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Harvard Graduate School of Design

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09/02/2026

📚 Happy first day of classes for the Fall 2026 semester!

09/01/2026

What does it mean to think of memorial practice as part of a longer ecological cycle?

In “Shelterwood,” Kate Doherty (MLA I ’27) unites ritual memorial practice with ecological restoration in the urban forest. Developed in Core II with section instructor Min Yeo, the project draws from cemeteries and forests as landscapes that both hold continuity beyond the span of any single life.

The title refers to a silvicultural term describing the process of fostering regeneration beneath the cover of mature trees. In the project, this becomes both a guiding metaphor and a material strategy: timber from declining trees is used for burial carpentry, while the understory is tended as seedlings are recruited into the gaps left in the canopy.

Oak and pine, dominant canopy species on the site, carry distinct roles. Oak, associated with endurance and memory, is shaped into marker posts and benches designed to weather slowly. Pine, softer and historically tied to funerary traditions, is used for caskets, acknowledging impermanence and return. Through rings, grain, decomposition, and craft, wood becomes a record of time shared between tree and human lives.

An ethos of care extends across the site. Crafting takes place at a public maintenance hub in partnership with a local vocational school, goats from the adjacent zoo support understory grazing, and alternating mown strips allow passage through burial grounds and wildflowers.

Conceived as a material loop where everything necessary is already present, “Shelterwood” invites reconnection with the ecological systems we inhabit and the lives that precede us. When a tree falls, life remains, and new life takes hold through an ongoing cycle of care, remembrance, and renewal.

08/31/2026

We've had a great time over the last few days welcoming our new students to Harvard and to the GSD community. One more day of orientation, then classes begin on Wednesday September 2!

08/27/2026

The GSD announces its fall 2026 public programs and exhibitions, a series of events that explore resilience and adaptability through design. View the full calendar on the GSD website (link in comments)!

The exhibition "Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, and Situations", on view through December 20, examines how designers can respond effectively to a world increasingly defined by environmental disruption, political instability, technological transformation, and rapidly changing patterns of habitation. An opening event on September 10, features a conversation about the work of Christo & Jeanne-Claude, while a symposium on November 12–13 builds on that legacy to discuss impermanent urbanism worldwide.

August Lehrecke, co-founder of Pneuhaus, traces his fascination with inflatables and how it grew into a full-fledged studio, while Adrien Verschuere discusses the temporal dimension of his studio, BAUKUNST.

The theme of resilience asks how communities recover after disruption. Dana Cuff, director of UCLA’s CityLab, discusses the ongoing pressures and conflicts involved in rebuilding communities devastated by fire—a subject historian and theorist Sylvia Lavin approaches from a different angle in “Architecture After Fire”. Kashef Chowdhury speaks about how his work responds to Bangladesh’s culture, history, and increasingly fragile ecological conditions.

Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu explore the design and research of their practice, Neri&Hu, while Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori describe how their practice, Labics, approaches every building as an opportunity to enrich public space. Closer to home, the GSD’s Gary Hilderbrand discusses his practice and pedagogy built around close site reading and the development of narrative through design.

As a sonic complement to the lectures and symposia, Grammy Award–winning musicians Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee perform a selection of their music inspired by landscapes.

All events will be livestreamed on the GSD website unless otherwise noted.

08/26/2026

🐕 Happy National Dog Day from Papaya, one of our favorite buddies here in the GSD's Communications Office. Say hi if you see him on campus this year!

08/25/2026

What does it mean to design a performance space from the space “between the curtains”?

In “Curtain Call,” Jade Radford (MArch I ’29) designs a performing arts center and music school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, serving both the public and members of the academic community. Developed in STU-1101 Core 1, taught by Kyle Coburn, the project takes its name from the theatrical moment that recognizes performers alongside the supporting cast and crew.

Beginning with the studio brief’s use of sectional jump cuts, the building brings together two seemingly incompatible sections through shared spatial and circulatory strategies. Drawing from staged views in set design and the sequencing of performance spaces, “Curtain Call” establishes a relationship between curtains and program, using thick CLT walls to organize circulation, structure, and moments of performance.

The selected sections reinterpret the double-loaded corridor, transitioning from private rehearsal spaces into a public atrium. Positioned at opposite ends of the site, they create distinct public and school entrances while keeping public programs on the ground floor and visually connected to private practice spaces above.

Rather than centering performance in a single frontal space, the project reveals smaller and varied performances along circulation paths as one moves through the building. Practice rooms are situated between each curtain wall and overlook the atrium, reinforcing the relationship between rehearsal and performance.

08/21/2026

New exhibition on view in the Druker Design Gallery starting August 26!

"Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, and Situations" explores how designers can respond to a world increasingly defined by environmental disruption, political instability, technological transformation, migration, and rapidly changing patterns of habitation. While the design disciplines have traditionally privileged permanence and stability, architects, engineers, urban designers, and planners have We are living through an era marked by profound environmental, social, political, and technological transformations. Yet architecture, urban design, and planning remain more invested in imagining permanence than in engaging with change. These disciplines have privileged stability, order, and enduring form, frequently treating transformation as a condition to be managed rather than as a productive force in shaping the future.

At the same time, architects, engineers, and urbanists have developed elegant and innovative methods of building and as well as have imagined urban interventions that employ lightweight structural systems. to challenge conventional assumptions about materiality, enclosure, and permanence. Their experiments demonstrate how minimal means could produce expansive spatial possibilities, generating an extraordinary repertoire of adaptable and resource-efficient structures.

The exhibition is curated by Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, and Dan Borelli, director of exhibitions.

Please join us for a public opening on September 10. The curators will lead a walk-through of the gallery followed by a screening of Running Fence (1977) and a discussion about the work of Christo and Jean-Claude. The curators will lead a tour of the gallery followed by a discussion of the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude with Vladimir Yavachev, director of operations at the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, and Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology. Selections from the film “Running Fence” (1977) will be screened.

08/17/2026

In "Compositions for Water", Michelle Li (MLA I AP ’26) reimagines Kyoto’s Fushimi Sake District as a soundwalk that foregrounds the presence of water flowing both above and below ground. Developed in "Presence of Water: Garden Inherency and New Hydraulic Culture of Kyoto", led by Jungyoon Kim and Shunsaku Miyagi, the project draws inspiration from the musicality of Japanese gardens such as Murin-an and the 72 micro seasons (Shichijūni kō) of the Japanese calendar.

Framed as a cross-modal experience, the landscape becomes a medium for emphasizing the textuality, seasonality, and materiality of sound. Through a slow choreography across the district, the soundwalk unfolds as a sequence of sonic scenes: natural springs, sake breweries, canal paths, suikinkutsu water-music devices, dragonfly gardens, rain-listening pavilions, and biophonic environments shaped by cicadas and birdsong.

Rather than treating landscape as a visual experience alone, Compositions for Water invites visitors to engage water as an atmospheric and temporal presence that unfolds through movement and listening.

08/14/2026

What does it mean to extend the Great Green Wall into a rapidly urbanizing African city?

Originally imagined as a line of trees stretching from Djibouti to Dakar, the Great Green Wall has evolved into a continental-scale effort to restore landscapes, strengthen communities, and address climate pressures across the Sahel.

In a Harvard GSD studio led by Sierra Bainbridge and Rob Levinthal, students traveled to Dakar, Senegal, to explore how this ambitious initiative might take root in urban and peri-urban landscapes.

Collaborating with local leaders of the Dakar Greenbelt Initiative, GSD students worked across sites shaped by mining, shrinking green space, flooding, and heat . They also researched the complex social, economic, and ecological realities of the Mbeubeuss landfill—the largest in West Africa. The studio examined how landscape design can support ecological repair while engaging the communities whose livelihoods are tied to these places.

Bainbridge calls this work “landscape diplomacy”: using design to connect landscapes, people, and policy toward more just and resilient futures.

This research was made possible by the Koji Yanai Innovation Infrastructure Initiation Fund.

08/12/2026

What happens when the logics of retail and exhibition begin to overlap? In Shelves, Chuchu Qi (MArch I ’27) reimagines the abandoned Chicago Union Station Power House as an art mall where display, commerce, and public life converge. Developed in "New Rooms: Defining a Permanently Temporary Art Infrastructure", taught by Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow, the project explores the parallel between art and retail through image collections of marketplaces and exhibition spaces shaped by desire, encounter, and display.

Extending diagonally through the existing power station, the intervention transforms the building into a series of elongated shelves. At its center, a shared atrium serves as both a structural framework and a gray zone between gallery and market spaces. The atrium stitches together dim, controlled exhibition rooms with a brighter, sloped retail-scape, encouraging wandering and unexpected cross encounters.

By lowering the threshold between institutions and everyday life, Shelves proposes a new form of art infrastructure in which viewing, displaying, gathering, and circulation unfold simultaneously within a permanently temporary public landscape.

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