Harvard GSD's Mohsen Mostafavi to Step Down as Dean

John Hill

25. 十月 2018

Mohsen Mostafavi in the GSD's Gund Hall (Photo via Harvard Gazette)

Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, announced on Tuesday, October 23rd that he will be stepping down at the end of the 2018/19 school year, after more than a decade as head of the GSD.

Mostafavi's announcement mentions the school's increasing emphasis on collaboration through a new Master in Design Engineering program with the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a new joint degree program with the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, as well as the expansion of Gund Hall by Herzog & de Meuron, which started during his tenure but will be realized after he steps down.

But the announcement does not mention many of the other GSD achievements that took place during Mostafavi's tenure. These include, among other things, broadening the annual $100,000 Wheelwright Prize to architects beyond the confines of the GSD, the establishment of the Richard Rogers Fellowship at Rogers' Wimbledon House in London, and a blossoming of GSD publications, which can be seen as an expression of the studio work and research initiatives being done at the school.

Mostafavi, who served as Chairman of the Architectural Association in London and then Dean at Cornell University before taking over as Dean at Harvard, will go on sabbatical after stepping down next year and then return to teaching and research at the GSD. Impressively, 2019 will be the first time Mostafavi has not served as the head of an architecture school since 1995!