Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, Situations

• Livestream Link: This event will be in person and livestreamed. The livestream is available at the top of this page: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/infrastructure-in-a-time-of-flux-methods-conditions-and-situations/
• Please note: RSVP does not guarantee entry, which is filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Doors open 15 minutes before the event begins, so be sure to arrive early.
• AIA Continuing Education Credits: This event is approved for 8.5 LU|Elective credits through the American Institute of Architects. For attendees wishing to register for credit, a form will be available at the end of the event.

, is an exhibition that examines how architecture, engineering, urban design, and planning respond to a world increasingly defined by environmental disruption, political instability, technological transformation, migration, and rapidly changing patterns of habitation.

This symposium brings together designers, architects, humanitarian workers, and historians to reflect on the exhibition’s three themes and a case study:

• Methods: This panel explores historic and contemporary approaches to lightweight construction: suspended, pneumatic, tensile, tensegrity, deployable, gridshell, folded, scaffolding, and spaceframe systems. Developed across different periods and disciplines, these methods use tension, air pressure, geometry, movement, modularity, and coordinated assemblies to create expansive spaces with relatively little material.
• Conditions: This panel brings together urbanists, economists, and political scientists to discuss the forces that continually reshape human settlements. These forces operate beyond the scale of individual buildings, transforming landscapes, redistributing resources, influencing migration, and determining where and how communities can live.
• Situations: Designers and researchers present contemporary examples and speculative proposals for structures that meet immediate human needs. These situations emerge through necessity, ritual, labor, exchange, displacement, conflict, celebration, and collective action.
• Case Study, Kumbh Mela: Religious pilgrimages create temporary sacred cities. Drawing work by several schools at Harvard, this interdisciplinary conversation reflects on the Kumbh Mela, one of the largest gatherings in the world, and the roads, tents, sanitation systems, ceremonial routes, and public services that support it. This panel is organized by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.

The full lineup of speakers will be announced shortly.

This symposium is supported by the Koji Yanai Innovative Infrastructure Initiative Fund and a partnership with the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.

Info: Alessandro Petti is an architect, artist, researcher, and educator. Together with Sandi Hilal, he co-directs DAAR, a practice working across architecture, art, pedagogy, and research. Their work addresses and intervenes in the political and spatial conditions of exile, displacement, decolonization, and difficult heritage, including the afterlives of colonial-fascist architecture. Through projects and research, they have developed concepts and practices including Permanent Temporariness, Refugee Heritage, Campus in Camps, and Decolonizing Architecture. Petti is Professor of Architecture and Social Justice at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. His work has been presented internationally while remaining grounded in long-term collective practices in Palestine and beyond.

Info: Religious pilgrimages create temporary sacred cities. Drawing work by several schools at Harvard, this interdisciplinary conversation reflects on the Kumbh Mela, one of the largest gatherings in the world, and the roads, tents, sanitation systems, ceremonial routes, and public services that support it. This panel is organized by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.

SPEAKERS
• Rahul Mehrotra
• Tarun Khanna
• Satchit Balsari
• John Macomber
• Namita Dharia
• Diana Eck

Info: This panel explores historic and contemporary approaches to lightweight construction: suspended, pneumatic, tensile, tensegrity, deployable, gridshell, folded, scaffolding, and spaceframe systems. Developed across different periods and disciplines, these methods use tension, air pressure, geometry, movement, modularity, and coordinated assemblies to create expansive spaces with relatively little material.—Moderated by Dan Borelli, Director of Exhibitions, Harvard GSD.

Info: This panel brings together urbanists, economists, and political scientists to discuss the forces that continually reshape human settlements. These forces operate beyond the scale of individual buildings, transforming landscapes, redistributing resources, influencing migration, and determining where and how communities can live.—Moderated by Kelsey Nocket, Loeb Fellow 2027; Former USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance

Info: This panel features designers and researchers presenting contemporary examples and speculative proposals for structures that meet immediate human needs. These situations emerge through necessity, ritual, labor, exchange, displacement, conflict, celebration, and collective action.—Moderated by Luis Felipe Vera Benitez, Chief of Operations, Inter-American Development Bank

Event venue & nearby stays

Harvard University Graduate School Of Design, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, United States

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