“Architects learn different ways of representing data. We can represent data in a very graphic way rather than numerically and textually,” he says. “Imagine someone going into biology with the ability to represent the interaction of complex systems in a different way than a normal biologist would represent it…. It would expand the kind of way you can learn about things. The hope is that [studying architecture] will contribute to an expanding potential of thoughts in other fields.”

Professor Ficca agrees that the study of architecture has implications far beyond the acquisition of technical, applicable knowledge. “I know it’s a very simplistic analogy saying [architecture] is the merging of the arts and sciences, but despite being a technical field of study and practice, it is implicitly a cultural act.”

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Fiorenzoli affirms that the study of architecture informs and is connected to other areas of study. A joint concentrator in music and architecture studies, Fiorenzoli sees the disciplines as deeply connected and is currently at work on a thesis that combines the two. “Architecture and music have very similar languages,” she says. “Architects will often talk about the rhythm to a façade—how quickly you eyes move across a facade, what are the pattern of the movements on the building, how do they interact…. The two worlds are definitely related in that sense.”

Meanwhile, Abigail Harris ’16 hopes that her design training will enable her to combine her interest in architecture and her secondary in women, gender, and sexuality studies in a socially impactful way. “In WGS, we see that all institutions are constructed by…heteronormativity,” Harris says. “I’m interested in seeing how we can construct some of those social implications in our designs.”

CONSTRUCTIVE CHANGE

Ambitious philosophy aside, the architecture track is young, and students and faculty members alike acknowledge that there is room for improvement. Harris feels the track still doesn’t have a specific focus and lacks complete definition.“I wish that I wouldn’t be such a newbie to the program because it’s definitely only getting up and running, and the classes that we have to take aren’t exactly defined,” she says. “Right now, I don’t have a really specific focus on my architecture studies.”

Hong cites a variety of ways in which the track could be improved: “There needs to be a much larger infrastructure, more staff, more student interest.”

Yet, students find plenty to praise about the track—notably, its tight-knit community and the specificity with which the program caters to their interests. Harris admits that the existence of the track cemented her decision to go to Harvard. She had been considering Princeton, which is well known for its undergraduate program in architecture, but chose to attend Harvard after discovering that the architecture studies track was being implemented.

Also attractive to students is the relatively small size of the track—out of the 70 sophomores that declared HAA concentrations last November, nine opted for architecture studies. This results in smaller classes and more personalized teaching. Lopez recounts a time when the students expressed disappointment that none of the course offerings for a particular semester dealt with modern art. Hays heeded their complaints and was able to implement a new course about modern architecture for the following semester.

Additionally, students are excited by how the newness of the track enables them to have a real impact on its development. “That ability to control what will happen for the next generation—that is something I’m very thankful for," Fiorenzoli says.

It is this commitment to improvement that breeds positivity about the track’s future. Hays hopes the track can expand beyond architecture into urban and landscape studies. Fiorenzoli, too, has a grand vision for it. “I see it as being its own concentration,” she says. “I see it expanding in numbers full of students who come here knowing that there is an architecture track, knowing there is a space for them.”

Even as it endures growing pains, the architecture studies track seems to be in the midst of a multifaceted bloom, simultaneously opening Harvard’s doors to students who might previously not have felt that the school’s definition of liberal arts included a place for them, and encouraging the development of a different way of thinking about the nature of architecture. “Right now, architecture is a profession,” Hays says. “I would like to define it more as a discipline and a mode of knowledge.”