Instruments of Service: Harvard Design Magazine 52

At a moment when “design” has become everything—and hence nothing—Issue 52 examines the hidden mechanics and visible output of design practice in order to track the shifting role of designers in society and to gauge the capacity of designers to effect change in a world of mounting crises.

The issue poses a simple question: What do architects actually make and how is this changing?

The issue is based upon research seminar PRO-7448 Products of Practice: A Critical History and Uncertain Present. Building upon the seminar’s narrow focus on the history and theory of architectural instrumentation and its impact on the contemporary relationship between the designer and society, the issue explores the ways in which our changing instrumentation limits or expand the role of the architect in society.

Issue Overview

Issue 52’s exploration is grounded in architecture. In days gone by, architecture was seen as the “mother art” (Frank Lloyd Wright) and as “the ultimate goal of all creative activity” (Walter Gropius’s introduction to his Bauhaus Manifesto), but over the past century it has lost its purchase on such sweeping and grandiose claims to creative primacy and world-building. At the same time, however, architecture remains a ubiquitous point of reference for a wide range of disciplines, practices, and protagonists that influence the design of the things we use and the environments we inhabit—including fields not only directly related to architecture such as landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design, but also fashion, industrial design, graphic design, and digital design.

The issue’s title, Instruments of Service, carries a double meaning. As defined in standard American Institute of Architects contracts, “Instruments of Service are representations, in any medium of expression now known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect and the Architect’s consultants under their respective professional services agreements. Instruments of Service may include, without limitation, studies, surveys, models, sketches, drawings, specifications, and other similar materials.” Instruments of service are the instruction manuals that architects—and other designers—make so that others can make something. They define the architect’s relationships with labor, construction, clients, and society. And these relationships—along with the agency of architectural practice—are changing as a growing number of external pressures force instruments of service to change.

Architects and designers can also be seen as instruments of service to society, responsive to a continually shifting set of values. At a fundamental level, the designer’s job is to imagine and articulate a better future. In a time of crisis and competing value systems—market returns, cultural relevance, environmental response, social equity, automation—the role of the designer in society is ever more important and increasingly accountable to divergent interests that call into question the raison d’être of design practice itself.

In the end, what we make is inextricably tied to why and for whom we make it.  

Issue 52 was the first Harvard Design Magazine issue to sell out within weeks of release in over two decades, signalling its relevance within and beyond the discipline. The issue has received significant interest and acclaim, including a recent review in the Spring 2025 Yale University School of Architecture Constructs publication. 

Guest Editors: Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti and Jacob Reidel 

Affiliated output

Guest Ed. Christoforetti, E. and Reidel, J. Harvard Design Magazine 52: Instruments of Service. Fall 2024. 

Department of Architecture Lecture Series at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). Invited lecture titled The Architect in a World of Changing Values. Singapore. Spring 2025.

Harvard Design Magazine Issue 52 Lecture and Discussion at The Design School at Arizona State University (ASU). Lecture delivered with J. Reidel. Tempe, AZ. Spring 2025. 

Department of Architecture Lecture Series at Georgia Institute of Technology. Invited talk and discussion on The Architect in a World of Changing Values: From the Outside In and Inside Out. Atlanta, GA. Spring 2025.

Harvard Design Magazine Issue 52 Launch Lecture at Harvard GSD. Fall 2024. Lecture delivered with J. Reidel.

Invited talk as part of the Faculty Discussion Series, The Design School at ASU, Spring 2025

Harvard Design Magazine Issue 52 panel discussion, Head Hi, New York, NY, Spring 2025

Harvard GSD Town Hall Meeting, Spring 2025.

Student research web archive of architectural instrumentation from PRO-7448:
https://products-of-practice.webflow.io/