Events

    Water Stories with the Artist Alia Farid

    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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    Water Stories with the Artist Evelyn Rydz

    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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    The State of Housing Design 2023

    Location: 

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

    What is the state of housing design in the US? In particular, how are architects of new single- and multi-family housing responding to issues such as the warming climate, the affordability crisis, increasing regulations and construction costs, and the demand for new unit types that better reflect today's demographic realities?

    These questions will be the focus of a half-day event marking the release of The State of Housing Design 2023, a new book that examines themes in housing design, explored through over 100 recent buildings in the US. The event will feature panels...

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    Our Artificial Nature: Perspectives on Design for an Era of Environmental Change

    Location: 

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

    On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Our Artificial Nature, featuring Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities core and affiliated research faculty, the GSD hosts a candid dialogue on the trajectory of design research and practice in response to environmental change.

    Carson Chan, curator of the concurrent MoMA exhibition Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism, will engage GSD faculty in a conversation about past design speculations, current research, and practice futures.

    The conversation will address the cultural...

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    Film Screening: Wild Life

    Location: 

    Harvard Divinity School, James Room (Swartz Hall), 45 Francis Ave., Cambridge

    Join us for a public screening of Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhely and Jimmy Chin's extraordinary film Wild Life—a story of love, wildness, and restoration in Patagonia, Chile. The film follows conservationist Kris Tompkins on an epic decades-spanning love story as wild as the landscapes she dedicated her life to protecting.

    A discussion on the film will follow the screening. Special guests include Kris Tompkins and Chai Valarhelyi in conversation with guest curator Geralyn Dreyfous and HDS writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams.

    ...

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    Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis Opening Event

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    In this opening discussion for the exhibition, Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis, exhibition curator and faculty director Jinah Kim will engage in conversation with art historian Yukio Lippit and Radcliffe’s curator of exhibitions, Meg Rotzel.

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute's exhibition, Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis (on view September 18–December 16, 2023), presents artworks that tell alternative stories of water experiences in the context of climate change. They treat water not as a...

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    Art, Activism, and Climate Change: Conversation with Angélique Kidjo and Vijay Iyer

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University present a series of virtual programs focusing on the intersection of art, activism and climate change. The second program in the series will feature Angélique Kidjo in conversation with Vijay Iyer.

    Learn more and RSVP.

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    Art, Activism, and Climate Change: Conversation with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University present a series of virtual programs focusing on the intersection of art, activism, and climate change. The first program in the series will feature Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

    Learn more and RSVP.

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    Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: James Wines

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

    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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    Screening of Taming the Garden

    Location: 

    Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies, 1730 Cambridge St., Room S010, Cambridge

    Georgian director Salomé Jashi's 2021 film Taming the Garden tells the story of a powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, who has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarin plantations. The film moves the concept of uprooting...

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    ECOLOGICAL TIME IN TIME-BASED MEDIA ART

    Location: 

    Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard—Online

    Media and video art practice of the last twenty years coincided with the harrowing expansion of climate degradation. While the effects of climate change had been anticipated before 2000, they took shape ubiquitously and lethally post-2000, bringing new challenges about whether and how to imagine a future for shared life on the planet. These effects coincided also with a deeper historical understanding of how we got here, tracking the history of extractive economies and their imbrication with the forces of gender, race, colonialism, and a human-centered anthropocentricism.

    This...

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

    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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    Design Impact – Following the Sun: Design Futures at the Intersection of Health, Equity, & Climate Change

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online

    Design Impact – Following the Sun: Design Futures at the Intersection of Health, Equity and Climate Change is a global virtual summit sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Council. Launching Thursday, September 23, the summit brings together an outstanding roster of global leaders to share their work and vision at the intersection of health, climate change and equity. This inspiring, two-day virtual summit transcends regional and national boundaries to unite our global community of practice, challenging us to use design as a tool for actionable,...

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    Lecture: [Re]Constructing Real Estate: The Question of Value

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online

    For this event with the Harvard Graduate School of Design, speaker Emmanuel Pratt will contextualize the historical degeneration vs. regeneration of The Commonwealth to present date, lead viewers on a virtual site visit, and share some upcoming developments emerging across a network of value-based partners.

    Speaker:
    Emmanuel Pratt, LF ‘17, received a BArch (1999) from Cornell University and an MSAUD (Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design, 2003) from Columbia University. From 2011 to 2019, Pratt served as the director of aquaponics at Chicago...

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

    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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    Linda Shi, "Green Infrastructure Beyond Flood Risk Reduction"

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

    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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    Lecture: Romy Hecht, "The Green Ideal: Botanical Practices and the Creation of Santiago’s Civic Landscape"

    Location: 

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

    Join the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a lecture delivered by Romy Hecht.

    Romy Hecht is a Professor at the School of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC), where she gives courses and research seminars on historical narratives and design theories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century landscapes. As an author and recipient of National Grants and research fellowships, Hecht has developed a fundamental task in the studies of landscape architecture in Latin America. She has focused on constructing a comprehensive history of Chile’s landscape...

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