Spring 2025 public programs

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces its spring 2025 public programs and exhibitions, with many events highlighting how we visualize and understand design in context.

The exhibition Envisioning Cluny: Kenneth Conant and Representations of Medieval Architecture, 1872–2024, on view in the Druker Design Gallery (through April 4), focuses on how medieval monuments inspired the evolution of modern architectural visualization techniques. Curator Christine Smith brings together photographs, drawings, plaster casts, and recently created 3D models of capitals from the twelfth-century monastery complex at Cluny, France, to suggest previously unimagined possibilities for future scholarship. The opening event, Sounds of Medieval Cluny (January 30), will conjure the monastery through music: a vocal performance by Blue Heron and commentary by musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly.

Renowned designers Kengo Kuma (April 8), Dorte Mandrup (February 13), Minsuk Cho (March 13), and Jala Makhzoumi (March 11) share architecture and landscape projects that cultivate symbiotic relationships between buildings and their sites. On March 6 and 7, the conference African Landscape Architectures: Alternative Futures for the Field examines the multifaceted ecologies, materialities, and identities of African landscapes with designers working across the continent. The conference’s keynote, the 2025 International Womxn’s Day Lecture (March 6), features a dialogue between Princess Adedoyin Talabi Faniyi of the Osun Sacred Grove in Osogbo, Nigeria, and Tarna Klitzner, founder of TKLA in Cape Town, South Africa.

The spring’s programming also highlights creative practices that tackle pressing social and political issues. The Just City Lab will kick off the fifth annual Mayors’ Institute on City Design Just City Mayoral Fellowship (February 6) with civic leaders discussing strategies to address racial, social, and environmental injustice in our cities. Deanna Van Buren (March 4) advocates for prison abolition, Maurice Cox (March 25) addresses inequality in Chicago’s public space, and Peter Barber (April 3) designs and champions affordable housing in the UK. In response to the worsening housing affordability crisis, the Joint Center for Housing Studies hosts The Evolving Landscape of Social Housing in New England on April 18, bringing together practitioners, policymakers, advocates, and researchers to examine new models of social housing in the region.

These planners and designers shape our cities; artists’ images, performances, and sculptures question our worldviews. Philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne (February 3) unpacks the role of African Art in the universal museum. Internationally renowned photographer An-My Lê seeks “to photograph the landscape in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture.” (April 1). Tunde Wey explores exploitative systems in a variety show, VIEW FROM THE EDGE! On Periphery-Center Relationships (April 10). Finally, on April 17, Ximena Caminos shows how The ReefLine, an underwater sculpture park in Miami, helps to restore the city’s marine ecosystems.

The complete public program schedule appears below and can be viewed on Harvard GSD’s events calendar. All events will be livestreamed on the GSD website unless otherwise noted. Please visit Harvard GSD’s home page to sign up for periodic emails about the school’s public programs, exhibitions, and other news.

Sounds of Medieval Cluny with 
Christine Smith, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and Blue Heron  
Exhibition Opening and Reception 
January 30, 6:30pm

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “African Art and Universal Museums” 
Aga Khan Program Lecture 
February 3, 6:30pm 

Mayors Imagining the Just City: Volume 5 
Panel Discussion 
February 6, 6:30pm

Dorte Mandrup, “Conditions of Place & Form”
Kenzō Tange Lecture
February 13, 6:30pm

Deanna Van Buren, “Designing for Abolition” 
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture 
March 4, 6:30pm

African Landscape Architectures: Alternative Futures for the Field 
Conference 
March 6–7

Princess Adedoyin Talabi Faniyi and Tarna Klitzner 
International Womxn’s Day Keynote Address 
March 6, 6:30pm

Jala Makhzoumi, “Landscape, Garden, and a Colonial Legacy” 
Aga Khan Program Lecture  
March 11, 6:30pm

Minsuk Cho, “Notes on Time” 
Lecture 
March 13, 6:30pm

Maurice Cox, “The Design of Power Sharing: Chicago’s South and West Sides” 
Carl M. Sapers Ethics in Practice Lecture 
March 25, 6:30pm

Jorge Otero-Pailos, “Distributed Monuments” 
Lecture 
March 28, 12:30pm

An-My Lê, “Maps & Legends: Photography Between Histories and Beyond Borders” 
Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture  
April 1, 6:30pm

Peter Barber, “Reimagining Social Housing” 
John T. Dunlop Lecture   
GSD Open House, April 3, 6:30pm

Cambridge Talks: Acts of Scaling 
Symposium 
April 4–5

Kengo Kuma, “Return to Nature” 
John Hejduk Soundings Lecture 
April 8, 6:30pm

VIEW FROM THE EDGE! On Periphery-Center Relationships
Tunde Wey
Variety Show
April 10, 6:30pm

David Sheldon-Hicks, “Future Mapping” 
Lecture 
April 15, 6:30pm

Ximena Caminos, “The ReefLine” 
Lecture 
April 17, 12:30pm

The Evolving Landscape of Social Housing in New England 
Symposium 
April 18, 1pm

Brian D. Goldstein, “‘These Contradictory Things’: Max Bond’s Harvard” 
Lecture
April 23, 6:30pm

Thinking Through Soil 
Book Release
April 24, 12:30pm