Max Rohm (MArch/MLA ‘01 and visiting design critic in 2005) and Flavio Janches just published a new book, Urban Interrelations, proposing enhancing integration of informal settlements into the urban mainstream through community participation in the development of public spaces and facilities.
This semester urban planning and design students are investigating issues through option studios in New York, Jerusalem, Burkina Faso, China and closer to home.
On November 17, the GSD hosted the annual fall get together of the four accredited planning programs in Massachusetts, featuring a lecture by Susan Fainstein (senior research fellow), “The Argument for Just Outcomes.”
This year the GSD inaugurated a competition for the school’s first Pavilion Program. The jury has ruled, and “Simulated Panorama” was selected for installation in spring 2013 under the Gund Hall portico.
Common Frameworks: Rethinking the Developmental City, a studio taught by Chris Lee of Serie Architects, is part of a three-year research project to rethink the development of the megaplot through understanding what a city holds common: its housing.
For 40 years Gund Hall has reigned as an architectural icon of the 20th century: great bones, proudly displayed. But changes in contemporary architectural practice and education, along with the need for increased energy efficiency have argued for updating. The GSD is rising to the challenge.
This fall, the GSD collaborated with Lars Müller Publishers to release three new publications.
Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo (design critics in urban planning and design and founding members of Ecosistema Urbano of Madrid) just won a competition for the construction of the Reggio Children Foundation’s new experimental education center in Italy.
Carlos Garciavelez (MAUD '12 and teaching associate in urban design) published his thesis research "Concrete Matters: Beyond Stillbirth Infrastructure" in the Mexican journal Arquine. Garciavelez argues for the introduction of a rapid transit bus system to the Periférico, a double decker beltway in Mexico City, to partially transform it into a mass transit infrastructure and create new public amenities for the city. Read “El Periférico como generador ce cuidad.”
Chris Reed (adjunct associate professor of landscape architecture) just returned from Asia, where he was a keynote speaker at the 2012 Forum on Resilient Cities, hosted by Kongjian Yu (design critic in landscape architecture and DDesS 95) at the Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Beijing.