Dezeen promotion: Wolfgang Rieder, owner of the Rieder Group, has become the first design entrepreneur to be granted a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University.
As one of the Loeb Fellows, the Austrian-based owner of the Rieder Group will spend the 2019/2020 semester at Harvard University in Cambridge devoting himself to topics including climate protection and sustainable building in order to actively advocate better and more resilient architecture.
Wolfgang Rieder will be granted a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University
The fellowship, which is linked to the Harvard University School of Design, was established in 1968 through a foundation set up by entrepreneur and philanthropist Frances and John L Loeb.
It was created for civic leaders, journalists, architects, technologists, urban planners and designers, activists, landscape architects, policy makers, and public artists. Rieder was one of nine scholarship holders to be appointed a Loeb Fellow out of more than 200 applicants.
Rieder is the first design entrepreneur to receive the honour
Each of the chosen fellows will cover a different industrial sector, from transportation and sustainability to arts and culture and public interest design.
Rieder plans to use his time at Harvard to learn more about sustainability.
"In order to counteract the climate crisis, we need to break away from the material fetishism in architecture and engage in a substantive debate on sustainability." said Rieder.
"I don't want to be re...