Archinect - Greener Grass

Harvard University Explores Disruptive Innovation in Real Estate

2015-01-08T17:44:00-05:00

At the fringe of innovation, the architect transforms vague market demands into tangible, meaningful interventions. But of these interventions, few take shape into critical market shifts. Lately, however, there has been an increase in the number of trends brooding the status quo. A recent Harvard University conference gathered top industry leaders to talk about “Disruptive Innovation” and how it is changing the face of the real estate industry. I had a chance to attend and write an article for the GSD Real Estate program. Here it is in its entirety below.

An idea largely reserved for more probationary enterprises, disruptive innovation and real estate may initially sound paradoxical. However, in an industry that values stability and rewards risk mitigation, the risk inherent in dissenting against the market norm ultimately inhibit innovation. At the second annual Harvard Real Estate Conference Disruptive Innovation in Real Estate, organized by the MDes Real Estate and the Built Envir...

Real Estate Field Study: Dallas Aircraft Plant

2014-11-28T13:22:00-05:00

The Field Study courses at the GSD are essentially architecture and urban design studios predicated on in-place economic, financial, and regulatory assumptions. This is where the creative, methodological processes of design meet real world constraints of development. Students from any school at Harvard are encouraged to enroll, bringing pupils from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), Harvard Law School (HLS) and the like into groups with architects, urban designers, landscape architects, and urban planners from the Graduate School of Design (GSD). The result is consistently a plethora of creative, yet grounded ideas for solving difficult real-world urban conditions. The final research is presented to the stakeholders of the project to invoke a lively debate, muster public enthusiasm, or possibly even be implemented.

Each semester, there are 2 field studies - one locally based around Boston, and the other, anywhere around the globe. This semester Professor Rick Peiser arranged for the local...

Filling the Void

2014-10-07T12:57:00-04:00

Architects are generalists. The core of our curriculum - design, tectonics, construction, structural engineering, mechanical systems, sustainability, urbanization, zoning, etc - prepares us to juggle multiple components of the architectural process, aggregating into a cohesive end result. We are problem solvers, but are we problem finders? In other words, can architects recognize opportunities in the built environment to improve the way humans live and interact with each other? I undoubtedly believe yes…and no.

Innovation and invention is ubiquitous within an architecture school, but practicality is at times scant. When did the last studio project you completed have a capital plan? Your loft space offers daylight into your closets - so stoked for you - but what’s the absorption rate in this market? I have a sketchbook full of great ideas, or so I thought until I learned how to underwrite. There is a multitude of opportunity to actually implement great design in the world, but the arc...

A Search for Greener Grass

2014-09-16T21:23:00-04:00

Architects rarely ‘architect.’ This is the lesson I learned 5 years ago while I was in my 3rd year in architecture school and had two summers of internships under my belt. Rather than the illustrious profession I had imagined, I was aghast to find the gaping disconnect between academic studies and professional practice. The importance of the progression of theoretical exploration in the built environment was highly stressed in the academic arena, but this pedagogy was scarce in the current architecture profession. Architects bowed to the whims of their clients, sacrificing truth, authenticity, and innovation for security, economy, and placating exteriority. Those endowed enough to find themselves designing on the fringes of theory and technology were treated like chattel, working 70 to 80+ hours a week, making less than their peers, with tremendous student loans, and living in substandard rental housing in some of the most expensive cities in the world. The profession in majority is...