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Harvard Graduate School of Design

@harvardgsd

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MLA candidate and recent MArch graduate Luis Arturo Gómez Escobedo (@artgomez.mx) created Hanal Pixán: an offering to the home and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology's 2026 Day of the Dead altar. Hanal Pixán means “food for the souls,” the Maya tradition of calling our dead home. Two roofs, one of palm thatch and one of shingles, cross over a shared center. Each is built from the materials of its time, and vellum drawings follow those materials from their source to wall, frame, and roof. The altar holds both houses as a memory for the ones who return. Arturo is a Maya designer and artist, born in Mérida, Yucatán, and raised in San Francisco. On view at the Peabody Museum through November 5! Presented with the support of the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Photography: Luis Arturo Gomez Escobedo by @harvardgsd
We have a few more Virtual Open Houses this week if you're interested in learning about the GSD's degree programs! Learn more about the full open house schedule and register with the link in bio. November 5 Master in Landscape Architecture @gsd_mla, 9 a.m.–1 p.m. Doctor of Design, 12–2 p.m November 6 Master of Architecture @harvardgsd_architecture, 9 a.m.–12 p.m. ➡️ Follow @gsdadmissions for more information! 📆 Applications are due January 5, 2027. by @harvardgsd
Submissions for A–Z 2026 are due today! A–Z, distributed by Harvard University Press @harvardpress, is an annual publication that features work produced by each graduating class at the Harvard GSD. This assemblage of drawings, renders, collages, illustrations, excerpts, abstracts, models, captions, diagrams, and vignettes represents projects and research produced in the GSD’s disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, and design engineering. A–Z, itself an assemblage of voices from every corner of the School, offers fleeting glimpses into a diverse pedagogical culture driven by a community of designers committed to shaping the future of design through many perspectives and approaches. Participation is open to all graduates of the Class of 2026. If you are a 2026 grad and you have not received invitation emails from the publications office, please send a message to a-z@gsd.harvard.edu. Photographs by Maita Hagad @maitahagad by @harvardgsd
🐈 Happy National Cat Day! Here's some of what Remy's been up to at the GSD this fall! 📸: 1) @renzomarsino, 2) @studio.jmso, 3) @jo__lee (as always, please send us your best Remy content if you happen to see him around!) by @harvardgsd
10¹⁰ Years: A Cosmographic Atlas of Collapsed Scales by Dana Barale (MDes, Narratives ’26) @danarch explores the relationship between architecture, scientific observation, and the vast scales of the universe. Developed under instructor Marina Otero Verzier, the project uses speculative instruments and spatial interventions to investigate how we perceive phenomena beyond human scales of space and time. Barale investigates Super-Kamiokande, a neutrino observatory buried one kilometer beneath a mountain in Japan, as an architecture that enables inquiries into the most abstract questions of the universe. Through a series of speculative instruments, visual interventions, and scalar tests, the project examines how subatomic, biological, architectural, geological, and cosmological scales become entangled within systems of detection under extreme temporality. Conceived as an atlas, the installation assembles fragmented interfaces through which deep cosmic pasts, elemental media, and posthuman regimes of perception become rendered into spatial encounters that mirrors the multi-scalar condition of the detector. by @harvardgsd
Thinking of applying to the GSD? Want to know more about our degree programs? Check out this week's Virtual Open House schedule. Learn more about the full open house schedule and register with the link in bio. October 28 Master in Design Engineering @harvardmde, 10–11:30 a.m. October 29 Master in Design Studies @harvardgsd_designstudies, 9–11 a.m October 30 Master in Urban Planning @harvardurbanplanning, 9 a.m.–12 p.m. Master of Architecture/Landscape Architecture in Urban Design @harvardurbandesign 10 a.m.–1 p.m. Master in Real Estate @harvardmasterinrealestate, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. ➡️ Follow @gsdadmissions for more information! 📅 Applications are due January 5, 2027. by @harvardgsd
“Living Seams” by Htet Hlaing @htet__hlaing (MArch I ’26), winner of the 2026 Peter Rice Prize, reimagines architectural construction through living mycelium, proposing a compostable building system capable of growth, adaptation, and material transformation. The project was developed as an individual thesis project at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, advised by Martin Bechthold and Daniel Tish. Hlaing introduces mycelium as a material strategy for addressing the end-of-life limitations of conventional SIP construction while expanding its new architectural possibilities. The thesis rethinks SIP construction as a time-based material system composed of pregrown mycelium-wood bilayers that are biowelded on site into a compostable assembly. Buildings are not permanent, yet we continue to construct them as though they are. Contemporary wall assemblies rely on tightly bonded layers of membranes, insulation, and petrochemical adhesives to achieve high technical performance. Yet these same assemblies are difficult to repair, nearly impossible to disassemble, and ultimately destined for landfill, embedding disposal into the logic of contemporary construction. Today’s construction paradigm defines strength as resistance to change, the capacity of a system to remain fixed, stable, and unchanged under load. In biology, strength operates differently. Biological strength is not the refusal of change, but the ability to absorb variation and without failure, to deform, adapt, heal, and remain resilient through transformation. This thesis begins from that distinction, proposing architecture as a constructed ecology rather than a static assembly of fixed layers destined for landfill. By treating mycelium as both binder and insulation, the thesis proposes a circular building system that reduces waste, labor, and embodied carbon, while rendering growth legible as architectural form over time. by @harvardgsd
Corner Shed reinterprets the corner condition of Boston’s North End as a device for public access, circulation, and civic life. In this project, Udom Ly (MArch I ’29) @slash.formulate proposes a mass-timber building organized around two primary halls and a network of new pedestrian connections across the site. Developed in STU 1102: Core 2 with instructor Cara Liberatore, the project uses the neighborhood’s dead-end streets as generators for a staggered architectural geometry of overlapping corners, framed views, and public passage. Situated within Boston’s North End, the project reinterprets the neighborhood’s corner condition as an urban and architectural device. The design transforms the three dead-end junctions surrounding the site into points of public access that reconnect the block, creating new pedestrian permeability across the site and toward the park. The building form is generated by projecting these dead-end streets into the site, creating a juxtaposition of two square footprints, one rationalized through a grid and the other shifted against it. This staggered, non-platonic condition produces a series of corners ranging from large to small throughout the building, creating moments of porosity, visual overlap, and framed views into the interior space. The project is organized around two primary halls, a Film Training Center designed for a 15-year lease and a second hall for intermittent and flexible use. Supporting programs are positioned beneath each hall, while public circulation wraps around the elevated volumes and connects the three entrances to Commercial Avenue. Glulam mass timber provides the long-span framework, allowing the halls to remain open and adaptable while reducing embodied carbon. Extruded exterior columns draw inspiration from the site’s existing retaining walls, while a tilted roof responds to Boston’s seasonal solar conditions, diffusing natural light and moderating heat gain. The resulting porosity positions Corner Shed as civic infrastructure, connecting spaces of production with encounter, access, and public life. by @harvardgsd
Spend a day in the life with Saniya Malhotra @forestrani, MLA ‘28! 📆 Interested in learning more about the Landscape Architecture program? We have a virtual open house on November 5 (9am-1pm)! 🔗 Go to our link in bio and choose “Admissions” to find out more. ➡️ Follow @gsdadmissions for more admissions content, and @gsd_mla to see what our MLA students are up to. by @harvardgsd
Option studios at the Graduate School of Design are intensive courses for advanced research and practice in the design disciplines. Because students in option studios can engage with the challenges of particular sites, whether in New England or across the world, a period of on-site study is sometimes required. Check out highlights from recent option studio trips to locations around the world. Fall 2026 option studios reflect a collective effort to explore sustainable ways to reuse existing structures, investigate equitable solutions to the housing crisis, and design resilient landscapes for a changing climate. From reimagining the Ellinikon Airport in Athens to studying housing in Helsinki, and from a rethinking clean energy in Ireland to analyzing water infrastructure in Hong Kong, the Fall 2026 option studios represent the leading edge of interdisciplinary research at the GSD. Image 1: Afterlives: Transforming Saarinen’s Ellinikon Terminal, Museum of Design Athens, Eric Höweler & Hanif Kara. Photo: Ralph Lin Image 2: From Rust to Must: Reimagining McKeesport, Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, Mckeestport, PA Image 3: Architecture Before Form, Douglas Harsevoort & Juan Sala, Xilitla, Mexico Image 4: Shared City: Subverting Positive / Negative Space, Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic, Helsinki Image 5: Aqua Incognito VI: Resilience Under New Climate Regimes in Valencia, Spain, Lorena Bello Gómez Image 6: Wind and Water Infrastructures for the Wild Atlantic Way, Roisin Heneghan, Shih-Fu Peng & Hanif Kara, Western Ireland 🔗 Check out our link in bio to read an overview of the Fall 2026 option studios! by @harvardgsd
Join the Graduate School of Design for an evening performance with Grammy Award-winning musicians, followed by a conversation with Edward Eigen. 6:30 - 8 pm by @harvardgsd
Bridging the languages of design and finance, Justin Tan @justinjoeltan (MRE ’26) recently completed the Master in Real Estate (MRE) program at the GSD. A licensed architect who practiced in Boston for several years, Justin came to the GSD seeking more insight into the development process and more agency “upstream,” where decisions about the shape of cities are made. At the GSD, Justin took part in the MRE “Development Project,” a course paired with an option studio. Traveling to Mumbai for a site visit, he worked with a fellow MRE student, an architect, and an urban designer on a holistic development and urban masterplan. He brought that approach to his summer practicum in Rotterdam with the developer RED Company. There, he prepared multiphase pro forma underwriting for tender offers to landowners and helped bring institutional partners and pension funds into the firm’s deals. His classmates came from investment, development, consulting, urban planning, and data science, and working with them shaped how Justin sees the built environment: as a system of many actors working together. With his GSD degree, his aim is to speak fluently as both a designer and an investor and to connect two worlds that too often operate apart. ➡️ Follow @harvardmasterinrealestate to learn more about our MRE program! by @harvardgsd

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