Nicholas Harkness on Landscape, Climate, and the Korea Institute's Collaboration with the GSD
The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is pleased to share coverage of a recent interdisciplinary collaboration between our department and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Professor Nicholas Harkness, Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Korea Institute at Harvard University, was a central voice in "Designers of Mountain and Water: Alternative Landscapes for a Changing Climate," an exhibition that ran through May 15 at the GSD.
The exhibition—organized not by national origin but by bioregions, areas defined by shared ecological and climatic conditions—brought together the work of 23 landscape architecture practitioners across 13 bioregions in Asia and the Asia-Pacific. Professor Harkness participated both as a collaborator in shaping the exhibition's conceptual framing and as a speaker at the related GSD conference.
In a conversation with exhibition curator Jungyoon Kim (Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the GSD and co-founder of PARKKIM), Professor Harkness reflected on the resonances between anthropology and landscape architecture: "Anthropologists have studied how societies inhabit, make use of, and transform landscapes" since the founding of the discipline, he noted, describing the project as a compelling meeting point between environmental realities and sociocultural context.
Nicholas Harkness at the GSD conference “Designers of Mountain and Water: Alternative Landscapes for a Changing Climate.” Photo: Zara Tzanev.
For the Korea Institute in particular, Professor Harkness emphasized the exhibition's dual value—elevating locally specific knowledge about the Korean peninsula while connecting Korea's landscape practices to broader regional and global conversations. "It has helped to elevate knowledge that is very local to the Korean peninsula," he observed, "while also connecting Korea through people, practices, and the diffusion of ideas to other regions, near and far."
This collaboration is a meaningful example of how anthropological inquiry can inform and enrich design practice, and how Harvard's disciplinary communities can come together around urgent questions of climate, culture, and environment.
We thank William Smith for his coverage of this story.