The creative imagination is not solely based on the intuitive capacities of individuals. One of the tasks of design education is to help provide the tools, techniques, and methods that enhance constructed imagination. At the same time, the modes and practices of design need to confront the challenges of our contemporary societies. The commitment to societal engagement through design excellence is at the core of the pedagogy at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This volume celebrating the first seventy-five years of the GSD presents episodes in a rich history along with selected looks at current and future lines of teaching and research; these views reveal the constant oscillation between the pragmatic realities and the imagined yet never realized ideal that lies at the heart of design. The aspirations of the famous architecture school are demonstrated through a series of ideas, projects, practices - INSTIGATIONS - that reflect the mission for the GSD to reimagine and construct better futures.

The creative imagination is not solely based on the intuitive capacities of individuals. One of the tasks of design education is to help provide the tools, techniques, and methods that enhance constructed imagination. At the same time, the modes and practices of design need to confront the challenges of our contemporary societies. The commitment to societal engagement through design excellence is at the core of the pedagogy at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This volume celebrating the first seventy-five years of the GSD presents episodes in a rich history along with selected looks at current and future lines of teaching and research; these views reveal the constant oscillation between the pragmatic realities and the imagined yet never realized ideal that lies at the heart of design. The aspirations of the famous architecture school are demonstrated through a series of ideas, projects, practices - INSTIGATIONS - that reflect the mission for the GSD to reimagine and construct better futures.

MOHSEN MOSTAFAVI, an architect and educator, is dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. He is the editor of Ecological Urbanism (with Gareth Doherty).
PETER CHRISTENSEN is a PhD candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a former curatorial assistant in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.