History is a manner of thinking about the world, grounded in the places we design, construct, and inhabit. Design offers the opportunity to re-imagine the world around us, today and for the future. We might draw from history, or draw upon it; certainly, it is to be hoped that we are drawn to it, as designers and historians. The purpose of landscape history—not reducible to memory nor timelines nor styles—is to produce and share knowledge of how we have come to be who and where we are. We will gather across studios we collectively inhabit to draw attention to and lessons from the design of history. We will investigate the relationship of history as a craft and design as a mode of inquiry. As landscape historians who have chosen to teach and do their scholarship within the GSD and Harvard design community, we investigate the role of history and its methods and narratives in the understanding of place and cultural relationships to site and landscape. By thinking like a historian, designers might re-imagine both their future and our collective future.

Learn more and RSVP for Think Like a Historian, Imagine Like a Designer: A Conversation on Landscape History and Design Education.