Harvard’s GSD has announced the 2017 winners of the Richard Rogers Fellowship, a new residency program to be hosted at the Wimbledon House. The Wimbledon House was designed by acclaimed architect Lord Richard Rogers for his parents in the 60s and generously gifted to Harvard.The landmarked residence will house the fellows with the goal of bringing together experts and practitioners across disciplines who are focused on the built environment and its capacity to advance the quality of human life. 

Central to Rogers' life and career were the questions of urbanism, sustainability and how people use cities. “The spirit of the Fellowship” said Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design at Harvard GSD “is intended to carry forward and expand on Richard’s deep commitment to cities not as ends in themselves, but as a fundamental means to bettering human life. At the GSD, our work is organized around the urgent issues cities are facing globally, a pedagogical approach requiring exploration and collaboration across disciplinary lines. We are very fortunate and excited about this opportunity to support, learn from, and promote such cross-disciplinary research internationally, in the context of London’s thriving architecture, design, and art communities and vast institutional resources.”

The fellowship is a three-month residency accompanied by a $10,000 cash prize. Two fellows will share the residence during each term. The inaugural program saw over 200 applicants from around the world. The selection committee, comprised of academics from an array of disciplines such as Architectural Technology, Urban Studies and Design, has chosen 6 soon-to-be fellows hailing from Australia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States. The projects that will be investigated by these fellows include examinations of public and affordable housing, how food and cooking transform cities, and citizen-driven urban regeneration initiatives.

Spring 2017 Fellows:

Namik Mackie (MDes ’16; Oslo + Cambridge, UK): The Return of the Group Form: A Comparative Speculation on Radical Urban Regeneration in London and Berlin - their work compares trajectories of citizen-driven initiatives in two key capitals of post-Brexit, “migrant crisis”-stricken Europe, London and Berlin

Maik Novotna (Viele + Stuttgart): The State of the Estate: A Tale of Two Cities - their work seeks solution for re-densifying and revitalizing an aging housing stock by exploring the challenges for social housing in London and Vienna and comparing their two approaches

Summer 2017 Fellows:

Jose Castillo (March ’95, Ddes ’00, Mexico City): On Food, Cooking, and the City: Learning from London - their work draws connections between urban food economies and pressing global problems such as climate change, inequality and migration

Said Springhall (March ’96, Mexico City): London and the Challenges of Affordable Housing - their investigation into affordable housing focuses on the “social contract” that is established between the state, developers, civic agencies, and citizens.

Fall 2017 Fellows:

Shantel Blakely (Cambridge, MA): Pattern Informed by Sensibiliy: Herbert Road on Art and Design - their work focuses on early-20th-century English poet-educator-anarchist Herbert Read and is an investigation into whether or not art, architecture, and design can achieve social harmony

Dirk van den Heuvel (Amsterdam): Socio-Plastics: Resituating New Brutalism and the British Welfare State - their work examines the interrelations between architecture, planning, and housing policies and aims to reconnect the notion of architectural invention with the urgent need for equitable and livable cities