Harvard Design Magazine #52: “Instruments of Service” Launch Party, Drinks & Discussion

At a moment when “design” has become everything—and hence nothing—issue 52 examines the hidden mechanics and visible output of design practice in order to track the shifting role of designers in society and to gauge the capacity of designers to effect change in a world of mounting crises. The issue poses a simple question: What do architects actually make and how is this changing?

Issue 52’s exploration is grounded in architecture. Once upon a time asserted to be the “mother art” (Frank Lloyd Wright) and as “the ultimate goal of all creative activity” (Walter Gropius’s introduction to his Bauhaus Manifesto), but over the past century it has lost its purchase on such sweeping and grandiose claims to creative primacy and world-building. At the same time, however, architecture remains a ubiquitous point of reference for a wide range of disciplines, practices, and protagonists that influence the design of the things we use and the environments we inhabit—including fields not only directly related to architecture such as landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design, but also fashion, industrial design, graphic design, and digital design.

The issue’s title, Instruments of Service, carries a double meaning. As defined in standard American Institute of Architects contracts, “Instruments of Service are representations, in any medium of expression now known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect and the Architect’s consultants under their respective professional services agreements. Instruments of Service may include, without limitation, studies, surveys, models, sketches, drawings, specifications, and other similar materials.” Instruments of service are the instruction manuals that architects—and other designers—make so that others can make something. They define the architect’s relationships with labor, construction, clients, and society. And these relationships—along with the agency of architectural practice—are changing as a growing number of external pressures force instruments of service to change.

Architects and designers can also be seen as instruments of service to society, responsible to a continually shifting set of values. At a fundamental level, the designer’s job is to imagine and articulate a better future. In a time of crisis and competing value systems—market returns, cultural relevance, environmental response, social equity, automation—the role of the designer in society is ever more important and increasingly accountable to divergent interests that call into question the raison d’être of design practice itself.

In the end, what we make is inextricably tied to why and for whom we make it.

---- For the occasion, please join the following guest editors and contributors for drinks and discussion at Head Hi:

Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti is assistant professor in practice of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the founder and director of Supernormal, a design studio based in Cambridge, MA. Her research, practice, and teaching focus on changing definitions and modes of design practice in the built environment. Her work explores emerging theories, methods, and the technological building blocks that enable design practice to confront the overlapping and conflicting imperatives of our time: the climate crisis, artificial intelligence, and market-driven urbanism. @ebchristo

Jacob Reidel examines and advances the purpose, value, and potential of architectural practice. His work—spanning practice, research, publication, and teaching—is grounded in the conviction that while architecture and the people who create physical spaces have existed for millennia, the practice and the profession of architecture are comparatively new and unstable frameworks, subject to reconsideration and redesign. He is assistant professor in practice of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a licensed architect in New York where he co-chairs the AIA New York Future of Practice Committee, and is co-founder and editor of CLOG. @jacob_reidel 

Mario Carpo is Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL). His research and publications focus on the history of early modern architecture and on the theory and criticism of contemporary design and technology. He is the author of Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001), which has been translated into several languages. Additional books include The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011); The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence (2017); and Beyond Digital: Design and Automation at the End of Modernity (2023), all published by MIT Press. @mario_carpo

Michael Caton, AIA, NOMA, is an architect and product leader advancing business models with scalable impact in the AEC industry. He led technology and computing at Juno, a start-up accelerating the development of sustainable multifamily buildings with mass timber. Before Juno, he led the architecture discipline for WeWork’s vertically integrated enterprise team. Caton was also a design and technology leader with several New York practices, including Ennead Architects. He has held academic appointments at Pratt Institute; the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation; and the American University of Sharjah. @michaelcaton

Toni L. Griffin is founder of urbanAC LLC, a planning and design practice working with public, private, and nonprofit partnerships to reimage, reshape, and rebuild just cities and communities. UrbanAC leads transformative projects rooted in addressing historic and current disparities involving race, class, and generation. They have collaborated with cities on the cusp of just social and economic recovery including Chicago, Indianapolis, Rochester, and St. Louis. Griffin is also professor in practice of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is founding director of the Just City Lab, a research platform that investigates design’s impact on social and spatial justice in cities. She has authored articles on design justice and co-edited The Just City Essays. Griffin has lectured extensively in the US, the Netherlands, South Africa, and South America, and served as an Obama presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. @tonilgriffin

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Harvard Design Magazine probes beyond the established design disciplines to enrich and diversify current discourse. Scholarly, poetic, and visually lush, each presents new interpretations of design’s defining role in today’s culture. Distinguished and unexpected voices from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning meet those from the realms of art, science, literature, and beyond. A space for dialogue, speculation, and surprise: Harvard Design Magazine opens a door onto the applied device of design, and the people, places, and politics it engages. @harvarddesignmagazine 

Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art, architecture, design and sound specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, exhibitions, music, performances and other events. Head Hi Fi enhances the experience of sound in the space with its vintage Klipsch La Scala speakers. @headhi_ny