Though he garnered global praise at the peak of his career from 1960 to 1990, Australian architect John Andrews faced waning fame as postmodern cultural transformations challenged modernist design values, and wider social and economic changes led to a withdrawal of government-funded institutional commissions. Yet his body of work is a remarkable achievement that deserves to be better known. Following a path from Australia to the United States and Canada and back again, John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense examines his most important buildings and reveals how the internationalization of architecture during this period was an unexpectedly dispersed geographical phenomenon, following more complex flows and localized progressions than earlier modernist ideas that travelled from center to periphery, metropole to outpost. Andrews negotiated the advent of postmodernism not by ignoring it, but by cultivating approaches that this new era foregrounded--identity, history, place--within the formal vocabularies of modernism. As Andrews assumed wider public roles and took appointments that allowed him to shape architectural education, he influenced design culture beyond his own personal portfolio. This book presents his legacy traversing local and international scenes and exemplifying late-modern developments of architecture while offering both generational continuities and discontinuities with what came after. John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense features essays from Paul Walker, Mary Lou Lobsinger, Peter Scriver and Antony Moulis, Philip Goad, and Paolo Scrivano, along with nearly 100 new photographs from visual artist Noritaka Minami of existing buildings designed by Andrews in North America and Australia.

John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense

Arts & Photography

Walker, Paul

History & Criticism

Harvard Graduate School of Design

Empty Plinths: Monuments, Memorials, and Public Sculpture in Mexico responds to the unfolding political debate around one of the most contentious public monuments in North America, Mexico City's monument of Christopher Columbus on Avenida Paseo de la Reforma. In convening a diverse collective of voices around the question of the monument's future, editors José Esparza Chong Cuy and Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa probe the unstable narratives behind a selection of monuments, memorials, and public sculptures in Mexico City, and propose a new charter that informs future public art commissions in Mexico and beyond. At a moment when many such structures have become highly visible sites of protest throughout the world, this new compilation of essays, interviews, artistic contributions, and public policy proposals reveals and reframes the histories embedded within contested public spaces in Mexico. Empty Plinths is published alongside a series of artist commissions organized together with several major cultural institutions in Mexico City, including the Museo Tamayo, the Museo de Arte Moderno, and the Museo Experimental el Eco.

Empty Plinths: Monuments, Memorials, and Public Sculpture in Mexico

Frida Escobedo: Split Subject

Architecture

Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley

Science & Math

Bonvehi Rosich, Montserrat Bonvehi

Denizen, Seth

Nature & Ecology

Assembled in honor of Eduard F. Sekler, Professor Emeritus of the History of Architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, Form, Modernism, and History is a fitting tribute to a man who as architect, historian, and preservationist has been instrumental in restoring history to a prominent place in contemporary architectural theory and practice. 
 In twenty-two probing and original essays, distinguished scholars and designers--including architects Henry Cobb and Rafael Moneo--combine the insights of history, theory, and practice in order to reveal the evolution of design thought and methods and to interpret the relationship of architecture to its social, cultural, and political contexts.

Form, Modernism, and History: Essays in Honor of Eduard F. Seckler

From an interview with Enrique Norten by Brigitte Shim:   Shim: Throughout modern architecture, the house has been a laboratory for invention. It has been a testing ground for architects to explore new ideas using the ordinary program of kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living space. How is this house used to push your architecture?   Norten: What I was looking for with this house was probably a return to the main principles of modernism. I was trying to look for the very basics of architecture: a simple structure, simple construction methods, and straightforward spatial conditions that would satisfy the needs of our family. The house was a laboratory where I was looking back to where the tradition of modernity started, and I tried to recapture that.

Enrique Norten: A House in the City (Eliot Noyes Series)

From an essay by Carlos Jiménez:
“Since 1983, when work on my house and studio began, the project has undergone a variety of transformations, expansions, assimilations―simply put, it has followed a path of growth and discovery. My proximity to this path’s every turn puts me much too close for objective appraisal, yet this position offers an auspicious vantage point from which to reflect on the implications of architecture in one’s life. I now gather some observations, memories, and moments, all of which emerge through one biographical detail or another―an inevitable outcome when writing on such a personal work, a work that by its evolving nature is both my first and my most recent project.”

Carlos Jiménez: House and Studio (Eliot Noyes Series)

The dramatic tiered, open student work spaces in Gund Hall are vibrant with the talent and energy of future architects, landscape architects, and urban designers and planners. We at the GSD are still idealists who believe in the power of design to shape a new agenda for our society, improve the quality of life, and invent compelling visions for the future. Our times demand a complex and comprehensive understanding of the design professions; the coexistence of multiple disciplines that inform one another makes the entire learning process here richly speculative and discursive.  The courses of study address topics of national and international concern, ranging in scale from broad ecological and infrastructure problems to the minute details of fabrication processes. Design issues are debated passionately every day, and we all thrive in this high-energy atmosphere of open and honest dialogue mediated by the rigors of analytical critique. The intellectual osmosis that takes place in our great shared studio space is perhaps the most potent agent in pedagogy, allowing our students to absorb multiple kinds of knowledge in an almost effortless manner.  In our teaching there is no attempt to simplify design problems. To the contrary: each project is tackled in the spirit of trying to understand its complex totality. The curriculum emphasizes asking questions rather than coming up with easy answers. At the GSD, design is constantly challenged by (and responds to) other fields of inquiry, such as technology, history, and theory. Our probing conversations often take place beyond and behind the surface of any one proposal.  Each student project requires many hours of solitary and collaborative study, research, and development. In their visual manifestations, the results are thoughtfully crafted, carefully presented, and embody sophistication and subtlety that may not be easily classified as representing any particular style. Instead, the work of each student reflects his or her own creativity and personality.  In my opinion, academia presages the future of the profession, and the seriousness with which we undertake our theoretical discourse at school creates the ethical underpinning of future generations, whose learning processes extend over a lifetime in their praxis. It is hoped that this volume may convey this essential spirit of learning that animates every day at the GSD.  Preface by Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture

Studio Works 10

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

From the introduction: "To talk about this project is easy, because the story of its making is so complex and the results (the public places, the houses, the feeling of civility in the air) so wonderfully rich. There is always something thoughtful and provocative to be said about Borneo Sporenburg. When one reads or hears about the vicissitudes of the project's evolution--about the long approval processes and the large cast of characters--it all seems like an excellent piece of narrative, a great plot replete with subplots leading us to intense episodes of dramatic action. There is something for everyone in the story of these peninsulas."

Residential Waterfront, Borneo Sporenburg, Amsterdam: Adriaan Geuze, West 8 urban design & landscape architecture, The Seventh Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design

From the Introduction: "The Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design has been awarded every other year since 1986. Its objective is to recognize the remarkable value of urban design projects around the globe. This time, the prize goes to the City of Aleppo, for the rehabilitation of its historic town. The project has been carried out by the Old City Department of the City of Aleppo, in collaboration with GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) and the efforts of many individual citizens. This recent experience in central Aleppo shows us how urban rehabilitation in a historic setting can transmit a vital new meaning when the main focus of the project is restoring urban fabric rather than rebuilding monuments; key to improving current conditions is understanding that the city's physical layout synthesizes its evolution. Furthermore, the effort demonstrates that the city's inhabitants can be the protagonists of such improvements."

Aleppo: Rehabilitation of the Old City, The Eighth Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design

Social Sciences

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Books by Harvard Graduate School of Design