Events

    2023 Dec 08

    Water Stories with the Artist Alia Farid

    12:00pm

    Location: 

    Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge

    Join the artist Alia Farid for a tour of Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis and a discussion of the artwork Chibayish, 2023. Chibayish is part of a larger group of works that Farid has developed since 2018, focused on the impact of extractive industries on southern Iraq and Kuwait's ecological and social fabric.

    ...

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    2023 Nov 18

    Water Stories with the Artist Evelyn Rydz

    1:00pm to 3:00pm

    Location: 

    Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge

    Join the artist and educator Evelyn Rydz for an afternoon of conversation and collective artmaking within the exhibition Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis, on view September 18–December 16, 2023.

    The exhibition presents artworks that tell alternative stories of water experience in the context of climate change, while encouraging viewers to appreciate the multivalent meaning of water and their own relationship to it. Rydz has repeatedly observed the increasing impacts on natural and cultural ecosystems throughout her various field...

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    2022 Nov 02

    Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: James Wines

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    James Wines – born in Chicago, IL 1932 – is the founder and president of SITE, an environmental art and architecture organization, chartered in New York City in 1970. He is the former Chairman of Environmental Design at Parsons School of Design and a retired Professor of Architecture at Penn State University. His architecture, landscape, and public space projects are based on a site-specific response to surrounding contexts. Prof. Wines’ educational philosophy advocates ‘integrative thinking,’ as a means of including...

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    2022 Oct 06

    Loeb Fellowship 50th Anniversary Symposium: Keynote by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. She co-edited the bestselling climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast...

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    2022 May 16

    Director’s Series | Life: The Arnold Arboretum as an Institution of Public Health

    7:00pm to 8:30pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum—Online

    The Arnold Arboretum's sesquicentennial Director's Series traces the Arnold’s significance in the landscape architecture movement, value for the people of Boston, and leadership in creating global connections between plants and people.

    Panelists include:

    • Dr. Michelle Kondo, Research Social Scientist, UDSA-Forest Service

    • Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space, City of Boston

    • Laurence Cotton, Consulting Producer, “Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing...

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    2021 Oct 04

    Spiro Pollalis, “Sustainability and Climate Change: From Science to Design”

    12:00pm to 1:30pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online

    The upcoming national investment in infrastructure is most welcomed; it will add jobs and stimulate the economy. However, it is imperative for the infrastructure to be sustainable, resilient, and mitigate climate change. How can that be ensured?

    Since its founding in 2008, the research at the Zofnass Program has focused on providing tools for designers and planners to measure the sustainability and resilience of infrastructure. Recently, the focus is on expanding the tools for mitigating climate change. Today, the outcome of the Zofnass Program empowers both sides: the design...

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    2020 Sep 23

    Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History

    12:00pm

    Location: 

    Online—Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard

    As the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow, Leslie M. Harris is completing “Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History.” She uses memoir and family, urban, and environmental histories to explore the multiple meanings of New Orleans in the nation, from its founding through its uncertain future amid climate change.

    ...

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    2020 Sep 21

    Kiley Fellow Lecture: Seth Denizen, "Thinking Through Soil: Case Study from the Mezquital Valley"

    12:00pm to 1:30pm

    Location: 

    Online—Harvard Graduate School of Design

    Almost 200,000 acres of land in the fertile Mezquital Valley are irrigated with the untreated sewage of Mexico City. Every drop of rain, urban runoff, industrial effluent, and sewage in Mexico City is sent to the Mezquital Valley through a 60 kilometer pipe. Soils in this valley have been continuously irrigated with urban wastewater since 1901, longer than any other soil in the world. The capacity of these soils to produce conditions in which agriculture can be practiced safely and produce healthy crops depends on a complex negotiation between soil...

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    2020 Sep 10

    Linda Shi, "Green Infrastructure Beyond Flood Risk Reduction"

    7:30pm to 9:00pm

    Location: 

    Online Event, Graduate School of Design

    This lecture explores whether it is possible to achieve both social justice and environmental sustainability in efforts to mitigate urban flood risk. The expanding scale of urban flooding under climate change has renewed interest in large-scale restoration projects that make room for water in metro centers. However, ecologically functioning green infrastructure – unleashed rivers, sprawling wetlands – is inconsistent with the current governance landscape of fragmented local governments seeking to maximize local land values and minimize affordable housing. Moreover, even...

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    2019 Oct 18

    Aging in [a] Place: Planning, Design & Spatial Justice in Aging Societies

    1:00pm to 5:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Stubbins, Room 112, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Today, public discussion and policy focuses on “aging in place” as a way to improve quality of life and reduce costs. However, in part because of socioeconomic differences and structural inequalities, not all older adults can live in or move to age-supportive communities, neighborhoods, or homes that match their values and needs. Differences in access to places to age well can take the form of spatial inequalities, such as inadequate market rate housing for older adults on fixed incomes.

    'Co-sponsored by the Harvard Joint Center for...

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    2019 Feb 19

    Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Dilip Da Cunha, “The Invention of Rivers”

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

    Separating land and water is not just an act of division; it is also an act of creation. It creates land and water from ubiquitous wetness, defining them on either side of a line. It is one of the first acts of design, setting out a ground of habitation with a line that has largely been naturalized in features such as the coastline, the riverbank, and the water’s edge. These features are subjected to artistic representations, scientific inquiry, infrastructural engineering, and landscape design with little awareness of the act that brought them...

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    2018 Nov 13

    Anna Heringer, “Architecture is a Tool to Improve Lives”

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    HGSD, Gund Hall, Stubbins Room 112, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

    “The vision behind, and motivation for my work is to explore and use architecture as a medium to strengthen cultural and individual confidence, to support local economies and to foster the ecological balance. Joyful living is a creative and active process and I am deeply interested in the sustainable development of our society and our built environment. For me, sustainability is a synonym for beauty: a building that is harmonious in its design, structure, technique and use of materials, as well as with the location, the environment, the user, the socio-...

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    2018 Nov 08

    Thomas Woltz, “Threatened Landscapes: Designed Countermeasures of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects”

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium 105, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

    Public parks are a source of civic identity for the communities they serve – inclusivity and authenticity are crucial. Similarly, memorials are bastions of democratic exchange and act as repositories of our cultural past and evolution. Thomas Woltz will present projects from the portfolio of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW) that demonstrate the power of the firm’s research-based design to reframe our relationship with civic, ecological, and cultural systems within the public realm. Lastly, Thomas will present NBW projects that...

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    2018 Apr 19

    Dr. Yvonne Cagle

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Room 105, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Dr. Yvonne Cagle is a NASA Astronaut and Family Physician. In 2008, Dr. Cagle retired as a Colonel in the USAF where she served as a Senior... Read more about Dr. Yvonne Cagle

    2018 Apr 13

    Housing Symposium, “Reframing Housing Development: How Changes in Design, Construction, and Regulation Could Reduce the Cost of Housing”

    1:00pm to 6:30pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Room 105, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge

    What can be done to reduce the cost of housing, particularly in the United States? To help answer this question, we will bring together a diverse mix of people... Read more about Housing Symposium, “Reframing Housing Development: How Changes in Design, Construction, and Regulation Could Reduce the Cost of Housing”

    2018 Apr 03

    Harvard HouseZero Typology Symposium

    4:00pm to 6:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Room 105, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge

    The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) retrofitted its headquarters, a pre-1940s house in Cambridge, MA, into a first-of-its-kind test case to demonstrate unprecedented levels of building efficiency and promote substantial shifts in the design and operation of existing buildings. Dubbed “HouseZero,” the project aims to prove that ultra-efficient retrofits can, indeed, be achieved...

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    2018 Mar 02

    Mark Joseph and Amy Khare, "Succeeding Where Mixed-Income Transformation Falls Short: A Path to Equity and Inclusion in Our Cities

    12:00pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Stubbins Room 112, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Drawing on their work examining the costs and consequences of racial segregation and the concentration of poverty and affluence as well as the... Read more about Mark Joseph and Amy Khare, "Succeeding Where Mixed-Income Transformation Falls Short: A Path to Equity and Inclusion in Our Cities