Harvard Design Magazine #49: “Publics” Issue Launch and Conversation

Event Description

In a world of increasing polarization and boundary-drawing manifest at multiple scales, what has happened to the notion of “the public”? Is there evidence that collective understanding of who belongs in our neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations is changing? And to what extent have the urban planning and design professions enabled or constrained these transformations? The 49th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, guest-edited by Anita Berrizbeitia and Diane Davis, addresses “the status of the public” in political and social discourse, in design thinking and practice, and in the built environment itself. We ask leading public intellectuals, scholars, and practitioners in architecture, urban planning, landscape design, law, and the social sciences and humanities to join us in pondering the fate of the public in a world where challenges to collective responsibility and xenophobic thinking are becoming ever more dominant.

The event will be introduced by Harvard Design Magazine’s Editorial Director, Julie Cirelli.

Speakers

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across built environment disciplines, including architecture, research, design, and public art.  Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen. Members have a broad range of skills and experience covering design, construction, furniture making, fabrication, brief development, urban and public realm design, organizational development, making, audio production, events programming and production, performance, carpentry, ceramics, product development, set design and theatre-making.

Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, and one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. He is the author of the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner (1978; 2nd ed., 2003); and the award-winning books, Streetwise (1990) and Code of the Street (1999); and The Cosmopolitan Canopy (2011). Dr. Anderson is the recipient of the 2017 Merit Award from the Eastern Sociological Society, the 2013 Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award, and the 2018 W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, both from the American Sociological Association.

Anita Berrizbeitia is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on design theories of modern and contemporary landscape architecture, the productive aspects of landscapes, and Latin American cities and landscapes. She was awarded the 2005/2006 Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she studied architecture at the Universidad Simon Bolivar before receiving a BA from Wellesley College and an MLA from the GSD. Read More

Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Before moving to the GSD in 2011, Davis served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she also had a term as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. Trained as a sociologist, Davis’s research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, comparative urban governance, socio-spatial practice in conflict cities, urban violence, and new territorial manifestations of sovereignty. Her books include Transforming Urban Transport (with Alan Altshuler) (Oxford University Press, 2018), Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (Indiana University Press, 2011), Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2004; named the ASA’s 2005 Best Book in Political Sociology), Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press 1994; Spanish translation 1999). Read More

Tali Hatuka an architect and urban planner, is a Professor of Urban Planning and the head of the Laboratory of Contemporary Urban Design, at Tel Aviv University. Her work is focused primarily on two fields: urban society and city design and development. Hatuka is the author and co-author of the books: The Design of Protest, Violent Acts and Urban Space in Contemporary Tel Aviv, The Factory, State-Neighborhood, The Planners, City-Industry and Land- Gardens. She also works as a city planner and urban designer, consulting with municipalities in Israel. Hatuka has received many awards, including being a Fulbright Scholar and a Marie Curie Scholar at MIT. She holds academic degrees from the Technion in Israel and Heriot-Watt University in the UK.

A. K. Sandoval-Strausz is director of the Latina/o Studies Program and associate professor of history at Penn State University. His books include Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City, which won the Caroline Bancroft History Prize and was a finalist for the Victor Villaseñor Book Award; Hotel: An American History; and Making Cities Global: The Transnational Turn in Urban History.

Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected].

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