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Harvard Design Press

Harvard Design Press is an imprint of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Harvard Design Press challenges, broadens, and advances the design disciplines, and advocates for the value and power of design in making a more resilient, just, and beautiful world. In pursuing new and original ideas on the research and practice of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design, the imprint reinforces and extends the Harvard University Graduate School of Design's reputation as the leading global authority on design's role in the most critical issues the world is facing today. From housing, climate change, and social equity to urban ecology, design engineering, and architecture history and theory, Harvard Design Press forges new lines of inquiry, engages established modes of thought, and publishes ideas with the potential to improve how we live as individuals, cities, societies, and cultures, and as one planet.

09/25/2026

A closer look at Harvard Design Magazine’s typography throughout the years. Pictured here are over 20 years of the magazine constantly reshaping its designs to mirror the evolving conversations of each era.

Harvard Design Magazine is published by the Harvard Design Press at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

To explore the full catalog and to purchase – visit harvarddesignmagazine.org.

Photographs by Maita Hagad

09/24/2026

On a late summer day, AquaPraça—a floating 400-square-meter steel platform, painted brilliant white—appeared in the Venetian Lagoon, destined for its September 5 debut at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia.

Shortly after AquaPraça arrived in Venice, the GSD’s Krista Sykes spoke with Professor Eric Höweler about the project’s design, fabrication, and afterlife; the ability of architecture to promote eco-literacy; and what responsible architecture might mean today.

Read “An Interview with Eric Höweler: AquaPraça, from Venice to Belém” through our series! Visit harvarddesignmagazine.org to read the full interview.

Image 01: AquaPraça in transit. Photo courtesy of Cimolai.
Image 02: Photo courtesy of DSL Studio.
Image 03: AquaPraça, moored in front of the Arsenale in Venice, Italy. Photo courtesy of DSL Studio.
Image 04: Photo courtesy of Cimolai.

09/22/2026

In Harvard Design Magazine No. 36: “Landscape Architecture’s Core?,” Gary Hilderbrand writes: "We approach our work with a kind of double vision: seeing and seeing beyond. Seeing sites for what they are and for what they might become. Imagining growth and time unfolding ahead of us."

Today, Professor Gary Hilderbrand will be delivering the Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture “Writing on the Surface of the Earth.” He will discuss how the work of his landscape architecture practice, Reed Hilderbrand, is grounded in close site reading and narratives that find precise expression through design. Drawing on projects from the firm’s portfolio spanning the past 25 years, the lecture will explore the evolution of the practice, while reflecting on the reciprocal relationship between pedagogy and professional practice.

“Writing on the Surface of the Earth” will be held today in Piper Auditorium from 6:30 – 8 p.m. EDT. The event is free and open to the public, with a livestream available on the Harvard Graduate School of Design's website.

Visit harvarddesignmagazine.org to read sample content from HDM 36 and other issues, and to purchase.

09/18/2026

Forthcoming this fall, we’re excited to share teasers from our fourteenth title in The Incidents, The Circle and the Sphere by Karenna Gore with an introduction by Harvard Graduate School of Design dean Sarah M. Whiting.

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On May 22, 2024, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, standing against the concrete and glass backdrop of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall, Gore addressed a graduating class of future architects, landscape architects, design engineers, and urban planners and designers.

Gore, a professor of earth ethics whose work hovers around the intersection of values, faith, and ecology, could seem an unexpected fit as the messenger of parting wisdom to a group of designers. But she begins her speech by foregrounding the shared task of facing a climate crisis that continues to threaten life and systems on Earth in new and increasingly erratic ways, and encourages a future for design that lies in learning from the natural world.

Calling on figures as varied as theologian Thomas Berry to landscape architect Kate Orff, Gore suggests this multidisciplinary Earth-centered approach could not only be beneficial to design thinking but integral to it. “It is not Earth that needs fixing,” she said. “It is us.”

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Early copies arrived just in time for Climate Week, where Gore will be participating in the following events:

September 18: Immorality of Inaction: Voicing the Truth on Climate hosted by the Center for Earth Ethics and Columbia Climate School.

September 20: Reawakening Humanity’s Sacred Connection with Earth. Held in person and virtual at the Fetzer Institute.

September 25: Global South Summit with Reverend Leo Woodberry at the Union Theological Seminary. Free and open to the public.

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Series edited by Ken Stewart and Marielle Suba
Designed by Ella with Chad Kloepfer and Willis Kingery
Copublished with and distributed by Sternberg Press
Printed by Grafiche Veneziane

Visit Sternberg Press to view the full scope of the series and for purchase details.

Cover photo: Ken Stewart
Video: Grafiche Veneziane

09/17/2026

In March of this year, Yun Fu and Yona Chung curated “Temporary Exhibition of Temporal Public Spaces.” In a conversation with William Smith for our series, they discuss emerging design practices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Korea.

The exhibition celebrates what Fu calls “cheap and cheerful” responses to a need for vibrant public space, even if the architectural conditions that define those spaces exist only briefly.

Read “Living Well in an Uncertain World” through . Visit harvarddesignmagazine.org to read the full text.

Image 1: Installation view of A Temporary Exhibition of Temporal Public Spaces featuring Public Parasol by Su Chang Design Research Office, Hong Kong. Photo courtesy of exhibition team.
Image 2: A panel discussion featuring the exhibition curators, designers from domansa and Studio Tngtetshiu, and each participant’s preferred form of milk tea. Photo: Anita Kan.
Image 3: PTT Saraphi, 2019. Sher Maker, Chiang Mai. Photo: Rungkit Charoenwat.
Image 4: Mist Encounter, 2017. Serendipity Studio with KWA Architects (Kuan-Wei Chen). Photo: Yi-Hsien Lee.

09/15/2026

This month in the archive: Platform

Platform 2, 3, and 4 bring together a mix of projects, research, and events from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 2008-2011 – documenting salient design explorations to inform global dialogue and shape future initiatives.

Platform 2, 3, and 4 were published by Actar and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and many volumes are still available for purchase from Actar.

09/11/2026

“This summer produced images that we’ve seen before: burning forests, exhausted fans, temperature records, hospital corridors where people are suffocating. But through the prism of health capital, the health contract, and health commons, another potential narrative emerges: that of a greater Paris where vertical segregation, territorial fractures, and hospital fragilities adapt to the climate policies of the 21st century.” – Magda Maaoui

Read “Heat Waves as a Social Autopsy of the Built Environment” through our series! Visit harvarddesignmagazine.org to read the full text.

Image: The top two floors of a typical historic Parisian residential building, with a pitched roof and gables. Photo courtesy of Chad and Steph via Wikimedia Commons.

09/09/2026

This month in the archive: The Incidents

Marxist geographer David Harvey opened his lecture with a fact: between 2011 and 2013 China consumed nearly 45 percent more cement than the United States had in the entire 20th century. In Abstract from the Concrete, he asks “why.”

Meanwhile, when Yoshi Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of Atelier Bow-Wow arrived at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in the winter of 2016, they challenged students to look deeply at their surroundings, and to record their reactions as a “public drawing.”

From global concrete flows to street-level encounters, "Abstract from the Concrete" and "Architectural Ethnography" unpack how we inhabit and construct our world.

The Incidents is a book series based on uncommon events at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. It is co-published and distributed by Sternberg Press. Copies are available for purchase from their website.

09/07/2026

Pairs is a journal of conversations edited by students at the Harvard GSD. Each issue pairs subjects with objects: interviewees with contents from a Harvard or external archive. The journal does not have a theme but instead organizes a diversity of threads and concerns relevant to our moment in the design disciplines, covering architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning. The conversations are in turn not comprehensive accounts but open-ended exchanges, eliciting often candid and provisional ideas in progress.

Today, with 6 different issues, Pairs remains an evolving space for dialogue, bringing students and archival objects into direct conversation with contemporary practice.

Grab your copy of the latest issue, Pairs 06, through the Frances Loeb Library or through the Harvard University Press!

09/04/2026

We welcome Harvard Graduate School of Design students, new and old alike, back to the trays! Bringing new ideas and diverse perspectives to the studio desks – swipe to see students exploring the titles keeping our design community inspired for the new term ahead.

To explore our catalog, read sample content, or grab a copy – see harvarddesignmagazine.org.

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