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Tag: Gund Hall

  • Thursday, November 16, 6:30 pm – Our Artificial Nature: Perspectives on Design for an Era of Environmental Change

    On the tenth anniversary of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, the Druker Design Gallery exhibition Our Artificial Nature: Perspectives on Design for an Era of Environmental Change aims to situate emerging research within a history of design and solidify a dialogue around a new ecological paradigm. Carson Chan, Director, Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will engage GSD faculty in a conversation about past design speculations, current research, and practice.

    The conversation will address the cultural, social, and technological processes emerging within design discourse that aim to address ecological imperatives. The event will call attention to the idea that design practice is the creation of the artificial, as well as the imagination of our constructed environment in a moment when our designed and natural worlds are fused. Both the event and exhibition aim to situate current research within a history of design for environmental change, framing new paradigms for environmental design.

    This event is part of ArtsThursdays, a university-wide initiative supported by Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA). Free and open to the public in the Gund Hall Piper Auditorium at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on November 16 from 6:30 – 8. For complete information visit www.gsd.harvard.edu

  • Friday, November 3, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm – Hydraulic Geographies: Atlas of the Urban Water in the Andean Region

    Latin America contains 31% of the world’s water sources. Adding in the Caribbean, drinking water coverage in the area reaches 94% compared to developing countries. However, 37 million people still do not have access to water, and 100 million lack access to sanitation (World Bank). Chile, for its part, has 99% drinking water coverage. However, a large amount of its territory is in a continental zone that will be strongly affected by the future consequences of climate change, both because of droughts and floods, a product of the receding of the Andean glaciers and of the evolution of projected precipitation patterns. Thus, climate change will force the Andean regions to rethink how they manage their water resources and the infrastructure that supports their management. Better collection, storage, and distribution systems will be essential when promoting ecological and socially sustainable development. It is necessary to have an integrated view of resources and the infrastructure that manages them, thinking about the multiple dimensions to which these could cohesively respond.

    On November 3, the Harvard Graduate School of Design will feature Tomás Folch, in Gund Hall 112, for a free public lecture. He is currently a professor and Co-Director of the Center for Ecology, Landscape and Urbanism –CEPU- of the Design Lab of the Adolfo Ibañez University in Santiago and a Founding Partner at PAUR. Folch earned his undergraduate Architecture and Master of Architecture degrees from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, and his Masters in Landscape Architecture from the GSD.

    Trained as an architect, his professional work has expanded the scales of architecture, urban design, and landscape through professional experience with production on heritage and urban recovery projects, housing and social equipment, landscape architecture, and territorial planning. He is co-founder with Sofia Armanet of Paisaje Urbano -PAUR- where their work has been oriented to public space and includes built projects such as urban parks in informal areas, restoration designs for urban wetlands in Santiago, and consultancy for international agencies for the informal city in Latin.

    His work has been featured in international exhibitions, such as the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture and the 2006 Architecture Biennial of Chile in the category of emerging generation. He has received numerous awards, such as the National Exhibition Award in the Architecture Biennial of Santiago 2008, the South-South Professional Award of the XX Architecture Biennial of Chile 2017 for being the proposal more effective in establishing a horizontal dialogue with the geographies of the global south, and the PAU 2017 Urban Contribution Award in the categories of Best Height Building Project and Best Urban Project for Subsidized Housing.

  • Tuesday, October 31, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Toru Mitani

    Is there any essential difference between the detail design of landscape architecture and of architecture? It is very common to discuss detail design in the architectural realm, as evidenced by a number of research works and publications focusing on the rationality and logics of the wooden structure of traditional Japanese architecture that praise its beauty. On the other hand, it is not so easy to find any discussion of detail designs of the traditional gardens in Japan, because most focus on the semantics and symbolization of their style. For example, the stone formation in the dry garden has been explained from the viewpoint of Buddhist symbolization or sometimes of the spiritual representation, and not from the viewpoint of its functional, structural reason, in other words, as a matter of engineering.

    Japanese-based landscape architect Toru Mitani discusses these and other considerations with reference to the concurrent Harvard Graduate School of Design exhibition featuring his ongoing work and collaborative projects with his firm ‘studio on site.’The lecture will take place Tuesday, October 31 from 6:30 – 8:30 in Gund Hall Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge. Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Thursday, October 5, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Teresa Moller

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design presents a free lecture by Teresa Moller on Thursday, October 5 beginning at 6:30 pm in  Gund Hall’s Piper Auditorium on Quincy Street in Cambridge. The studio Teresa Moller y Asociados has been working for the past 35 years in the world of Landscape Architecture. The office strongly believes in the power of simplicity. A careful observation and awareness of the existing landscape is the key for developing sociocultural projects and bringing nature accessible to people and for them to find balance in a constant changing urban environment.

    The diverse landscapes of Chile have been the setting for the majority of the studio’s projects since its founding. Distinct palettes of plants and materials are utilized as project locations range from the Atacama Desert in the north to the Lakes Region of the south as well as from the Pacific Coast in the east to the Andes mountain range in the west. This diversity has developed a way of working in the studio that approaches each project by examining the valuable elements existing in the site along with the surrounding natural systems, local ecology, and architecture. Thus, every project is a direct and unique result of its environment.

    The work has an architectural base, a geometry that structures the landscape over which the vegetation interacts more freely. Moller’s work is characterized by its simplicity, and she strongly believes that in that simplicity lays its force. This force unites nature with architecture and provides a point of interaction between humans and their surroundings. The studio has developed international projects, including in China, Germany, Argentina, and Australia. The studio works in the realms of residential, public urban space, commercial, institutional and agricultural settings with many built projects to date. The goal of the office is always to collaborate with the architects and clients, using each participant’s strengths and knowledge to arrive at an integrated design solution that is both efficient and elegant.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Friday, March 31, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Mexico City at a Crossroads: Designing an Urban Future in the Era of Climate Change

    Join the Harvard Graduate School of Design on Friday, March 31 from 6:30 – 8:30 in Gund Hall’s Piper Auditorium, Quincy Street in Cambridge, for the Keynote Lecture for Mexico City at a Crossroads: Designing an Urban Future in the Era of Climate Change.

    Mexico City’s Mayor Miguel Mancera will discuss current challenges for the nation’s capital city, which was recently named the World Design Capital for 2018 by ICSID. The mayor will share lessons learned so far and engage in a dialogue about the built environmental future of CDMX (Ciudad de México) going forward. Mexico City has emerged out of a complex history to take a role as a leading global metropolis but is now in flux. Renowned for its architecture and design aesthetics, the city also faces major infrastructural scarcities in transportation, water supply, and affordable housing. Its enormous scale poses environmental, energy, and public health problems associated with pollution, carbon emissions, and urban sprawl. Recent efforts to write a new city constitution have amplified conflicts over how to build, govern, and finance its future. This keynote lecture—which launches a day-long conference on Harvard’s campus sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies that will include participation by governing officials and activists as well as leading researchers on CDMX—will highlight Mexico City’s tripartite identity as global leader, national powerhouse, and sovereign urban authority confronting the multi-scalar territorial and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.

    Co-sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Interdisciplinary Urbanism Initiative, Department of Urban Planning and Design.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.  Free and open to the public.  Image from www.planetsave.com.

  • Tuesday, March 7, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Planting in the Public Realm: Projects and Projections

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design will conduct a panel discussion on Tuesday, March 7 from 6:30 – 8:30 in Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Quincy Street in Cambridge.

    Plant life, long regarded in cities as an amenity, has throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries also become an accepted necessity integral to the urban fabric. Yet, there are multiple challenges facing plants and planting design in urban areas. Pollution, climate change, increasingly restricted space, and insufficient or nonexistent public budgets for plants are only some of the factors that make it difficult for vegetation in our cities to survive. Yet numerous new public urban parks have been created, tree planting programs persist, new plant cultivars are developed, spontaneous plant growth is studied, and new planting design paradigms are proposed.

    In a series of short presentations and a moderated discussion, landscape architects, planting designers, and ecologists will assess the current state of the art in planting the public realm. The event seeks to draw out ideas for how plants can be used in the future design of urbanizing areas to create healthy, sustainable, inclusive, and appealing environments. What is the importance of planting the public realm today, and what are its biggest challenges? What are the roles of landscape architects, designers, ecologists, and plant scientists in accommodating plant life in cities and in areas that are becoming urbanized, and are we beyond botanical xenophobia? Moderated by author Sonja Dümpelmann, associate professor of landscape architecture, with Steven Handel, visiting professor in landscape architecture; Noel Kingsbury, writer and garden designer; Norbert Kühn, TU Berlin; Doug Reed MLA ’81, lecturer in landscape; and Matthew Urbanski MLA ’89, associate professor in practice of landscape architecture.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. The event is free and open to the public.

  • Tuesday, February 21, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Toward an Urban Ecology

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design will host a lecture by Kate Orff in Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30.

    Kate Orff, RLA, is the founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design studio based in New York City, and author of Toward an Urban Ecology, a book about the practice. SCAPE re-conceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. A range of participatory and science-based strategies will be discussed and shown in the lecture through the lens of the office’s work, featuring projects, collaborators, and design methods that advance urban ecological design.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. The event is free and open to the public.

  • Wednesday, April 15, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – An Evening with Adriaan Geuze

    As a cofounder of West 8, Adriaan Geuze has established an international reputation based on a unique approach to design, relating contemporary culture, urban identity, architecture, public space, and engineering in the individual project, always taking the context into account. With an international team of 70 architects, urban designers, landscape architects and industrial engineers, West 8 has implemented projects such as Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam, Governor’s Island in New York, Madrid Rio, and Miami Beach SoundScape Park (pictured.) He will speak on Wednesday, April 15, from 6:30 – 8 in the Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge. This Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture is an annual honorific lecture on landscape, free and open to the public. For more information contact events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Wednesday, November 12, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Topology: On Sensing and Conceiving Landscape

    The invention of landscape has always oscillated between a history of beliefs in nature, with its many representations, and a history of terrain measurements through various techniques of appropriation. In his talk sponsored by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design on Wednesday, November 12, from 6:30 – 8 in the Piper Auditorium of Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge, Christophe Girot will consider the longstanding balance between culture and its instruments for sensing and conceiving a landscape, noting that the particular representation of landscape that we hold true today has roots in the dialogue between ars and techne that has characterized every epoch. The aim of this talk and discussion is to open a window on topology’s shifting point of view with regard to this form of interdependence that will considerably affect our ability to act and perform effectively on landscape’s reality. Girot is chair of Landscape Architecture at the Institute of Landscape Architecture, ETH Zürich.

    For accessibility accommodations please contact the events office two weeks in advance at (617)-496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.  Free and open to the public.

  • Tuesday, October 28, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Olmsted Lecture: On the Theoretical and Practical Development of Landscape Architecture

    The Harvard University Graduate School of Design will present its Olmsted Lecture on Tuesday, October 28, from 6:30 – 8 in the Piper Auditorium of Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge.  The speaker will be Joseph Disponzio, and his topic is On the Theoretical and Practical Development of Landscape Architecture.

    Exploring the transformation of the modeling of land from garden-making to landscape architecture, this lecture by Joseph Disponzio will establish the intellectual origins of landscape architecture in relation to the new garden practices that emerged during the 18th century, and the texts that codified these practices, amid Enlightenment-era changes in the understanding of nature. Disponzio is Preservation Landscape Architect for the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation, and Director of the Landscape Design program at Columbia University. He has taught at several institutions, published widely on garden history from the 18th century to the present, and is currently writing introductions for an edition of N. Vergnaud’s L’Art de créer les jardins (1835) and a translation of Jean-Marie Morel’s Théorie des jardins (1776).

    For accessibility issues, please contact the events office two weeks in advance at (617)-496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. Free and open to the public.