America

Harvard Design Magazine, number 48,

“A terrible mechanism [is] on the march, its gears multiplying.” So begins the first essay of the 48th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, guest edited by Mark Lee, chair of the department of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Florencia Rodriguez, editorial director of -Ness Magazine. The issue takes as its theme the slippery and ambiguous figure of “America,” seen through the lens of the built and unbuilt environment. Americanization—once the “terrible mechanism” bent on pressing capitalist values on emerging economies everywhere—is now in retreat, eclipsed by the more urgent domestic concerns of pandemic and climate change, racial injustice and domestic radicalization. The very notion of what constitutes America is ripe for redefinition.

The America Issue of Harvard Design Magazine, featuring a new design and art direction by Alexis Mark, invites historians, architects, landscape architects, urban designers, theorists, curators, artists, and planners to reflect on the country’s past and present, and to imagine sustainable futures. Projects, taxonomies, dialogues, essays, and spatial interpretations explore possible Americas. They allow us to delve into issues relevant to small cities, towns, and rural areas—as well as major urban centers—and to study barriers and opportunities facing communities across the country.

Highlights of the issue include essays by Ana María LeonEdward Eigen, Sylvia Lavin, Victor J. Jones, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, and Zoë Ryan, as well as dialogues between Paul Andersen and Sam Jacob, Michelle Wilkinson and Adrienne Brown, Mimi Zeiger and Ann Lui, Mark Lee and Michèle Lamy, David Hickey, Jennifer Bonner, and Mack Scogin, Maurice Cox and Rahul Mehrotra, Shaun Donovan and Jerold Kayden, and Michael Van Valkenburg and Henry N. Cobb. A photography essay by Marianne Mueller honors Robert Frank, and a bibliography of readings on race and architecture encourages further exploration of America as a country, an idea, and a history.

Editorial Director: Julie Cirelli
Production Manager: Meghan Ryan Sandberg
Design and art direction: Alexis Mark

218 pages, 8.85 x 11.63 inches
ISSN 1093-4421
ISBN 978-1-934510-78-0
$16

Published by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Spring 2021.