Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate investor, died this week at the age of 81. That seems young to me. Or maybe I’m just being overly optimistic about life expectancy. This is around the US average.

Whatever the case, if you work in real estate, you likely know/knew of Sam. In my case, he spent a lot of time at Penn after he permanently endowed the real estate center (under both his name and his late business partner’s name).

I used to go and listen to him speak at least twice a year, and I would hang off his every word as a young student of real estate. “So wait, how does this all work?”

It was also at this time that he sold Equity Office to Blackstone for $39 billion (back in 2007, it was the largest private equity deal in history). Sam’s explanation for doing this deal was that Blackstone offered him more than what he thought the portfolio was worth, so he sold it. He took no credit for good market timing.

If you’ve ever heard Sam speak, you know that he’s incredibly direct. Generally, he also didn’t seem to give a fuck, and was happy being the only person in a Hawaiian shirt among a sea of blue and black suits.

In fact, he’s largely the reason that, as students, we used to all joke that the richer the speaker, the more funny and honest they would be. “Come on, let’s go to this one. She’s rich.” I guess this is just what happens when you no longer have anything to prove.

But none of this is to say that he didn’t care. He cared a great deal about the school and about helping young students. And for that, I say: thank you Sam. Thank you for being generous with your time.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) just announced a new 12-month degree called the Master in Real Estate (MRE). Here's a short excerpt about the program:

The MRE program is designed to train future practitioners to address new and urgent realities facing the built environment and cities today. Whether undertaken by for-profit businesses, not-for-profit organizations, or public entities, real estate occupies a pivotal role in determining how the places where we live, work, and play are equitable, environmentally sustainable, and appealing, in addition to being productive for the economy.

The key takeaways are that this is a graduate program being designed for aspiring real estate entrepreneurs and that it will live within Harvard's Graduate School of Design. So there is an implicit recognition that the world of real estate doesn't need to run counter to the pedagogical goals of a design school.

Anyone who went to architecture school will tell you that real estate is often viewed as the "dark side." Either you commit yourself to the pure world of architecture and design, or you sell out and seek profits in the world of real estate. But I have always considered this to be a false dichotomy.

Real estate is a fundamental component of how we shape our built environment. And so if one's ambitions are to improve the built environment -- which is something that architecture schools do teach you -- why should the delivery vehicle matter? Shouldn't we be encouraging people to optimize for maximum benefit?

I completed my undergraduate degree in architecture. But very early on I had the feeling that I was only getting one piece of a larger picture. And so I went to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school and completed a degree that combined both architecture and real estate. My goal was to figure out a way to combine both passions. Maybe I'd become the next Jonathan Segal.

Penn was very open to cross-disciplinary studies at the time (this was the mid-2000s), but there was still a gaping divide between the school of design and the business school. Walking across campus meant taking off one hat and putting on another. There wasn't a lot of overlap.

After school, I returned to Toronto and started working in development. I then decided to pursue my MBA part-time, which really wasn't necessary for my career, but was probably driven by some sort of insecurity I felt at Penn. I was the outsider design student (with funny glasses I might add) trying to keep up with Wharton MBAs.

I went back to the University of Toronto for my MBA and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I still couldn't understand why there was such little overlap between the design school and the business school when it came to matters of the built environment. The real estate courses at Rotman were also extremely limited at the time.

So I started talking to faculty members: What would it took to create a joint real estate program that lived somewhere between the design school and the business school? I offered to help and I tried to press upon everyone that this was a gaping void and a huge opportunity. Canada was falling behind in terms of real estate education. It was time to step up.

The answer I got was generally always twofold: (1) Rotman's real estate courses were already good enough and (2) it's pretty hard to start a new program at the University. You have to do a bunch of things, one of which includes finding money. So, sorry.

Harvard's new Master in Real Estate degree is the kind of program I had in mind. So I'm happy to see others taking action. And I ultimately think it will be a good thing for our cities.

If you'd like to apply, you can do that starting this fall.

The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design -- my alma mater -- has just launched a new initiative with Surface Magazine called the Surface Summer School at Penn. A fairly unique partnership between a media company and an accredited university, the goal of the "summer school" is twofold.

One, it gives Penn students, who might otherwise struggle to find an internship in this climate, something productive and positive to do over the summer. And two, it applies design thinking to the problems of this pandemic.

Penn students will have the month of June to design a prefabricated COVID-19 testing structure -- one that could be rolled out in dense and compact urban centers around the world. A jury will then review the submissions and a winner will be announced by mid-July.

The jury includes a host of noteworthy architects and designers: Winka Dubbeldam, Dror Benshetrit, Thom Mayne, Yves Béhar, Susan Sellers, Marion Weiss, Ferda Kolatan, Joe Doucet, and others. Starting on June 3rd at 6:30 PM eastern, members of the jury will also start delivering design lectures on Surface's Instagram.

I am looking forward to seeing the submissions. Hopefully all of them will be made public.

Photo by Dyana Wing So on Unsplash