Andrei Harwell, executive director of the Yale Urban Design Workshop and senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture, has been selected as the scholar-in-residence for the third annual Krane Art History Guest Residency program at Connecticut College.

This semester, Harwell will work with students enrolled in the course “Imagine Home,” taught by Associate Professor of Art History and Architectural Studies Anna Vallye, to create a study of housing types in New London County. The course focuses on a history of images that shape and confine American ideas of home. Students will study the cultural meanings conveyed by building and product design, art, film and mass media; the social values and norms they fix or break; and the exclusions and inequities they fight or help sustain. Through research, field trips and creative work, students will analyze local residences. Work with a new cohort of students will continue in Spring 2026, culminating in an exhibit and digital publication.

In a career spanning 25 years, Harwell has developed award-winning urban strategies and design projects that respond to contemporary issues and challenges facing American and world cities, towns and urban regions. Much of his work is focused on the integration of buildings, infrastructure and the natural environment at the neighborhood scale, emphasizing the way in which good design can connect people and communities; contribute to economic, social and environmental resilience; and create a strong sense of vibrancy and local identity.

Harwell’s current work includes research and planning for community health and wellness and the urban environment in New Haven’s Dwight neighborhood and Bridgeport’s East Side, focusing on factors related to environmental injustice. At Yale in 2022, he created and coordinates the innovative, multidisciplinary affordable housing clinic Housing Connecticut, which was recognized by the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture with the 2024 Housing Design Education Award.

The Krane Art History Guest Residency Program began in 2023 and is supported by a gift from Trustee Jonathan A. Krane ’90. The program is intended to introduce students to notable scholars and leading experts in the history of art and visual culture to foster interdisciplinary approaches to learning and bring to light the significance of inherited artifacts and material culture in the social construction of knowledge and history. Past guest residents were Brian Wallis and Näkki Goranin in 2024, and Lucy Sante and Natalie Curley in 2023.