A popular J-term for MUPs, “Retrofitting Suburbia,” led by current Loeb Fellows Lynn Richards and Deanna VanBuren, dealt with the possibilities of revitalizing abandoned or underutilized suburban properties. Fourteen students explored policy and design strategies to facilitate and create incentives for redevelopment in the two-day class.
Loeb Fellows saw the Harvard University January term as an opportunity to dig into their interests, work closely with GSD students and - by the way - solve some thorny real-world challenges. They designed 4 dynamic courses based on their passions. Read more in the LOEBlog Image: Lynn Richards with students in Retrofitting Suburbia
The final review of the Master of Urban Planning first semester core studio was all about big visions, as students examined the visions and novel physical interventions of influential urban plans from the western planning canon.
Plan Downtown Malden (find the full document here) is a project of the Second…
The gigantic pop-up city established for the Hindu festival Kumbh Mela is the perfect crucible for interdisciplinary research. This January 8 faculty and 20 students from the GSD and other Harvard schools are traveling to northern India for fieldwork for the project “Mapping Kumbh Mela.” The initiative is co-led by Rahul Mehrotra (chair of the department of urban design and planning) and Diana Eck (affiliated professor to UPD) with the South Asia Initiative, FAS, HBS and SPH. Read "Mapping the Kumbh Mela" in the Times of India.
GSD students will display the wide range of the school's research when Penn State holds its 1st "Nature of Spatial Practices" conference this Friday. The conference will examine how spatial practice, education and political discourse are responding to recent changes in technology, mobility and socio-cultural patterns.
Krzysztof Wodiczko’s (professor in residence in art, design, and the public domain) Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, a project designed with Julian Bonder, was recently nominated for the 2013 European Union Mies van der Rohe Prize.
A partnership including several GSD alums just won a major bid for the first-of-its-kind modular building of micro-units in NYC. Alphonse Lembo (MUP '10) of Monadnock Development led the team which included Eric Bunge (MArch '96) and Mimi Hoang (MArch '98) of nArchitects. Listen to an interview with Eric Bunge on WBUR's Here and Now.
In a profile in Harvard Magazine, professor of urban planning Ann Forsyth talks about why she’s taken up biking and why, in order to improve cities, she feels it’s necessary to look to the suburbs. Read the “Harvard Portrait.”
Loeb fellows and GSD faculty are applying their talents to the challenges of revitalizing Detroit in the Detroit Works Project. Toni Griffin (LF 1998 and adjunct associate professor of urban planning) led the Detroit Works’ technical team and Dan Pitera (LF 2005 and associate professor of architecture), director of Detroit Collaborative Design Center, oversaw community outreach. Chris Reed’s (adjunct associate professor of landscape architecture) firm Stoss Landscape Urbanism contributed to landscape, ecology and open space planning. Read "Stepping Up for the Future of Detroit" in the LOEBlog.