G Laster

G Laster (they/them) is a researcher, designer, and critical cartographer studying landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Their work, animated by critical whiteness studies and postcolonial studies, repositions the role of the designer-activist toward anti-hegemonic ends. They hold dual bachelor’s degrees in architectural design and Ethnicity, Race & Migration from Yale University.

Laster’s current research centers on summer camps as spaces of Native appropriation, ideological construction of Nature, and assimilation for American Jews. Their current practice uses counter-mapping to advance Indigenous land back efforts in Alaska and Oklahoma. They articulate the spatial dimensions of Indigenous land dispossession and political disenfranchisement to create visual tools that aid Native self-governance.

Project: Learning with Community: Design Pedagogy and Shared Resources for Climate Adaptation

This project will enhance course programming through community engagement for a landscape architecture design studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Through speculative design propositions, this course examines urbanized landscapes at imminent climate risk in coastal Massachusetts. Students and the teaching team have recognized that our informed assumptions should be tested against local, situated knowledge, that our work in the studio can be helpful to the realization of community visions, and that the diverse challenges, worries, and desires of residents who are community leaders (but not design professionals) may reveal emerging issues of climate concern to coastal communities more broadly. Known models of engaged scholarship must be adapted to the particularities of this course: its large size, its role in the core curriculum, and the sensitive nature of speaking with communities about climate risk. To date, the studio has amassed and analyzed many publicly accessible spatial data, documents, and resources. The primary product of this proposal is a compilation of this data to be shared with nondesign professionals in a format that is graphically legible and engaging as a basis for discussion, thus inviting a two-way exchange of knowledge. It will also serve as a pilot model for interaction that could be integrated into future design studio curricula.