Over the past decade, longstanding disciplinary divides between the urban and the ecological have given way to more fluid, polyvalent and potentially more productive relations. The challenges of the built environment have rarely, at any time, corresponded to traditional disciplinary or professional boundaries. Today, contemporary practices of urbanism are shaped by thinking from subjects as diverse as landscape architecture, geography and economics, while increasingly being informed by sensibilities and stores of knowledge broadly associated with the study of the natural world.
In this milieu, the MDesS Program invites candidates to examine contemporary practices of design and modes of production as they inform and manifest urbanism. As model and metaphor on the one hand, and as applied science on the other, urban and architectural practices and habits of thought are increasingly engaged with ecological thinking. In this space of intellectual inquiry and advancement of the design arts, the MDesS Program aspires to be a leading venue for post-professional studies of contemporary urban practice. MDesS candidates in the Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology concentration pursue advanced studies in topics related to contemporary urbanism, landscape, geography, or territory within the broader contexts of the global, social and natural environment.
Pierre Belanger, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory
Learn more about the MDesS in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology at gsd.harvard.edu/ule
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