New faculty: Lisa Haber-Thomson

When it comes to approaching design, Lisa Haber-Thomson understands all too well the pressures undergraduate students face in trying to find the so-called “correct answer.” But in order to embrace exploration, Haber-Thomson tries to emphasize to her students that it’s okay to fail.

“When you’re designing something, it’s open-ended. This can cause a lot of anxiety, especially for students who might not see themselves as a ‘creative person.’ At first, if you’re able to let go and be willing to make mistakes, I think it frees students to come up with something that they will ultimately be proud of,” she said. “I can't tell them, ‘This is how you can get an A’ or ‘These are the parameters’ in the same way that you could for an academic discipline that has much clearer guidelines — like what makes a good research paper, for example.”

This fall, Haber-Thomson, an architectural historian with a background in design, joins the faculty at Mount Holyoke College as an assistant professor of architectural history. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, a master’s degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a doctorate from Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She previously served as a lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has also worked in nonfiction video and digital media production.

While working on her master’s degree, Haber-Thomson found herself invested in the news surrounding the extradition cases at Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a U.S. internment facility on Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. International human rights and humanitarian organizations had repeatedly condemned the facility for alleged violations of legal rights of detainees.

“I started to get really interested in the spaces that the detainees were being held in, and wondered why architects weren’t talking about these spaces. I remember being told that this was not an architectural question, but rather more of a legal question,” she said. “I was really struck by this refusal to engage because you'd read testimony from these detainees, and they'd describe their experiences using precise spatial terminology.”

Still, Haber-Thomson felt that the circumstances at Guantánamo Bay were both an architectural question as well as a legal question.

“I was looking for alternative approaches to understanding these environments, and in the process began exploring ways of bringing legal questions into the discipline of architecture,” she said.

From that point on, she began exploring an interdisciplinary approach to understanding carceral spaces. Since then, she’s expanded her research into how architecture has affected the development of legal practice and how legal practice has shaped the development of architecture.

As part of her approach to the coursework, Haber-Thomson often provides architecture students with a single primary document, such as a photograph, historical text or court document, without offering any additional background information. She especially enjoys seeing students question aspects of a design that she may not have even considered after looking at the materials for so long.

“It makes for a really enriching discussion,” she said.

This semester, Haber-Thomson is looking forward to applying a more experiential learning approach to architectural history with her students. She plans on incorporating creative projects that tap into her previous work in digital media production.

“I'm very excited to be here and look forward to meeting everyone,” she said.