Harvard Graduate School of Design

10/14/2026

Cheminée Commune reimagines the apothecary as the center of a civic network for medicinal cultivation, research, and production in Ervy-le-Châtel, France.

In this project, Gillian Hause (MArch II ’26) proposes a passage of architectural interventions connecting medicinal cultivation, research, production, and exchange across the village landscape. Developed in STU 1302 (Fall 2025), taught by Liu Yichun, the project draws from medieval systems of herbal knowledge and communal craft.

Cheminée Commune proposes a medieval passage of alchemical pilgrimage through the meandering rural landscape of Ervy-le-Châtel. The project looks to the apothecary as a precursor to the industrialized pharmaceutical industry, revitalizing a dormant program. Small-scale architectural prototypes engage the existing gardens to support a renewed system of medicinal cultivation, research, and production. This architectural pilgrimage journeys from the medieval garden in the town center toward its final destination at the commercial apothecary. The programs encountered along this passage are tied to medieval ways of life and include an herb bath, alchemical workshop, exhibition hall, researcher housing, roadside hearths, and commercial apothecary. Scientific trial and new methods of medicinal cultivation animate these spaces.

The Merchant Hall is the largest structure within the village. Conceived as a reflection of the medieval guild hall, the civic space allows researchers and herbologists to showcase their craft and production. The twiggy, merchant-stall column recalls the casual and makeshift nature of medieval stalls traditionally used to sell goods, serving as both structure and furniture. These individual columns notch into a larger system of roof beams, producing a field of habitation in which every column becomes a small exhibition station.

Each structure houses its medieval essence of life, forming a larger circuit of medicinal craft and production. Cheminée Commune is a contemporary guild for herbal knowledge: from the medieval potager to the modern apothecary. The incubator binds the garden, the laboratory, and the storefront into a civic metabolism of wellness.

10/07/2026

"Retention Pond/Civic Space?" transforms Boston City Hall Plaza into a civic landscape that responds to the city’s growing vulnerability to extreme stormwater events. In this project, Maria Chen Liang (MLA I ’28) developed the work in STU 1111 (Fall 2025), taught by Pablo Perez-Ramos.

Projected increases in annual flood exceedance highlight the need for public spaces that function both socially and hydrologically. This proposal transforms City Hall Plaza into both a civic gathering space and an active system for water collection, retention, and infiltration. Through contour studies and physical modeling, the design develops a language of slopes and sunken forms that choreograph water flow into three shallow but vast retention pods. These depressions act as retention ponds during major storms, choreographing water flow across the sloping ground. In dry conditions, they support public festivals and demonstrations, allowing the landscape to shift between ecological function and civic use. Permeable brick and stone paving, paired with native plantings such as red maple, little bluestem, switchgrass, and buttonbush, enhance infiltration across the site. Combined, these systems enable the plaza to infiltrate roughly 33% of incoming stormwater. The project transforms flood risk into a visible, educational, and engaging public experience, making climate resilience a central feature of Boston's urban civic landscape.

10/05/2026

🚨 GSD applications are open now for the 2027-2028 school year!

📆 Applications for all programs (MArch, MLA, MUP, MAUD, MLAUD, MRE, MDes, MDE, DDes) are due January 5, 2027.

🔗 For more information, go to our link in bio and choose "Admissions".

You can also join us at one of our Virtual Open Houses, which offer an excellent opportunity for prospective students and applicants to learn more about your program of interest and life at the GSD directly from faculty. We invite you to register for one or more of the open houses to explore any programs that may be of interest.

Oct. 28, 2026 10-11:30 a.m.
Master in Design Engineering

Oct. 29, 2026 9 a.m.-11 a.m.
Master in Design Studies

Oct. 30, 2026 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Master in Urban Planning

Oct. 30, 2026 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Master of Architecture/Landscape Architecture in Urban Design

Oct. 30, 2026 11 a.m. -2 p.m.
Master in Real Estate

Nov. 5, 2026 9 a.m.- 1 p.m.
Master in Landscape Architecture

Nov. 5, 2026 12 p.m.-2 p.m.
Doctor of Design

Nov. 6, 2026 9 a.m.- 12 p.m.
Master of Architecture

➡️ Follow for more admissions updates!

09/24/2026

What does it mean to think of home not as a unit, but as a shared system?

In Home Re-assembled: The Distributed House Framework, Saagarika Dias (MAUD ’26) reimagines domestic space as an infrastructure of collective life. Developed in STU-1501, taught by Toni L. Griffin, the project is grounded in conversations with artists, food innovators, and community organizers in Chicago’s Bronzeville, where creative life unfolds across studios, courtyards, kitchens, and streets as much as within domestic interiors.

In response, the proposal “unboxes” the home, distributing its functions across a network of spaces that support living, making, sharing, and gathering. The Distributed House Framework operates through three strategies: disaggregating domestic programs, activating vacant lots, and organizing functions sectionally to accommodate diverse creative practices.

Vacant parcels become opportunities to assemble new typologies, from production spaces along infrastructural edges to food anchors that energize commercial corridors, courtyard-based community hubs, and flexible live-work infill for everyday creators.

Rather than prescribing fixed dwelling types, the project establishes a field condition of adaptable spaces that evolve with community needs. Home is reassembled as a shared landscape of creative production and social exchange, where belonging is constructed collectively through everyday practices.

09/23/2026

Remy (and all of us) are excited to welcome GSD alumni and friends for the GSD comeback this weekend, September 25–26, 2026. More info at the link below!

09/22/2026

The Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies are pleased to announce that Vincent Reina has been named the inaugural Nicolas P. and Joan B. Retsinas Faculty Director of the JCHS and Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the GSD. In these roles, Reina will join the senior faculty of the GSD, and his appointment will take effect on January 1, 2027. The Retsinas Directorship was established to honor Nicolas (MCP ’71) and Joan (GSD ’69) Retsinas and Nic’s vision of inclusive and equitable housing programs and policy. Founded in 1959, the Joint Center for Housing Studies is jointly affiliated with the GSD and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Reina, a leading national housing scholar, comes to Harvard from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the Founder and Faculty Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn. His work at Penn focused on advancing effective housing policy through rigorous research and close partnerships with cities, states, and national organizations. From 2022 to 2024, he served on the White House Domestic Policy Council as Senior Advisor for Housing and Urban Policy.

09/15/2026

Brian D. Goldstein (PhD ’13) is the author of Max Bond: The Life and Work of the People’s Architect, published today! Bond (MArch ’58) designed buildings from northern Ghana to rural Mississippi to Harlem to the National Mall.

A new book explores the Harvard-trained architect’s vision and impact, from Ground Zero to the Smithsonian.

09/14/2026

What if water became a visible, shared medium for climatic comfort?

In “Distilling Dermis,” Lewis Wightman (MArch II ’27) reimagines the facade of the Athens Polykatoikia as an active system for water-based climate adaptation. Developed in STU 1306, taught by Jenny French with TA Nicky Rhodes, the project responds to Athens’ intensifying heat, where climatic comfort has long depended on air conditioning and increasingly privatized public space.

The proposal reframes greywater not as a hidden utility, but as a material for cooling, heating, and social exchange. Inflatable shading cushions and solar stills are added to the facade, theatrically indexing interior plumbing while distilling greywater through evaporation. Potable water is stored below grade, cooled, and recirculated through a hydrophilic mesh screen to provide evaporative cooling at balconies and mist cooling at the street.

In winter, the system shifts from cooling to warmth. Water fills the facade cushions, absorbs direct solar radiation, and recirculates through deployable furnishings including mattresses, rugs, and couches. These radiant, waterbed-like elements create localized thermal comfort through conduction rather than heating the entire interior volume.

By using greywater for summer cooling and solar-warmed water for winter heating, “Distilling Dermis” transforms the facade into a shared climatic buffer against rising temperatures.

09/10/2026

Where Flamingos Return, Life Returns reframes lithium mine closure in the Salar de Atacama as a long-term ecological responsibility measured through the return and persistence of flamingo life.

In this project, Zeliang Lyu (MLA II ’28) proposes a Flamingo-Led Mine Closure Framework that uses flamingos as living indicators for evaluating ecological recovery across a shared hydrological basin. Developed in STU 1407, the Spring 2026 Atacama studio, taught by Pablo Pérez-Ramos, the project links basin-scale governance with site-scale landscape repair at the Monturaqui–Negrillar–Tilopozo aquifer. The project was recognized with the Honor Award, General Design, from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).

The framework expands responsibility beyond individual mining concession boundaries through overlapping zones of remediation, hydrological influence, and shared stewardship. Rather than evaluating mine closure solely through engineering stability and site safety, it introduces ecological thresholds tied to flamingo habitat, wetland function, and long-term monitoring. A two-hectare flamingo sanctuary serves as an initial refuge cell within a larger proposed wetland network.

At the site scale, the project adapts ancestral water-seeding practices to capture, slow, store, and redistribute seasonal runoff. Regraded channels, shallow basins, and reused mining roads extend wetness into the dry season, while nest-inspired topographies create gradients of water depth and salinity for nesting, foraging, resting, and refuge. Existing mining structures are retained and repurposed for rescue, quarantine, recovery, monitoring, and community ritual.

Together, these strategies transform the physical traces of extraction into instruments of recovery, connecting water management, habitat restoration, Indigenous stewardship, and mine governance. Rather than treating closure as the end of extraction, the project positions it as an ongoing responsibility to sustain life across the basin.

09/08/2026

What makes a home feel like a home? In the project Co-Row, Matt Thibodeau (MUP '26) explores this question through a rowhouse co-living proposal for Washington Park, a neighborhood in the heart of Chicago's historic "Black Belt" whose population has fallen from 60,000 at its peak to just 11,000 today. The vacant land that patterns the neighborhood is the product of decades of redlining, urban renewal, and deliberate disinvestment. With Washington Park projected to grow for the first time in nearly 70 years, Co-Row asks how people with ties to the neighborhood could return, and how housing might rebuild its tight-knit community.

Developed in the studio "Home. House. Housing.", taught by Toni L. Griffin, the project draws on archival research and narrative interviews with South Side residents to uncover what makes a house a home: shared spaces, intergenerational friendships, and above all, time spent together.

Co-Row proposes three distinct co-living typologies built around the rowhouse—a form common in Washington Park before large-scale demolitions—to restitch the neighborhood's social fabric on its own terms.