Cambridge - MIT - Harvard GSD

Carpenter Center !!!

Studios at Harvard GSD

MIT SOA -

Much fewer people here than at Columbia. The staff checking us in were wearing t-shirts, I noticed, and I was glad I was wearing pants rather than the skirt I brought.

Yung Ho Chang, the head of the architecture design department, introduced himself and the faculty using an animation of faculty faces superimposed on cartoon bodies: really playful! In general, the atmosphere seemed intense, but not as if people took themselves too seriously. The program is pretty small, only 25 - 30 people. What was really helpful was when they showed us the portfolios of people who got in. Do I have a chance? I have no clue, at this point.

The faculty presentations were 10 min each, and we had to choose to go to 3 of 6 available. I saw Mee Jin Yoon's (head of the M. Arch I program), Alan Berger's, and Sheila Kennedy's of Kennedy Violich Architects. M. J. Yoon showed us a project involving the conflict between "on-grid/off-grid" energy, using the Katrina victims as the means to study this phenomenon: figuring out how to provide off-grid energy to people where the grid was too damaged to use. Alan Berger studied how to rehabilitate a brownfield in Italy, and after presenting his research to the local government there, convinced of the need to follow through with his interventions. It was awesome how the designers could dictate what should happen, rather than developers whose general goals are economically motivated. Sheila Kennedy described photovoltaic powered organic LED's that could be woven into textiles and provide light and electricity. It was at the interface of technology, crafts, and architecture.

That evening, I ate dinner at Beer Works with Marty from Bike and Build! Shira couldn't make it because she had prior plans, but we caught up on events since reentering the real world, and about other Bike and Builders we had hung out with to that point. Beer Works brews their own beer, and it was excellent. I had an Irish something or other and the blueberry beer. Marty tried out the peanut butter beer??? It had only a hint of peanut butter, and mostly just tasted like beer, but creative certainly.

Harvard -

Walking toward Harvard's architecture building, I saw a building using glass bricks for windows, and smiled thinking, wow, a throwback to mid-century design. I kept walking, and stopped cold ... because I realized I was in the presence of greatness: The Carpenter Building is the only Corbusier-designed building in America. I stopped by ath Gund Hall for registration, realized I was an hour early, ran back and sketched like mad, only to remember how obnoxious it is to sketch Corbu buildings because they are so exacting. It was like seeing an old friend though. A Corbu building in America is the last thing I would have ever expected to see; I associate him so much with France and Versailles and William Curtis. It made my day.

More people here than at Columbia! The faculty presentations were a bit drier, but the students were spectacular. One PhD student was studying the intimate details of Type II diabetes in order to figure out a design for how best to deploy medical supplies to remote locations, which relates to architecture in the most abstract sense. A masters student with one of the most eclectic backgrounds I have ever encountered (also a former OMA employee) presented an urban study of a small Irish town, and how he used existing relics of pathways to reconnect the entire area in a mixture of historic analysis and modern design.

Later that day, I watched part of a studio review in process with Scott Cohen, head of the architecture department, and 5 other faculty members as critics. They spoke fast and animatedly about very abstract projects involving hotel design and facade vs. interior space, and they would even argue with each other about how they felt about each project. When they didn't like something, they said so quite bluntly, which was a welcome respite from how "nice" the reviewers were at UIUC.

It was an intense trip, and well-worth it.