variables such as site and scale. Yet, throughout Kuma’s oeuvre, the use of the small particle (or unit) remains remarkably consistent. To illustrate the potential of “particlization,” as it has come to be known in the past few decades, Kuma referenced the Hōryū-ji pagoda, constructed in the 7th century in Nara, Japan. Rising five stories, this wooden tower still stands today “as if by magic,” Kuma says. “The secret of the magic,” he explains, “is small, replaceable pieces” that, in aggregate, create a dynamic whole. A damaged piece of the pagoda can be replaced without destroying the larger entity. This accretion-of-small-pieces approach is a planned obsolescence that, ironically, promotes longevity, allowing the building to endure use, weather, and time in ways not possible for a monolithic concrete structure.

Particlization as employed by Kuma is inherently sustainable. Smaller pieces of wood—for example, the 6-by-6-centimeter-thick members used in the GC Prostho Museum Research Center—can be fabricated from immature trees, forestalling deforestation by leaving old growth areas untouched. In addition, these young trees require less time to reach the desired height, allowing for more rapid production of construction materials. And as a building’s pieces are replaced, the older elements can be recycled; wood becomes fuel, while thatch becomes animal feed or compost.

In Kuma’s designs, particlization brings other benefits. Building with small pieces of wood in earthquake prone regions increases seismic resistance due to the flexibility of multiple joints, which absorb shocks more effectively than rigid concrete and steel. An accretion of smaller units also lends itself to a human scale—a quality evident in even Kuma’s larger buildings, including the Japan National Stadium (2019) in Tokyo, employing wooden planks, and the Portland Japanese Garden (2017) in Oregon, which relies on an aggregation of smaller buildings to create an intimate courtyard. Such arrangements, whether of material or spatial elements, encourage different forms of maintenance and care that may tap into traditional cultural practices like that of the Ise Shrine, ritualistic rebuilt every 20 years as a signal of impermanence and renewal.

Within his thriving international practice, Kuma holds a place for architectural experimentation. These investigative forms abide by a similar logic of particlization, yet the particle itself continues to vary. The Casa Umbrella (2008), a Milan Triennale installation inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s tensegrity structures, uses a Tyvek umbrella as the unit; when joined with others via zippers, the umbrella becomes part of a larger temporary shelter, resistant to seismic shocks and easily erected in disaster situations. The Mêmu Meadows Experimental House (2012), a prototypical cabin in Hokkaido, Japan, features a double-layer membrane stretched over a multi-piece wood frame; geothermal energy warms the uninsulated enclosure in freezing temperatures. And now there is Domino 3.0, an installation fabricated for the 2025 Venice Biennale that utilizes soft 3D-printed joints to position and secure living trees. Like Kuma’s other works, this most recent project reflects the interdependent relationship between humankind and nature. In La’s words, “abstract assemblages of small pieces produce a simultaneity of parts and wholes in a unified ecological phenomenon—mysteriously precise, ineffable, and sublime.”

Jeremy Ficca on Biogenic Materials: Where High Tech and Low Tech Meet

By the early 1900s, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had emerged as an industrial powerhouse, due in large part to its prodigious steel production. More than a century later, the city has refashioned itself as a center for innovation. It is thus fitting that Jeremy Ficca (MArch II ’00), an associate professor and incoming Associate Head of Design Fundamentals in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), has concentrated his research on biogenic building materials. Made from rapidly renewable resources such as plants and fungi, biogenic materials offer a sustainable alternative to standard materials such as steel and concrete, requiring less energy for sourcing and construction, and even assisting with carbon sequestration. This semester, as a design critic in the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Ficca is teaching an option studio called “Material Embodiment: Logics for Post-Carbon Architectures” in which biogenic materials—and geogenic materials, which are sourced from the earth’s crust—feature prominently.

With respect to buildings, Ficca explains, we tend to think about energy and carbon in two ways. The first and more conventional outlook involves increasing energy efficiency for elements like heating, cooling, and lighting, often through technological means. The second relates to how and with what materials buildings are constructed, along with the externalities that accompany these design decisions, such as their impacts on human labor and greenhouse gas emissions. This more holistic approach underlies the “Material Embodiment” studio, in which students explore bio- and geogenic materials (such as hemp, straw, and earth) to design a hybrid workforce-training and research facility on an old river-front industrial site in Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood Green. The studio asks the students to rethink the material composition of a building as well as their designs’ broader implications on material sourcing, labor, construction technology, and maintenance.

Ficca recently spoke with Krista Sykes about bio- and geogenic materials, his own research, and the urgency for change within the architectural discipline.

 

How did you become interested in biogenic materials?

My teaching and design research focus on the intersections of materiality, technology, and architecture. While this initially operated within the field of computational methods of design and fabrication, material affordances were a common thread. As one who teaches courses and studios that focus on the materialization of architectural intent, I contend with the impact of building on our planet’s ecosystems through the carbon intensive and extractive nature of construction. Like many of us, I spent time during the pandemic looking inward. The writings of ecological economist Tim Jackson were an important influence on my understanding of post-growth and the imperative to transition to a more resilient economy and society. Around the same time, I was asked to reconceive a core material and construction course for graduate students in CMU’s Master of Architecture program. Doing so provided an opportunity to fundamentally rethink this content in relation to climate change and resilience. The questions that began to arise through the development of the course and subsequent discussions with students highlighted the inadequacy of simply trying to achieve greater and greater efficiency in building performance rather than exploring how the building’s material makeup can substantially reduce energy and carbon expenditures.

We are at a precarious moment. There is broad consensus that our climate crisis requires fundamental recalibration of the acts of building to address the negative externalities of the process. There is no single solution to this immense challenge. Responses will be quite different depending upon local circumstances. I am interested in how material practices can address questions of embodied carbon and energy and how these practices might open space for design imagination and architectural expression. This is a technical problem but also a deeply cultural question.

In the North American context, the most universal biogenic construction material is wood. But there is a remarkably rich range of harvested and grown materials alongside wood, including bio-resins, mycelium, and hemp, to mention but a few. Some biogenic materials belong to longstanding traditions of building, while others emerged through rigorous research and development processes. My current work focuses on industrial hemp and lime, often referred to as hempcrete. While the combination of these materials to construct walls dates back more than thirty years, it is somewhat analogous with straw and cob techniques that have much longer histories.

You mentioned that some of the biogenic materials being explored in the studio connect to longstanding building traditions. Could you say more about the materials you have in mind?

Some of the students this semester are exploring loam (earth and clay) construction. These are practices with long histories that were largely passed over because they were incompatible with industrialized building techniques. There is remarkable work underway by architects like Roger Boltshauser and Martin Rauch that seek to situate these methods within the technological circumstances of our time. This is in part a process of reconnecting with practices that were perhaps deemed to be pre-modern, inefficient, or even primitive. But this renewed interest does not result from nostalgia or a desire to return to pre-modern vernacular techniques. Rauch’s development of prefabricated insulated rammed earth blocks is a response to the challenges of scale, labor, and construction costs. As their work is demonstrating, adoption of these techniques will require automation to address their labor intensiveness. Additionally, there is research underway at the Gramazio Kohler ETH research group developing robotic deposition of clay to yield monolithic architectural elements. It is a fascinating melding of high and low tech, of high precision and lower-resolution architecture. I find these calibrations, frictions, and occasional contradictions to be both exciting and a source of opportunity, prompting questions about the cultural connections between how we conceive of our environments and the materials with which we build.

How did your research come to focus on hemp and lime?

In December 2018 the United States passed the 2018 Farm Bill, removing hemp with extremely low concentration of THC from the definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act. Passage of the bill legalized the growth and processing of industrial hemp nationwide. As I researched industrial hemp, I was impressed by its remarkable attributes as a crop and its performance as a building material. Per acre, industrial hemp is one of the most effective CO2 to biomass crops.

The convergence of the farm bill and the performance capacity of hempcrete that was emerging through research in the EU pointed to opportunities for applications in the US. There is a track record of industrial hemp farming in the EU and UK with a few noteworthy examples of buildings that utilize the material. I was initially drawn to the labor-intensive nature of using hempcrete as a site-rammed material, and its potential to inform incremental, process-oriented approaches to construction within domestic architecture. I was interested in how a house might grow over time along with the harvesting and processing of material. This work, at the scale of the house, has transitioned into the design of discretized assemblies.

How does your work dovetail with the students’ pursuits throughout the semester?

The studio directs attention to one of the fundamental elements of architecture—the wall. We do so in part because many bio- and geogenic materials lend themselves to solid construction that relies upon accretion, processes of layering, compressing, and stacking. Materials like hempcrete and rammed earth require solidity and thickness to achieve thermal performance. But we also take on the topic of the architectural boundary because it reveals contemporary tendencies and desire. Principal among them is the legacy of modernism’s focus on lightness and thinness. The students are exploring spatial organizations and expressions that are informed and inspired by materials that require different processes of formation.

The students are developing proposals for a skilled workforce-training center located on a post-industrial site in Pittsburgh that was once a coke works and steel mill. It is a site with a long and complicated history of industrial growth, human labor, economic and environmental collapse, and regeneration. As I alluded to earlier, some of these materials are quite labor intensive. There are different attitudes to this topic. Some argue for greater human energy over embodied material energy and embrace the potential for the creation of new skills and jobs, while others point to automation to achieve scale and affordability. I am not advocating for one approach; rather, I’m interested in how the students’ positions on labor and technology inform their work. How might they calibrate architecture to production by humans and machines?

 Very early in the semester we cast some hempcrete blocks. This experience allowed us to work directly with the material, understand the limits of its resolution, and appreciate the characteristics of a low-processed natural material. Hempcrete, like many bio- and geogenic materials, can be hard to control. It is inherently somewhat imprecise. This pushes back against the characteristics of most contemporary building materials, which tend to rely on high degrees of precision and predictability.

Another point of convergence between my research and the work undertaken in the studio this semester is the topic of durability. Most buildings are constructed to be highly durable, to withstand weather and time. And there are many good reasons for this; buildings are expensive to construct and maintain. Some of the materials we have been working with challenge that approach in that they can be understood as weak, or to require different forms of maintenance and repair. A lot of the ways in which one engages contemporary construction is to try to minimize those conditions in a building. Over the history of many cultures, there have been remarkable practices of maintenance and care, some that also have functioned as cultural acts in society. So, when we build with materials that are low in energy, low in carbon, as great as they might sound, there are certain tradeoffs, and perhaps one of the tradeoffs is the fact that they might require different forms of care and maintenance. Rather than this being perceived as a problem to be overcome, might there be an opportunity here? Might this challenge the way we think about a building’s lifespan and open new ways of considering the traces of time and the finishing of a building?

As low energy, low carbon, sustainable alternatives to conventional materials, bio- and geogenic materials offer exciting possibilities. It seems that reframing potential problems associated with these materials as disciplinary opportunities renders them even more promising.

I agree. I want to be careful not to oversimplify or generalize. Making even a small building is a complex endeavor that relies on hundreds of materials with a wide range of embodied carbon and energy. These questions need to be considered holistically to weigh tradeoffs. The material practices we’ve discussed raise fundamental questions about the status quo of construction and its impact on environmental degradation; in doing so they open space for imagination. I find this territory, coupled with the various frictions and complications, to be quite useful for students to operate within.

*All images by Jeremy Ficca, unless otherwise noted.

Igniting Radical Imagination

“Think about someone who harmed you deeply. What would it take for you to sit down across from them, and ask them, Why? What supports would you need?”

This is one of the prompts that Deanna Van Buren, architect, activist, and director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), asked the audience to consider during her talk, “Designing Abolition,” on Tuesday, March 4, at the Graduate School of Design (GSD).

After her presentation, Van Buren was joined in conversation by her collaborator Andrea James , an activist, lawyer, and community organizer whose goal is to end incarceration for women and girls.

Van Buren designs systems of care that replace the carceral system. Her organization’s buildings focus on community-building and restorative and transformative justice—spaces where people can have healing conversations to resolve conflict, get support finding jobs and childcare, grow and prepare healthy foods, and work with community members to support the neighborhood.

Diverting people out of the prison system and into systems of care requires collaborating across industries. For example, Van Buren worked with lawyers, prosecutors, asylees, and others in Syracuse, New York, supporting The Center for Justice Innovation to open the Near Westside Peacemaking Project , the country’s “first center for Native American peacemaking practices in a non-Native community.” Now, instead of sending people to prison, judges can send them here for support within the neighborhood. The center features a Women’s Reentry Lounge, Circle Event and Art Space, Youth Zone, and Welcome Lobby. People have come to congregate at the center, gardening together in the yard, and using it for quinceañeras and engagement parties. This, says Van Buren, moves people from “incarceration to community cohesion. Prisons don’t keep people safe; this keeps people safe.”

In California, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights launched Restore Oakland the nation’s first center for restorative justice and restorative economics, which prompted Van Buren to create the real estate side of DJDS to acquire properties in ways that best serve communities. DJDS also supported Allied Media Projects to develop the LOVE Building in Detroit, Michigan, a commercial space with offices for nonprofits, which inspired DJDS to pursue the Grand River at 14th Parcel Assembly, with additional facilities for family support, youth activities, food justice initiatives, workforce development programs, education and literacy training, health and wellness services, and arts and culture groups. DJDS also designed the Common Justice Headquarters in New York, which serves victims of violent felonies and diverts people from prisons, as well as mobile refuge rooms to house formerly incarcerated people, exhibited at the Smithsonian Design Triennial under the title “The Architecture of Re-Entry.”

Restorative justice, transformative justice, and trauma-informed design are at the foundation of Van Buren’s practice, which she developed in part during her 2013 Loeb Fellowship , after working as an architect for 12 years. At the GSD, she described how she thinks about designing a room where people can have difficult conversations—the core of restorative justice, whose premise is that harm can be resolved without punishment, and that with the right supports in place, people can thrive. “A core part of what it means to be human,” Van Buren explained, “is conflict and resolution. We avoid it. We don’t have skills. We don’t practice it.” Rather than sending someone to jail for attempted murder, for example, the two parties can sit in a room and talk to one another. Designing a space like this requires a deep understanding of trauma and how it works at the physiological level. “If you’re going to go into a conversation that’s very traumatizing…you need an environment that’s going to help you with that interaction.” She described how limited views, access to daylight, art that reflects our identities, and the ability to move the chair away from the other person are just a few of the design elements that create felt safety, which calms the nervous system.

During her tenure as a Loeb Fellow, Van Buren created her own multidisciplinary course of study to develop skills she knew she’d need. “I rode my bike over the snow in Cambridge to take classes at different schools across Harvard. I took Marshall Ganz’s public narratives class at the Kennedy School, and planning with Michael Hooper at the GSD. I took a class on research methods for designers at MIT.” She enrolled in a course on analyzing visual data at MIT, and a workshop at Lesley University on Circle Keeping, a restorative justice practice that brings into conversation people who were part of an incident that caused harm. Her process was intuitive and interdisciplinary, in pursuit of “mak[ing] space for restorative justice.”

Van Buren proposed that, as we face a complicated era that some call “the great turning,” shifting from profit-focused industry to supports for people and the environment, we have the opportunity to choose how we intervene. Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of abolition provided a framework for her talk and the ensuing conversation with James, which focused in large part on how to close prisons in New England as a model for nationwide prison closures and alternative systems. “Abolition’s goal,” writes Gilmore, “is to change how we interact with each other and the planet by putting people before profits, welfare before warfare, and life over death.”

Van Buren suggested that we might consider three key questions: “What do we need to dismantle? What is the world we want to build? What skills will be required?” In the US, she said, “we have a lot to dismantle.” We’re facing “centuries of gross structural inequity in every community in this country and around the world,” which is evident in tree and food deserts, rural and tribal lands disinvestment, the US’ 1969 Freeway Act, and “co-located toxic land use,” among other challenges. Prisons in the US were built on “punishment, torture, and enslavement,” which “has to be unbuilt.” And, although people are attempting to open new prisons, more than 400 have been closed in the US in the last fifteen years, most of which now sit vacant.

“Designers are world-builders,” Van Buren said. “I cannot think of anything more important for designers to do,” she said, “than to ignite radical imagination.”

She described how the Atlanta City Detention Center, a jail that housed thousands of people, could be transformed into a Center for Equity, a food ecosystem, or community space, with potential for education and housing opportunities. The secure lobbies could be reinvented as “super lobbies where people can come in and be navigated to care-based resources.” We could “reimagine the justice core.” She illustrated this point with a map of the city’s justice system—the courthouse, police station, schools—and emphasized the importance of choosing an easily accessible site for the restorative justice center that is close to the justice core.

Instead of turning to punishments when people hurt one another, transformative justice views the harm as “a breach of relationship.” The people harmed need to “have their needs met” while the person who hurt them “makes amends.” No one, therefore, is being taken from their community, and returned to it later with the additional layers of trauma inflicted by prisons. Transformative justice helps people “heal by examining underlying issues, such as racism.”

New projects by DJDS include participation in a collaborative initiative to determine how to develop the newly closed MCI-Concord, which was the oldest operating prison in the nation, founded in 1878. Van Buren is also working with James to advocate closing women’s prisons in New England. Their focus is the last women’s prison in Massachusetts. With only 135 incarcerated women in Framingham, James argues that it would be relatively simple to close, and would mark the end of women’s prisons in the state, although the current governor is investing to construct a new women’s prison. Van Buren offers alternative models to prisons. Transformative justice spaces like the ones she created in California and Michigan divert people from prisons into systems of care, where they can find the support they need to remain in their communities.

“We have already created an exit plan for every single one of those women [in the Framingham prison]. We are uniquely poised in Massachusetts,” said James, “to close the women’s prison and create what different looks like, to become a model for the rest of the country.”

She and Van Buren continue to push to end incarceration for women and girls throughout the country, and to implement the abolitionism defined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore. In order to create new systems, Van Buren argues that we need to “develop the ability to hold complexity,” undertaking interdisciplinary collaborations to solve complex problems. To best prepare for the world that awaits them, Van Buren encouraged current GSD students to enroll in courses across Harvard’s schools in pursuit of their interests, noting that the MDes program provides a model for the kind of interdisciplinary study that helped her achieve her goals as a designer for transformative justice.