Harvard GSD Design Discovery Youth
A three-week summer program where high school participants 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.
Overview
Design Discovery Youth (DDY) is a 3-week program that takes place at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) in Cambridge, MA. The program engages an audience of Boston area high school students, rising sophomore to senior year in age, who are interested in learning about what design is, its media and methods, and the scales it involves. The program explores how to translate participants’ varied and valuable observations of the world into the spatial and visual language of design. Students are taught by Harvard GSD faculty and masters degree program graduates in addition to interacting with a diverse community of Boston area design talent and agencies.
Participants receive a program certificate, student evaluation, and produce a draft portfolio of design work that can be shared with design programs or professionals in pursuit of additional forms of design education and internship experiences to follow.
Program Summary
- Three weeks in Cambridge, MA
- High School audience, ages rising sophomores to seniors from Boston area
- Introduction to design and its potentials to impact the world
- Instruction by Harvard GSD faculty and advanced GSD masters students
Who Attends
Design Discovery Youth (DDY) is an intensive summer program that seeks to immerse rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors in the world of design. Applicants must be permanent local residents of the Boston/Cambridge area to be eligible. For the purposes of this program, “local” is considered within no more than a 20 mile distance from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA 02138. Most participants come with little to no experience with design, drawing, modeling the way a design process unfolds. All of these skills are shared as a part of this program through built references, technique workshops and iterative design assignments.
Learning Format
Students will be exposed to drawing, modeling, and representation techniques associated with architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism, as well as graphic, industrial, and fine arts design. The program strives to foster design skills and put students on track for exploring these ideas at the collegiate level.
Participants explore the impact of line work in drawing, learn how to physically model their drawn designs, and how to use digital media to illustrate and express their ideas. A combination of group and one-on-one instruction helps each student develop their ability to bring creative ideas to life!
DDY is run and taught by advanced graduate students in the fields of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Urban Design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD).
To see more examples of student design work and the life of this program, Harvard GSD Design Discovery on social media!
Schedule
Students examine problem solving and thinking through making within the design disciplines through small and large-scale projects, weekly discussions, and fast-paced group design challenges. During the three-week program, students are taught and exposed to the many techniques through which designers capture and convey ideas. Program days include participants sharing observations of the world around them through the lens of design assignments, discussion of design references with respect to how to visually communicate those observations to other audiences and the 3-dimensional built possibilities that extend from those ideas.
Guests are also invited to present and discuss their academic and professional experiences in design with participants. Program guests capture a range of different paths of application of design thinking through making that participants could choose to pursue.
Evaluation + Certificate
Participants receive a program certificate, student evaluation, and produce a draft portfolio of design work that can be shared with design programs or professionals in pursuit of additional forms of design education and internship experiences to follow.
Tuition + Financial Aid
The GSD Design Discovery Youth program is free to those who qualify. Applicants must be from the Boston/Cambridge area.
A device with a stable internet connection and sufficient resources to run Zoom and access the web-based course management and digital design software is required. The use of Adobe Creative Cloud is optional. Harvard’s Graduate School of Design will provide all participants with licenses to use these tools for the duration of the program. If needed, applicants may request computer support by emailing [email protected] with your name, program and year, and needs.
Faculty + Staff
Program Director
Program Coordinator
Megan Panzano
Executive Director of Early Design, Online, and Executive EducationLecturer in ArchitectureView Profile
Do you want to be kept informed about the Harvard GSD’s Design Discovery programs? Please join our newsletter here to get the latest updates!
Follow Harvard GSD Design Discovery on social media for more examples of student work and for more images and videos of the life of our programs.