Each year the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) hosts a talented group of mid-career professionals through its Loeb Fellowship, and the 2024 cohort is no exception. The nine fellows include “innovators, problem solvers, visionaries, and practitioners who lead the charge for social justice and transformative change working in fields such as post-disaster support, cultural infrastructure, land ownership reform, and climate justice.”
The Loeb Fellowship was started by John L. Loeb in the 1960s. Loeb led a campaign at Harvard GSD focused on the idea of “Crisis,” specifically in relation to the disorder of the American city. Loeb believed Harvard could help address this issue, and others, by bringing together a group of promising innovators each year so that they could return out into the world and their work with new ideas and renewed energy.
“Every year, Loeb Fellows add a special, irreplaceable energy to the GSD community. They come from all over the world, bringing with them such rich and varied experiences and an ambitious optimism that
opens our eyes to what’s possible. At the GSD, we are incredibly fortunate to count them among us, and I can’t wait to welcome next year’s class in Cambridge,” said Dean Sarah M. Whiting and Josep Lluís Sert, an architecture professor at the GSD.
As in past years, the 2024 Loeb Fellows will spend their 10 month residency immersing themselves in a rich academic environment by auditing courses at Harvard and MIT, to grow their professional networks and partake in an exchange of ideas, thoughts, and research. They also engage with Harvard GSD students and faculty, take part in lectures and public events as speakers and panelists , and assemble and host workshops and other activities.
“When we make our selection in the spring, we already know these individuals are highly accomplished and show great promise for growing their influence,” added current Loeb Fellowship curator John Peterson. “Our work is to recognize the opportunity that educational experience and the catalyzing effect of being within the cohort are as vehicles for their potential.”
The new cohort will join the ranks of over 450 former fellows. Notable past recipients include: Theaster Gates in 2011, Toni Griffin in 1998, Alessandro Petti in 2017, Emmanuel Pratt in 2017, Ana María Durán Calisto in 2011, Stephanie Hankey in 2022, Michael Uwemedimo in 2022, Jordan Weber in 2022, and Mpho Matsipa in 2022. These mentioned past recipients, and others, have gone on to participate in global architecture and design events, such as the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. The upcoming 2024 Loeb Fellowship cohort includes:
Catherine Buell
Former Director, Amazon Housing Equity Fund / Washington, D.C.
Akeem Dixon
Founder and CEO, The Intersect / Philadelphia
Henry Grabar
Staff writer, Slate / Paris and New York
Mavis Gragg
CEO, HeirShares / Durham, NC
Maria-Mercedes Jaramillo Garcés
Secretary of Planning, City of Bogotá / Bogotá, Colombia
Adi Kumar
Executive Director, Ndifuna Ukwazi / Cape Town, South Africa
Line Ramstad
Founder and Director, Gyaw Gyaw / Vormsund, Norway
Kannan Thiruvengadam
Director, Eastie Farm, Inc. / Boston
Joseph Zeal-Henry
Capital Development Manager, Greater London Authority; Cofounder, SOUND ADVICE / London
2024 Loeb/ArtLab Fellow
Of the new cohort, fellow Joseph Zeal-Henry will be the third Loeb/ArtLab Fellow, joining past artist Fellows Jordan Weber (2022) and Dario Calmese (2023). Through this continued partnership with the ArtLab at Harvard University, Zeal-Henry will have access to studio space and the ArtLab community and its intellectual resources and networks.
