Early Design Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design
Early Design Education (EDE) at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) is a set of five academic programs that open design and its potential to change the world up to a global audience.
Our programs teach design thinking and methods across various media and scales, under the assumption that these programs are one of a participant’s earliest experiences in thinking through making. We bring the GSD’s rich and varied resources and design talent to a global public. To make design as open and accessible as possible, we invite everyone–from high school students through mid-career professionals and beyond–to participate in our programs. Join us today and discover design at the Harvard GSD.
Our Programs
Harvard GSD Design Discovery Virtual
Explore Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design in three weeks, from anywhere in the world—no visa required. You bring your best ideas, and we provide digital software, a physical design kit, and design thinking instruction by Harvard GSD faculty and graduate students.
Harvard GSD Design Discovery
Three weeks at your own studio desk in the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall, going deep into a design concentration of your choice: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, or Urban Planning+Design. You’ll learn to think through making, visualization and modeling skills, analytical methods of evaluating physical sites, and develop a portfolio of design work through the studio methods of iteration and review.
Harvard GSD Design Discovery Youth
Learn, draw, model, and build under Harvard GSD graduate-student instructors to examine how design answers big questions. You’ll leave with a Harvard GSD Design Certificate and a personal portfolio of work. Open to Boston-area high school students. No tuition cost or design experience needed.
Equity in Design Mentorship
An academic and professional mentorship program for diverse Boston-area high school students interested in design, ran in partnership with the Boston office of global design firm Perkins&Will. This program creates mentorship trios of high school participants, current GSD students, and professional designers to support design education and open potential design career paths.
Harvard Undergraduate Architecture Studies
An undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree program in Architectural Studies that teaches thinking through making within the liberal arts context of Harvard College. Run in partnership with the Harvard College History of Art & Architecture department, students of the program receive a Harvard A.B. degree in History of Art and Architecture, Design Studies. Admission questions and processes are managed by Harvard College.
Click on the diagrams above and visit our GSD EDE Program Comparison page for more information!
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