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Harvard GSD Department of Landscape Architecture

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GLG Registration: https://tinyurl.com/33vcyp6h

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Please join the Department of Landscape Architecture and Carl Steinitz, Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Emeritus, for the Global to Local to Global Geodesign for Climate Change Mitigation (GLG) Workshop.

Registration is required (link in bio).

The Global to Local to Global (GLG) Climate Mitigation Project, in collaboration with Esri, has initiated an innovative workflow to address climate change mitigation through a structured framework designed to implement global-to-local-to-global projects. The GLG strategy creates a scalable geodesign workflow compatible across global, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and diverse jurisdictions and geographic scales directed to projected environmental changes by 2050. It utilizes climate science and optimization designs to inform national to local designs– which, in turn, informs national and global policy, as local implementation is vital for building climate resilience.

Geodesign - design at geographic scale - provides a collaborative approach that integrates multiple disciplines and uses geographical information systems (GIS)-based analytic and design tools to help explore alternative future scenarios in response to stated problems. In this workshop, participants will work in groups to simulate commitments to climate mitigation projects at the regional or local scale, in consultation with national NDCs, climate, land use, land cover, and bio-regional data and their projections to 2050. Their selections will be used to quickly generate a global geospatial model of climate-driven scenarios resulting from combined mitigation actions, to which groups will be asked to respond to how global and national outcomes may inform future design conditions.

This in-person workshop is open to all from Harvard/MIT and participants from the broader academic community. No prior knowledge of GIS is required.

This event is presented and sponsored in part by the Harvard Graduate School of Design Department of Landscape Architecture.

@harvardgsd by @gsd_mla

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a month ago

Where Flamingos Return, Life Returns redefines lithium mine closure in the Salar de Atacama as a project of ecological justice.

Located in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest non-polar deserts on Earth, the project responds to a basin where life depends on fragile relations among water, salt, soil, and time. Today, this basin is also one of the world’s fastest-growing lithium extractive frontiers. Brine and groundwater pumping affect not only mining sites, but also interconnected lagoons, aquifers, bofedales, flamingo habitats, and Atacameño/Likanantay territories.

The project identifies a core contradiction: lithium extraction operates through a shared hydrological basin, while mine closure remains governed through fragmented policies and concession boundaries. Existing closure systems focus mainly on engineering stability, safety, and contamination control, without clearly requiring the recovery of hydrology, habitat networks, or bio-cultural systems.

In response, the project advances a Flamingo-Led Mine Closure Framework that uses policy as a design medium. Flamingo habitat becomes both a design guide and a living indicator of basin health. Their life-cycle needs are translated into measurable habitat conditions, monitoring thresholds, trigger rules, and mandatory actions. Through a Basin of Responsibility, shared monitoring, repair funding, and triggered accountability, closure expands from site stabilization to basin-scale repair.

At the Monturaqui-Negrillar-Tilopozo aquifer, this framework is tested through a repair prototype that reuses abandoned mining infrastructure and adapts ancestral seeding-water strategies to restore refugia wetlands. By linking policy, monitoring, memory, and site repair, the project positions landscape architecture as a mediator between lithium companies, conservation, and Atacameño communities, opening a more just post-extractive future.

Option Studio- STU 1407: The Intelligence of Scarcity：Lessons from Atacama

Professor： @pabloperezramos
TA: @a_laorilladelmar taken in Harvard Graduate School of Design by @gsd_mla

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5 months ago

In 2025, TNC's Dangermond Preserve had the privilege of hosting students from The Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The students were there to engage deeply with the complex, working landscape of the preserve and imagine landscape architecture projects that respond to the timely challenges of biodiversity conservation, land stewardship, climate resilience and human use.

Today, we’re spotlighting “Holding the Fog” by Angel Li, a project focused on Dangermond’s unique oak woodland.

Coastal fog provides critical summertime cooling and moisture along the California coast, and research indicates that long‑term declines and increasing variability in fog – combined with warming temperatures – can heighten drought and fire risk for coastal ecosystems, including oak woodlands.

“Holding the Fog” envisions the coast live oak as a natural fog-catcher to support habitat resilience – creating a living fire break that retains moisture and strengthens the woodland’s adaptability in a drying climate.

Click through to see more of Angel’s project and view the full story map at the link in our bio.

Stay tuned as we highlight additional projects from the Preserve over the next few months!

#DangermondPreserve by @gsd_mla

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5 months ago

postFLUSH studio model workshop this week, designed to shift scale, iterate design ideas quickly, and connect back to scale of the civi space and the body…. @aishaiyen and @viridi.landie / @ceciliahuber and @cindymxq / @yunanzhaoz / @hxlxn.tt … @gsd_mla @harvardgsd @harvardgsd_architecture taken in Harvard Graduate School of Design by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

postFLUSH studio model workshop this week, designed to shift scale, iterate design ideas quickly, and connect back to scale of the civi space and the body…. @gsd_mla @harvardgsd @harvardgsd_architecture by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

STU-1407 The Intelligence of Scarcity: Lessons from Atacama

Spring 2026 Option Studio @harvardgsd

Instructor: Pablo Pérez-Ramos @pabloperezramos

📍Atacama Desert, Chile

The Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar landscape on Earth, provides a setting for examining how landscape architecture can respond to intensifying climatic pressures. Defined by the near absence of water, constant solar radiation, and geomorphologies shaped over extremely long periods of time, it reveals how landscapes evolve when climatic, geological, and hydrological forces act with minimal human interference.

At the same time, centuries of settlement and extractive practices have inscribed new layers of order—agricultural, infrastructural, and cultural—transforming how the desert is inhabited.

Working in and around Reserva Puribeter in San Pedro de Atacama, the studio focuses on conditions where scarcity becomes a generative principle. Atacama is approached as an environment that embodies an “intelligence of scarcity,” where the absence of water becomes the impetus for landscape form, and where human intervention can amplify ecological richness.

Drawing from oasis systems worldwide, students look at how small shifts in topography, hydrology, and ecology can produce unexpected fertility—depressions that gather moisture, shallow excavations that expose the water table, terraces that preserve soil, and vegetation that moderates heat.

Through an atlas of arid landscapes, fieldwork in Atacama, and collaboration with Likanantay communities, scientists, and local organizations, the studio explores how design can contribute to hydrological resilience in hyper-arid regions, and how local and global knowledge can inform ecologically healthy, economically viable, and culturally relevant futures.

Images: @pabloperezramos @rickyllvv @yinqiu_z

#harvardgsd #gsdoptionstudio by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

Authors: Weiwei Lei @weiwei_lei_

Title: Viaduktbad - Swim under the Vaults

Description: “Located at Jannowitzbrücke, a busy S- and U-Bahn hub in Berlin, the site includes 1,300 feet (396 meters) of arcade space under the S-Bahn viaduct along the Spree River, stretching from Alexanderstraße to Michaelkirchstraße Bridge. This underutilized space offers an opportunity to revitalize both neglected urban infrastructure and polluted riverfront.
The proposal aims to transform the station into a vibrant civic space that invites public interaction with water—connecting to Berlin’s spa and bathing traditions from the 19th century. By integrating water purification, the project enables safe, human-centered use of the Spree River. Alongside projects like Badeschiff and Flussbad Berlin, it contributes to a broader network of wellness and recreation along the river. The design reinforces connectivity through Berlin’s train system, creating a seamless urban experience. It merges infrastructure, mobility, and leisure, reimagining the viaduct as a cultural and ecological corridor in the heart of the city.”

Professors: Chris Reed @chrisreedstoss and Laila Seewang

Program: Master of Landscape Architecture @gsd_mla

School: Harvard University, Graduate School of Design @harvard @harvardgsd @harvardgsd_architecture by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

Welcome, admitted MLA students!

The Harvard GSD Landscape Architecture Open House brought together prospective students, faculty, and current students for a day of presentations, conversations, and shared work. Thank you to all who joined us — we look forward to welcoming the next cohort to our community at the GSD.

Student Work Poster Design: @maa_yaam

@harvardgsd by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

SOUNDINGS: Landscape Architecture Conversations

Join us for a series of conversations with GSD faculty exploring the roles, histories, and boundaries of landscape architecture today. From questions of labor and authorship to environmental narratives and cross-disciplinary exchange, Soundings creates space for reflection, dialogue, and critical inquiry.

Frances Loeb Library Lobby
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

• March 26 — For Whom Do We Work?
• April 2 — Environmental Histories?
• April 14 — Disciplinary Permeabilities?

Cover Image: @maa_yaam

@harvardgsd by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

Plant Matter(s): Designing and Representing Living Landscapes | Panel | Thursday, April 2, 2026 | Gund 109, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 5:00—6:30pm

with Rosetta S. Elkin, Dorothée Imbert, Sonia Sobrino Ralston, Chris Reed, and chaired by Danielle Choi.

Plants are a primary medium of landscape architecture. Yet, in the design process they are most often engaged through some other intervening medium—planting plans and schedules, spec sheets, details, chipboard and paper. “Plant Matter(s)” asks: In this moment of intensifying ecological crises, are more engaged or renewed disciplinary approaches to plants called for?
This panel addresses how landscape architecture represents plants in relation to both their designed form, predictive growth, and their ecological associations. The Forum asks how the field’s operative mediums—graphite, ink, shapefiles, vectors, pixels, and code—implicitly mediate how landscapes are conceptualized, conceived, and constructed. How do emerging approaches such as relating to plants as “live matter” (Elkin), foregrounding gardening practice (Raxworthy), or centering performance-driven planting design (Kennen) expand or limit disciplinary engagement with plants? What can emerging representation practices and tools offer? As landscape architecture aims to lead on the planning and design of resilient environments, questions of plant representation have implications across practice, pedagogy, and research. by @gsd_mla

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6 months ago

The Department of Landscape Architecture is pleased to announce the 2026 Penny White Project Fund Recipients.

Please join us in congratulating the following GSD students:

• Toby Matus-Bond & James Mpundo Musasizi: Kenya–Uganda Railway, Past and Projected: Railroad Urbanism Across the East African Transect
• Andrew Schwartz: Forested Holdings, Neighborhood Nurseries: Interim Tree Plantings on Detroit’s Eastside
• Alejandra Rivera-Martinez: Botánica Antillana
• Jeremy Dvorak & Jake Geitner: Recovering the Delta: Blues Epistemologies and Vernacular Landscape Formation
• Michael Rahtz: Changing Fields: Anthropogenic Impressions on the Painted Landscapes of Bucks County, Pennsylvania and Management Opportunities
• Jacqueline Chen: Taming the River-Dragon 101: River-Edge Typologies Along the Lower Yellow River
• Nia Kitchin: Spatializing Refusal: Practices of Landscape Resistance in the American South
• Jisu Yang: Tidal Rhythm: Oceanic Cycles as Participatory Memorial Practice in Jindo
• Victor Tessler: Vestiges of the Diaspora: Landscape & Memory in the Philippson Colony
• Eva Gildea: Hysteretypes: Flow-Register Paintings on Miyajima Island
• Eleanor Davol & Enrique Lozano: Zombie Wells and Haunted Brine: Subsurface Afterlives of the Permian Basin
• Avantika Velho & Manini Banerjee: Biopods: Reconnecting Water, Land, and Life at a Human Scale
• Javier Irigaray Berastegui: QUERCUS SUBER, A TERRITORY
• Samuel Maddox: Patchwork Prairies, Tangled Tenure
• James Blue: Land, Mark: The Landscape Typography of Herbert Bayer
• Kieran Silva: From Arrested to Accelerated
• Aja Procita & Charlotte Williams: Guilty of Dust: A Micro-Atlas of the West
• Gulsah Aygun Orhan: Tracing Landscapes of Resilience: Pomak Villages in the Rhodope Mountains
• Dillon Escandon: Novel Landscapes: Reframing Spontaneous Vegetation in Design Practice
• Martha Oloo: THE FIXED AND THE FLUID: READING THE INDIGENOUS LANDSCAPES OF OL MORAN
• Emilia Chavanne: Intersecting Care and Display: Tracing Labor Dynamics in Cultural Heritage Landscapes
• Flora Klein: Allée|Bocage: Cultural and Historic Landscape Practices for Future Climate Resiliency

Cover Image: @zgulsah by @gsd_mla

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7 months ago

Richard T.T. Forman’s Spatial Ecology of the Land

We had the privilege of welcoming Richard T.T. Forman to the GSD for a talk and conversation with Dean Sarah Whiting. Richard T.T. Forman is Professor of Advanced Environmental Studies in the Field of Landscape Ecology and Professor Emeritus at the GSD, and is widely recognized as a pioneering figure in establishing landscape ecology as a field.

His work has been foundational in defining how we understand landscape ecology—the study of how spatial patterns, from patches and corridors to larger regional mosaics, shape ecological processes and environmental systems. Through decades of research, writing, and teaching, Forman has influenced how designers, planners, and scientists approach the relationship between land, infrastructure, and ecology.

@harvardgsd by @gsd_mla

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7 months ago