The GSD will establish the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities as one of the three major University initiatives supported by Evergrande Group, an integrated industry leader based in China.
Mexico City was recently selected recently for the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge, and 6 students and alums from the GSD and HKS contributed to that success. Acting as the Agencia de Resiliencia Urbana (Urban Resilience Collective), Adriana Chávez (MDesS and MArch '14), Víctor Rico Espínola (MAUD '14), Oscar Malaspina (MAUD '13), Elena Tudela (MAUD '12), Einat Rosenkrantz (MAUD '13) and Johanan Rivera (HKS MPAID '13) collaborated with Mexico City to create its winning proposal.
Design scholars and practitioners from around the world just released the Laufen Manifesto for a Humane Design Culture. They went public in a video that includes the voices of: Andres Lepik (LF ’12), Rahul Mehrotra (chair of urban planning and design), Christian Werthmann (former chair of department of landscape architecture), Martin Rauch (Austrian artist who collaborated on the Mudworks installation), Caroline James (MArch ‘14, Loeblogger and chair of Women in Development) and Anna Heringer (LF ’12), along with many others. Learn more about the principles they espouse.
Ecosistema Urbano, the firm of Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo (both design critics in urban planning and design), just won the Silver Award of the Taipei International Design Award 2013 in the Public Space Design category . Their "Energy carousel" is the creative embodiment of a more sustainable approach to urbanism.
Lukas Pauer (MAUD '14) will publish the essay “Peak Sand: On the Limits of Resource Extraction Urbanisms in the Straits of Singapore” in the forthcoming Critical Planning 20: The Future, a graduate student-run publication of the UCLA Urban Planning Department.
Silvia Benedito (assistant professor in landscape architecture), and Alexander Häusler (MArch II '04) of OFICINAA won 3rd prize in the international competition to design the Danube riverfront in the city of Ingolstadt, Germany.
The Harvard Urban Planning Organization once again took part in Parking Day, an annual international event in which designers, activists, and ordinary citizens turn parking spaces into miniature parks. This year’s theme was “The Public Living Room.”
Erle Ellis just got to the GSD for his stint as visiting associate professor of landscape architecture and he’s already making a splash. In an opinion piece for the N.Y. Times, he challenges the conventional wisdom that human population growth is outstripping the earth’s ability to provide sustenance.
GSD students took part in an unconventional experiment at MoMA PS1 this summer, aimed at generating bold solutions to our pressing environmental problems. Brennan Baxley (MLA), Stefan DiLeo (MAUD), Yoonjee Koh (MArch), Yina Ng (MArch) and Patricia Semmler (MArch) joined peers from Cornell for a 2-week residency, living and working in a temporary installation at the museum.
As the world copes with significant climate events, Landscape Architecture is breaking out of its pigeonhole of gardens and grounds and assuming a role as convening discipline for urban problem-solving. Last term’s core studio Flux City, led by Chris Reed (HU ’91, professor of landscape architecture) took sea level rise as its focus, and students creaeted interventions to reverse the vulnerability of Jamaica Bay, NY.