“Reuse and Repair”, Harvard Design Magazine’s upcoming issue, No. 53

Themed "Reuse and Repair", Harvard Design Magazine’s upcoming issue, No. 53, is guest edited by architect Jeanne Gang (Kajima Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and founding partner of Studio Gang) and historian Lizabeth Cohen (Howard Mumford Jones Research Professor and University Distinguished Service Professor in the History Department at Harvard University).

The new issue brings together architects, educators, visual artists, and scholars from a range of fields – sociology, disability studies, urban history, and more – to consider how we can move beyond the allure of new construction to create climate-conscious buildings and cities, sustain cultural memory, and imagine more collaborative approaches to architectural practice.

Contributors include Imani Perry, David Gissen, Georgina Kleege, Chris Cornelius, and Kris Graves, among others.

A special event at Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Harvard Design Magazine No. 53 will be launched during a special event, free and open to public, to be held at the Piper Auditorium at Harvard Graduate School of Design on Wednesday, October 22, from 6:30 - 8:00 pm ET.

The evening will feature a conversation between Jeanne Gang, Lizabeth Cohen, and other speakers, hosted by Ken Stewart (Associate Dean, Communications and Public Programs). Panelists will include: Daniel M. Abramson, professor of architectural history and director of Architectural Studies at Boston University, Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow, co-founders of Kwong Von Glinow. Kwong Von Glinow’s design proposal for a renovation of a pavilion located on Chicago’s downtown lakefront is featured in this issue of the magazine and will debut at this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial.

The theme of the issue nods to the ubiquitous slogan, “reduce, reuse, recycle”, from the United States’ first national recycling programs in the 1970s. Although it originated from a grassroots movement to address mounting waste in post-war American cities, the slogan also had the effect of shifting that responsibility onto consumers, rather than the producers of throw-away packaging. Fifty years later, our theme – “Reuse and Repair” – channels some of the same urgency but focuses it through a more critical lens on the built environment’s complex technical, cultural, and political dimensions. Offering “Reuse and Repair” as a pair of concepts to encourage thinking around how systemic change might be enacted, we aim to open a conversation about how designing toward a low-carbon future can go hand-in-hand with the wider work of caring for and remaking our cities and society.

 

Excerpt from Guest Editors' Letter: Jeanne Gang and Lizabeth Cohen