Sam / Mark

Sam, 1975.

Xap in Chiapas, 1974.

Grandpa with Viola.

Mark at Harvard.

Mark in the here and now.

05-04-2025

Like many of us, when Sam Anderson arrived in Cambridge, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, beyond an interest in science and art.  He talks with Adams House roommate Mark Leib about friendships and experiences at Harvard and beyond that have shaped a life in architecture in his own design practice and teaching at his other alma mater Cooper Union.

As Sam and Mark reminisce about making “the best dance tape of the 1970’s” for parties at the Advocate, Sam looks back with appreciation that Harvard let summer adventures feed his studies, like his sophomore tutorial built on his stint on an iron ore freighter on the Great Lakes.

It was the summer studying housing development in Indigenous communities in Mexico on the Harvard Chiapas Project that confirmed what he’d discerned while taking visual studies courses—he wanted to work in design “in a socially valuable way.”

Fast forward to New York where an internship with influential architect Peter Eisenman exposed Sam to the “opposite idea” that architecture is above all about poetry.

Sam’s own practice seeks to balance poetry and social good through designs for the keepers of our cultural heritage, the museums, libraries, and archives that conserve the past for future generations, including his first project at Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum that came his way through a lucky chance.

When Mark asks about retirement, Sam reflects on passing on to young people what he's learned along the way, including tips on a long, happy, creative marriage.  And he closes with these words of wisdom—"one thing that I’ve learned over life is how little I know and how good it is to recognize my ignorance.”