Introduction to the Harvard GSD Exhibition “Platform 5”
Architect, Professor of Keio University　Hiroto Kobayashi

People around the world who used to be separated by great physical distances are now increasingly connected to others around the globe through advances in transportation and information technology. As a result, problems arising from relationships established between people of different cultural and/or social backgrounds, once rare, are now commonly encountered in our daily lives. At this moment in time, the question of what role design should play to contributing to global society – what design can actually achieve or make happen – must be the fundamental issue to be discussed in design schools around the world.

Since its founding in 1936, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has pursued design education in response to critical issues of each successive generation, seeking broad understanding of the background and context of society’s problems while projecting its future. One of the most outstanding characteristics of the GSD is its pursuit of multi-disciplinary approaches to design education and research, without setting any boundaries between the component disciplines that make up the school: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning and Design. Each of these departments offers separate degree programs and sponsors independent study topics, while at the same time, each intervenes in the others’ fields by conducting design studios and research programs that draw on the GSD’s multiple education systems. The discipline we call “urban design” had its origins in Harvard’s 1956 Urban Design Conference, which proposed a new design discipline connecting the three existing fields of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. More recently, the GSD has promoted “Ecological Urbanism” as new area of study, hybridizing the disciplines of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. These examples demonstrate the GSD’s willingness to experiment with new design methodologies by breaking down boundaries separating different fields of knowledge.

Another strong characteristic of the GSD that I sense is its diversity in terms of people and opinions. Not only students but also faculty members gather there from all over the world. Their combined experience of people and places allows them to perceive important, timely issues of a particular place or group under study and to discuss potential design solutions from widely differing points of view. When I first attended the GSD about twenty years ago for my master’s degree, my focus was on honing my design skills and thinking critically about the meaning of my designs in studios and seminars. Ten years later, when I enrolled in the GSD’s doctoral program, my focus shifted to design theory and social relevance. That such different approaches were possible within the same design school attests to the GSD’s openness and pluralistic design thinking.

The GSD offers its students and faculty a stage for creating diverse approaches to design problems and drawing multiple meanings from those approaches; never content to rely on conventional or static design methods, the school is constantly evolving its approach. This makes it a very exciting place to study.