One of the distinguishing characteristics of Harvard’s Architecture Department is that it primarily looks at the concrete world in order to theorize and reshape the discipline. It has always sought to establish a critical and consequential dialogue between academic speculation and advanced forms of practice in the profession, internationally. Above and beyond the diverse and numerous strategies and pedagogies of the Department, it is the ambition to expand the repertoire that remains the dominant, though usually unstated, collective and individual goal of faculty and students. Among the prevailing strategies is to work on intensely constraint-based projects that stimulate ingenuity and at the same time are embedded in the complex political terrain that architects must confront. Thus, despite the currently dominant interest in the new models of computation and technologically rigorous sustainable design, just to name two examples, it is the cultural and social dimension of architecture that remains the primary focus.

Preston Scott Cohen
Chair, Department of Architecture
Gerald M. McCue Professor of Architecture
Harvard University GSD