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The Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) has selected Herzog & de Meuron and Beyer Blinder Belle as the design team for a “significant transformation” of the School’s iconic Gund Hall campus building.
The proposed expansion will include the integration of a new space into the School’s existing structure, with the goal of creating a facility which “will embody the School’s visionary and cross-disciplinary work at the intersection of design, pedagogy, research, and practice."
The MIT Press, in collaboration with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is set to digitize landmark out-of-print architecture and urban studies books published by the MIT Press, making them freely accessible online for discovery and research. Aided by a $157,000 grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, MIT Press are enabled to digitize a collection of “image-rich and intellectually prized architecture and urban studies titles” complete with the commissioning of new forewords for the works. Following the project’s completion, MIT Press intends to distribute a minimum of 25 titles for free on several platforms, including its own ebook service.
Among the titles to be released are Francoise Choay’s “The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism,” which links modern theory with classical and Renaissance architecture, and John Templer’s “The Staircase,” regarded as the first theoretical and historical analysis of the elemental stair. Books on the subject of famous architects will also be released, such as Donald Leslie Johnson’s “Frank Lloyd Wright vs. America: The 1930s” and Grant Hildebrand’s “On Leon Battista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories.”
On a prominent, highly visible site within Harvard University’s Allston Campus, a celebration of the beauty of infrastructure is beginning to take shape. Designed by Boston-based Leers Weinzapfel Associates, the 58,000 square foot Allston Campus District Energy Facility (DEF) represents a new, highly efficient infrastructure typology, delivering electricity and water for the campus, whilst simultaneously showcasing the intricate complexity of engineering and design.
Future cities have captured our imaginations for centuries. From Thomas F. Anderson’s 1900 vision for a Future Boston, through Le Corbusier’s 1924 Ville Radieuse, to modern ‘future-proof’ cities such as Songdo, South Korea, architects and town planners have considered how cities will respond to the movement of people, capital, technology, and ideas.
Today, groups such as the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT have been created with the goal of suggesting ideas for the city of tomorrow. Through a technique known as ‘Futurecraft’, the Senseable City Lab places the designer in a possible future environment and asks them to generate design proposals which could enhance daily life. As we are about to see, some of their ideas would make heads turn even in a galaxy far far away.
The Mapdwell Project is a collaborative effort of researchers, academics, and professionals from MIT from a range of fields - design, building technology, engineering, environmental sciences, finance, and computer sciences - to develop a community resource of research-driven and tested information of sustainable practices.
The Sustainable Design Lab at MIT collaborated with design studio MoDE (Modern Development Studio), which designed the online viewer.
The fundamental goal of Mapdwell is to deliver a tool that enables communities to make informed decisions about how to incorporate sustainable practices into their lifestyles through community awareness, and access to information about energy efficiency and smart development.
More details on this tool after the break.
.jpg?1532615939 "The Trays at Gund Hall. Image Courtesy of Harvard GSD")
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