Harvard Graduate School of Design

Assembled in honor of Eduard F. Sekler, this collection is a fitting tribute to a man who has been instrumental in restoring history to a prominent place in contemporary architecture. In 22 essays, distinguished scholars and designers combine the insights of history, theory, and practice to reveal the evolution of design thought and methods.

Two Squares examines the changing role of public space in the cities of Beirut and Istanbul as they undergo major redevelopment. The study of Beirut looks at the redesign of Martyrs’ Square, and in Istanbul, the focus is on Sirkeci Square.

Focusing on six recent projects, this publication presents the architecture of renowned Turkish architect Han Tümertekin to the English-speaking world. The book examines in detail his ability to engage in some of the more difficult issues confronting architects throughout the world today, such as suburban tract development, landscape and environment, and the challenges of practicing in different countries throughout the world. It is the first of a new series of occasional monographs on contemporary designers in the Middle East and Muslim world.

“My proximity to this path’s every turn…offers an auspicious vantage point from which to reflect on the implications of architecture in one’s life. I now gather some observations, memories, and moments, all of which emerge through one biographical detail or another…”—From an essay by Carlos Jiménez

“What I was looking for…was probably a return to the main principles of modernism. I was trying to look for the very basics of architecture: a simple structure, simple construction methods, and straightforward spatial conditions… The house was a laboratory where I was looking back to where the tradition of modernity started.”—Enrique Norten [from an interview]

Two essays and a set of original diagrams consider the parameters of the “something beyond” in James Carpenter’s projects. Photographs and extended captions from Carpenter complete this book’s documentation of key projects.

In Aleppo, Busquets describes the value of successful urban rehabilitation in this historic setting. The Syrian city of Aleppo won the prestigious Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design for its urban renewal efforts and Busquets offers an innovative take on how these rehabilitation projects are accomplished effectively.

Envisioned as a new urban model for sculpture parks, the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park not only brings art outside the museum walls but also brings the park into the landscape of the city. This study offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the city and explore some hypotheses about the wider meaning of an urban design project.

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are shantytowns that lack even the most basic infrastructure and services. The Favela-Bairro Project, featuring the work of Jorge Mario Jáuregui Architects, seeks to turn these blighted areas into functioning neighborhoods, or bairros.

“When one reads or hears about the vicissitudes of the project’s evolution—about the long approval processes and the large cast of characters—it all seems like an excellent piece of narrative, a great plot replete with subplots leading us to intense episodes of dramatic action.”—from the Introduction

Color is a ubiquitous yet essential part of the city, creating and shaping urban form. Volume 3 of New Geographies brings together artists and designers, anthropologists, geographers, historians, and philosophers with the aim of exploring the potency, the interaction, and the neglected design possibilities of color at the scale of the city.

The scale of vision, viewpoint, and qualification of space made possible by satellite imagery reframes contemporary debates on design, agency, and territory. Volume 4 of New Geographies features articles and projects that critically address the relationship of space with such modes of representation.

The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon River that runs through Seoul, Korea, merits recognition as a seminal project in contemporary urban design. In this well-illustrated volume, contributors consider the ecological, infrastructural, and urban impacts of this exceptional project at the heart of the city.

Essays in The Superlative City examine the speed and aesthetic brashness of Dubai’s development in the early twenty-first century. Considering both visually arresting and less sensational elements of architecture, they situate Dubai’s urbanism in its contexts of architecture, urban planning and design, and historical and cultural processes.

Deserts are becoming increasingly popular tourist destinations. However, the growth of this tourism niche raises particular challenges, jeopardizing their fragile ecosystems and straining scarce resources. This book seeks to analyze the relationship between tourism and the sustainable development of those territories, addressing issues raised by architecture, landscape design, and planning.

A collaborative work among historians, literary specialists, and architects, this collection is directed at filling the gap in our knowledge about minority neighborhoods in the southern Mediterranean.

Landscapes of Development analyzes the impact of development policies on the physical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean since the end of World War II. Essays examine formal manifestations of development, focusing on urban and rural schemes, housing projects, and agro-landscapes and dams from Israel to Turkey, and from Greece to Syria.

Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir have been the major poles of growth and development in Turkey since the Republic was formed, although these three cities have followed very different paths. Through a series of three case studies and an introduction by Turkey’s most renowned urban historian and theorist, Ilhan Tekeli, the book studies the rise of these three main urban centers in Turkey and their roles in organizing the territory and its future reorganization.

Studio Works 11 features outstanding Harvard Graduate School of Design student work from 2003–2004 and 2004–2005, with material from exhibitions, research seminars, and thesis projects. Gund Hall’s open work spaces are vibrant with the talent and energy of future architects, landscape architects, and urban designers and planners.

Studio Works 10 features outstanding Harvard Graduate School of Design student work from 2001–2002 and 2002–2003, with material from exhibitions, research seminars, and thesis projects. Gund Hall’s open work spaces are vibrant with the talent and energy of future architects, landscape architects, and urban designers and planners.

At the intersection of three continents, the Mediterranean is one of the most important areas on earth. In New Geographies, 5, contributors from a variety of disciplines recast “the Mediterranean” as a twenty-first-century geographic entity, challenging conventional boundaries and dismantling prevailing political, spatial, and cultural meanings.

Many discussions of architectural metabolism fail to integrate formal, spatial, and material attributes. New Geographies, 6 traces alternative, synthetic routes to design based on better understanding the relation between metabolic models and concepts and the formal, physical, and material specificities of spatial structures across scales.

New Geographies, 7 examines the forms, imprints, places, and territories of information and communication technologies (ICTs) through spatially grounded and nuanced accounts of the hybrid conditions that ICTs generate, the scales at which they operate, and how this production of space is manifested in both advanced and emerging economies.

Spatializing Politics is an anthology of emerging scholarship that treats built and imagined spaces as critical to knowing political power. Essays illustrate how buildings and landscapes as disparate as Rust Belt railway stations and rural Rwandan hills become tools of political action and frameworks for political authority.

Airports are central to the life of cities but have remained relatively peripheral in design discourse. In Airport Landscape, case study projects for the ecological enhancement of operating airports and the conversion of abandoned airports demonstrate, through a range of practices, the significance of airports as sites of design.

As a metaphor, the island has been a fecund source of inspiration across many domains. Yet the concept seems to contradict trends toward interconnectedness in the geographic and design fields. An “atlas” of islands, New Geographies, 8 explores the new limits of islandness and gathers examples to reassert its relevance for design disciplines.

“Posthuman” signals a historical condition in which the coordinates of human existence on the planet are altered by profound technological, ecological, biopolitical, and spatial transformations. Engendering new ways of being in the world, this condition challenges long-established definitions of the ‘human’ and of the human environment.

This issue of New Geographies aims to foreground the significance of political thinking in the process of space production. It proposes the concept of commons as a mode of thinking that challenges assumptions in the design disciplines such as public and private spaces, local and regional geographies, and capital and state interventions.

Pairs is a student-led journal at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design dedicated to conversations about design that are down to earth and unguarded. Pairs 02 features conversations with Rashid bin Shabib, Sara Hendren, Jorge Silvetti, and Sumayya Vally, among others.

Empty Plinths responds to the debate around the Columbus monument in Mexico City and probes the unstable narratives behind other memorials and public sculptures in the city. This collection of essays, interviews, artistic contributions, and public policy proposals reveals and reframes the histories embedded within contested public spaces in Mexico.

Empty Plinths responds to the debate around the Columbus monument in Mexico City and probes the unstable narratives behind other memorials and public sculptures in the city. This collection of essays, interviews, artistic contributions, and public policy proposals reveals and reframes the histories embedded within contested public spaces in Mexico.

Architect Frida Escobedo’s early project Split Subject deconstructs a fraught allegory of national identity and modernism in Mexico. Frida Escobedo: Split Subject unpacks it and traces its influence throughout her career, and includes essays by Julieta Gonzalez, Alejandro Hernández, Erika Naginski, Doris Sommer and José Falconi, and Irene Sunwoo.

Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech presents a theory of contemporary architecture that spans the work of 112 practices in 750 images. It features essays on 21st-century architecture by Catherine Ingraham, Lucia Allais, Stan Allen, Phillip Denny, Edward Eigen, Sylvia Lavin, Antoine Picon, Marrikka Trotter, and others.

Though celebrated at the peak of his career, Australian architect John Andrews’ fame waned over time. His body of work exemplifies the late-modern development of architecture and deserves to be better known. John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense examines his most important buildings and presents his local and international legacy.

Pairs is a student-led journal at Harvard University Graduate School of Design dedicated to design conversations. Pairs 03 features Thomas Demand, Mindy Seu, Mira Henry and Matthew Au, Alfredo Thiermann, Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, Anne Lacaton, Edward Eigen, Katarina Burin, Marrikka Trotter, Christopher C. M. Lee, Keller Easterling, and others.