Creativity and Meaning

A recent Graduate School of Design conference was a bit unusual — it was also a competition. In his talk during the conference symposium, Scott Davis (pictured), a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, discussed one of four recent design competitions that have tested the boundaries of what competitions can be and what it means for design, planning, and the public interest.

Redesigning design contests

Conference examines pluses, minuses of having firms bid for interesting work, but with no guarantee of results

Science|

DateApril 29, 2015May 31, 2019

The Mellon Seminar Fellows will present “In Our Time: The Great War at 100,” Feb. 12-13. December and January marked the 100th anniversary of the World War I Christmas truce that lasted well beyond the holiday in some sectors of the front. Pictured is a trench occupied by British soldiers, July 1916.

Dimensions of war, including peace

Decisions toward and away from violence examined in Mellon Seminar

Arts|

DateFebruary 10, 2015March 8, 2019

Vietnam, the ongoing memory

Though the war ended almost 40 years ago, it feels curiously current, and still draws scholars and interested students alike

World|

DateDecember 19, 2014July 8, 2019

The gender-segregated signatures on this anti-slavery petition (image 1), sent to the 25th Congress from upstate New York, illustrate the “separate spheres” of household life in antebellum America. The work done by study co-author Daniel Carpenter (image 2), points to a trove of petitions now languishing in state and national archives. Another example (image 3) is a “Petition from Ladies of Marshfield, Massachusetts, 1835.”

Foreshadowing feminism

Petitioning against a congressional gag rule on slavery before the Civil War spurred generations of activists

Arts|

DateNovember 10, 2014May 17, 2019

Paulina Campos, M.P.P. '07, in a rooftop garden at Infonavit, the federal institute for worker housing in Mexico. She is CEO of Fundación Hogares, a nonprofit created by Infonavit to establish community-building programs in affordable housing developments.

From Mexico to Harvard, and back

Graduates return home to help a complex nation solve its problems, improve its people’s lives

World|

DateOctober 15, 2014September 11, 2019

Within a Mexican landscape of mind-broadening horizons, Julia Cohn '15 sits at ease high among the ancient Mesoamerican pyramids of Teotihuacan, 30 miles northeast of Mexico City.

Summering (with work) in Mexico

Between semesters, Harvard students conduct complex research, embrace an enthralling country

World|

DateOctober 10, 2014April 12, 2019

“We’re sharing Harvard research with everybody with an Internet connection,” said Peter Suber, director of the Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication, which administers Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard, or DASH — the free and open repository for peer-reviewed literature written by Harvard faculty.

Scholarly access to all

Harvard digital repository draws millions of readers, ranging from the academic community to the global public

Science|

DateJuly 15, 2014May 6, 2019

"The Art of American Advertising, 1865-1910” includes novelty items like this pull-string trade card for Nelson Morris & Co. sugar-cured hams from the Bates Trade Card Collection (photo 1); and babies angle for a meal in this Wells, Richardson & Co. trade card for Lactated Food (photo 2).

Early experiments in catching the eye

Exhibit illuminates rise of advertising in post-Civil War U.S.

Arts|

DateJuly 7, 2014

Sized for pocket carry, this 17th-century French arbitration treatise — including instructional illustrations — was bound with manuals for treating illnesses and injuries. The handmade compilation suggests that dual roles in medicine and law were common in the countryside, far from formal courts or medical care.

Old Harvard, old France, old crime

Exhibit spanning centuries of law combines detailed scholarship with a touch of scandal

World|

DateJune 18, 2014July 25, 2019

Adrian Jones '16, a student in ES 52: "The Joy of Electronics," demonstrates his digital synthesizer for senior lecturer Henry Leitner.

When engineering meets art

SEAS fair highlights meaningful intersections between creativity and impact

Science|

DateMay 8, 2014June 26, 2019

“We wanted to invite extraordinary writers to participate in conversations with our student writers,” said Bret Anthony Johnston (from left, center chairs), the curator of Writers in the Parlor, which brought writers Laura van den Berg and Paul Yoon to campus in March.

For writers and students, a break from solitude

Series a continuous conversation on craft, aspirations

Arts|

DateApril 21, 2014

An artist's rendering of Johnston Gate depicts what the gate will look like following the landscaping project. The gate will be 125 years old in December.

At 125, Johnston Gate gets a facelift

Landscaping makeover has begun at Harvard's first portal

Campus|

DateApril 14, 2014

Keynote speaker and Digital Public Library of America Executive Director Dan Cohen said that the digital age is moving libraries from static repositories to dynamic platforms — “modern discovery systems,” he said, that are open, interoperable, international, and poised to absorb the “mass digitization” the future will bring.

Books meet bytes

At Radcliffe, thoughts on the future of digital library collections

Science|

DateApril 4, 2014April 12, 2019

Visitors lined up to see Horizon House (photo 1) last November in remote Taiki-cho, Japan, just after this sustainable rural retreat was completed. The computer simulation Zero-House shows the transformation from an ordinary house in suburban France (photo 2) to a surplus-energy dwelling (photo 3).

Less energy, more creativity

GSD students design two sustainable houses, win awards for their work

Science|

DateMarch 31, 2014May 21, 2019

While in Japan to receive an award for their Tohuka Recovery entry, "Here Today, Here Tomorrow," Harvard Graduate School of Design students Kristen Hunter (from left), Trevor Johnson, Maria Arrasate, and Karina Gilbert went to the Tohoku Regional Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, which was the command center during the March 2011 disaster.

Out of disaster, a new design

Harvard team wins contest for fresh ideas to speed recovery from Japanese quake, tsunami

Science|

DateFebruary 24, 2014July 26, 2019

"Red River" (photo 1), "The Tall T" (photo 2), and "Duel In The Sun" (photo 3) are screening as part of the Harvard Film Archive's tribute to the Western genre.

Big skies, dusty trails

Film series pays tribute to the Western and its 1950s golden age

Arts|

DateFebruary 19, 2014April 23, 2019

“The Hanging Gardens at Villa I Tatti” is among many Steve Ziger watercolors illustrating the oral history site (photo 1). Bernard Berenson, in 1903, stands in front of a favorite painting (photo 2). The Berenson library was a coveted refuge for visitors (photo 3).

Bernard Berenson, recalled

Oral history project at Villa I Tatti interviews last links to art historian who donated Renaissance center

Arts|

DateFebruary 14, 2014March 12, 2019

Art, turned on its ear

Iconic Western works are recast to reflect racial realities generally ignored before

Arts|

DateFebruary 4, 2014April 26, 2019

‘The Thinking Hand’

Exhibit showcases traditional Japanese tools that can turn carpentry into artistry

Arts|

DateJanuary 30, 2014April 15, 2019

During a daylong presentation of GSD students' theses, Sara Tavakoli's 35-minute vampire movie took perhaps the biggest risk (photo 1), with critics questioning its relationship to architecture. Tian Ren offered a more traditional approach with an architectural scheme to refurbish a former Shanghai slaughterhouse (photo 2). “Thesis review is often a stressful time,” said Caroline James (photo 3), “but I was determined to enjoy the process.”

Architectural fever dreams

During day of GSD thesis presentations, student creativity is the watchword

Science|

DateJanuary 28, 2014

This contact sheet captures Martin Luther King Jr.'s January 1965 visit to the Memorial Church to deliver a speech.

‘The weapon of love’

Authority on Martin Luther King Jr.’s preaching will deliver own sermon

Campus|

DateJanuary 16, 2014April 3, 2019

“They are great tunes,” said Harvard choirmaster Edward E. Jones of “Jingle Bells” and “Sleigh Ride” — traditional holiday songs with a Harvard connection. Jones is seen here leading the 104th Annual Christmas Carols Service in Memorial Church.

Sweet hymns of joy

Harvard had a role in several timeless holiday carols

Arts|

DateDecember 17, 2013July 19, 2019

The annual meeting of the History of Science Society in Boston featured speakers such as Harvard's Joseph Pellegrino University Professor Peter Galison, who delivered a lecture on “nuclear wastelands” in the United States, the enormous tracts set aside for toxic dumps related to nuclear power and bomb-making.

Probing how the past behaved

Jam-packed conference focuses on vast array of topics surrounding history of science

Science|

DateNovember 26, 2013July 26, 2019

Homi K. Bhabha is at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris today representing the intellectual and academic world at the installation ceremony for Director-General Irina Bokova.

A Paris errand

Harvard professor addresses UNESCO

Arts|

DateNovember 18, 2013May 6, 2019

“The Blokadnitsy Project,” an exhibit by Jill Bough, presents photographs of women who survived the Siege of Leningrad. Each photo collage (of which only a detail appears here) is framed with artifacts from the women's apartments and a statement, like this one by Emma: "The stress we felt was not just about the war. It was the fact that we were prisoners."

Haunted by the siege

70 years later, Leningrad survivors tell their stories through words and images as part of 'Blokadnitsy Project'

Arts|

DateNovember 14, 2013

“The airport itself is this nice nucleus that can act as a container of broader ideas,” said Sonja Duempelmann (photo 1), who helped organize “Airport Landscape: Urban Ecologies in the Aerial Age” at Gund Hall this week. An exhibit of the same name is also on view through Dec. 19. Its color scheme, signage, and scale are all echoes of modern airports. It is the first time, organizers said, that every display space in Gund Hall has been given over to a single theme (photos 2 and 3.

Change is on the runway

Once airfields, then mini-cities, airports are now turning to landscape design to solve problems

Arts|

DateNovember 13, 2013

On a chilly, rainy late afternoon — Irish weather — the pews at Memorial Church were nearly full for a memorial honoring the late poet Seamus Heaney. Present were those “who loved Seamus on and off the page,” said Peter Sacks, Harvard’s John P. Marquand Professor of English.

A poet’s own epitaphs

Harvard’s memorial service for Seamus Heaney was lyrically laced with a lifetime of his insights

Campus|

DateNovember 8, 2013April 17, 2019

Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian, spoke at the opening reception of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) at the Boston Public Library last week (photo 1). David Weinberger of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab (photo 2) explained StackLife, a digital browsing tool developed at Harvard that allows a user to see at a glance the popularity of a given book, to Amanda Page, a library assistant at Countway Library.

National digital library gains traction

Conference celebrates strong early growth, plans for wide-ranging future

Arts|

DateOctober 31, 2013March 13, 2019

Standing in the Emily Dickinson Room in Houghton Library, Leslie Morris (pictured), is the Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA) general editor. Two years in the making, the EDA is a collaborative project of Harvard University Press and a growing number of repositories that own examples of Dickinson’s original work.

The digital Dickinson

Sophisticated site gathers her poems, in her handwriting, for all to see and study

Arts|

DateOctober 23, 2013April 30, 2019

Theater and visual artist Robert Wilson delivered a dramatic and discursive talk on how during his years of art-making he has jumped out of the box that long traditions of theater design and direction had set for him, like a trap. “The reason I work as an artist,” he told the audience, “is to ask questions.”

When all turn right, go left

Offbeat visual artist Robert Wilson discusses his craft and career

Arts|

DateOctober 21, 2013

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Conference examines pluses, minuses of having firms bid for interesting work, but with no guarantee of results

Decisions toward and away from violence examined in Mellon Seminar

Though the war ended almost 40 years ago, it feels curiously current, and still draws scholars and interested students alike

Petitioning against a congressional gag rule on slavery before the Civil War spurred generations of activists

Graduates return home to help a complex nation solve its problems, improve its people’s lives

Between semesters, Harvard students conduct complex research, embrace an enthralling country

Harvard digital repository draws millions of readers, ranging from the academic community to the global public

Exhibit illuminates rise of advertising in post-Civil War U.S.

Exhibit spanning centuries of law combines detailed scholarship with a touch of scandal

SEAS fair highlights meaningful intersections between creativity and impact

Series a continuous conversation on craft, aspirations

Landscaping makeover has begun at Harvard's first portal

At Radcliffe, thoughts on the future of digital library collections

GSD students design two sustainable houses, win awards for their work

Harvard team wins contest for fresh ideas to speed recovery from Japanese quake, tsunami

Film series pays tribute to the Western and its 1950s golden age

Oral history project at Villa I Tatti interviews last links to art historian who donated Renaissance center

Iconic Western works are recast to reflect racial realities generally ignored before

Exhibit showcases traditional Japanese tools that can turn carpentry into artistry

During day of GSD thesis presentations, student creativity is the watchword

Authority on Martin Luther King Jr.’s preaching will deliver own sermon

Harvard had a role in several timeless holiday carols

Jam-packed conference focuses on vast array of topics surrounding history of science

Harvard professor addresses UNESCO

70 years later, Leningrad survivors tell their stories through words and images as part of 'Blokadnitsy Project'

Once airfields, then mini-cities, airports are now turning to landscape design to solve problems

Harvard’s memorial service for Seamus Heaney was lyrically laced with a lifetime of his insights

Conference celebrates strong early growth, plans for wide-ranging future

Sophisticated site gathers her poems, in her handwriting, for all to see and study

Offbeat visual artist Robert Wilson discusses his craft and career

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