Premise
We are a group of designers focused on people-centered landscape architecture. We believe that our age's critical challenges, including adapting to changing climates and achieving social and racial equity, demand an in-depth understanding of human aspirations and limitations. The Critical Landscapes Lab engages with diverse audiences and a myriad of pressing socio-ecological issues across the postcolonial and Islamic worlds where the design disciplines—and especially landscape architecture—can help imagine better futures. Our focus recognizes a need for a critique of Western canons of knowledge, leading to new design and theoretical possibilities for landscape architecture.
The Critical Landscapes Design Lab’s current and recent projects include:
—Atlas for a City-Region: Imagining the Post-Brexit Landscapes of the Irish Northwest
—Sacred Groves & Secret Parks: Orisha Landscapes in Brazil and West Africa
—After Dark: Nocturnal Landscapes and Public Spaces in the Arabian Peninsula
—Climate, Cities, Color: The potential of landscape colors to mitigate the impacts of changing climates
—Mecca: The Lived City: Examining the ways Mecca is imagined, remembered, represented, and visualized
—Landscape Fieldwork: How fieldwork can inform and inspire landscape architecture innovations
The Critical Landscapes Lab is affiliated with the
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The Lab has research partnerships across Harvard University that include the
Afro-Latin American Research Institute, the
Center for African Studies, and the
Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Courses
Design Anthropology: Objects, Landscapes, Cities
People
Principal Investigator:
Gareth Doherty, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program
Faculty Steering Committee:
Niall G. Kirkwood, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Technology and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Paul W. Nakazawa, Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture
Gülru Necipoğlu, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art, Director of the Aga Khan Program of Islamic Architecture
Current and Former Researchers
Postdoctoral Fellow:
Mariano Gomez Luque (DDes ’19)
Research Associate:
Pol Fité Matamoros (MDes ’18)
Research Assistants:
Griffin Andres (AB ’21), Finn Bamber (AB ’21), Joan Chen (MLA ’19), Sinead Danagher (AB ’21), Rajji Sanjay Desai (MDes ’19), Pablo Escudoro (MDes ’18), Yvonne Fang (MLA ’21), Eva Gildea (AB ’21), Jiyun Jeong (MLA ’19), Isaiah Krieger (MLA ’22), Sam Lincoln (AB ’21), Estello Cisdre Raganit (MLA ’19), Ellie Rochman (MLA ’20), Roberto Ransom Ruiz (MLA ’20), Michele Turrini (MLA ’21), Ammara Vaid (AB ’21), Sam Valentine (MLA ’21)
Research Administration:
Suneeta Gill (MA, ’15)
Thesis Students:
Rawan Alsafar (DDes ’23), Sohun Kang (MArch ’21), Fatma Mhmood (MDes ’21), Roberto Ransom Ruiz (MLA ’20), Ayaka Yamashita (MDes ’21)
External Collaborators:
Olatunji Adejumo (University of Lagos), Tao DuFour (Cornell University), Caio Frederico e Silva (Federal University of Brasilia), Burcu Kütükçüoğlu (Istanbul Bilgi University), Moisés Lino e Silva (Federal University of Bahia), Iulia Statica (UCL), Hayriye Eşbah Tuncay (Istanbul Technical University)
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