Exit interview: Olly Wainwright

Scroll down for the latest news from The Sea Ranch, where a community meeting last night gave residents a chance to weigh in on a proposal from BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group to expand the enclave’s 1964 lodge. Punch List has obtained a recording of the session, and we share some of the highlights below.

But first, a conversation with Oliver Wainwright, the architecture and design critic of the Guardian in London since 2012. Olly spent the 2025-2026 academic year as a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, during a period of real tumult for American higher education, and for America’s oldest university in particular; then, like so many literary Brits before him, he headed west on a road trip chronicled in great and entertaining detail on his Instagram (@ollywainwright). I sent Olly, who’s now back in London, a few questions by email; what follows has been lightly condensed.

Christopher Hawthorne: You were at Harvard during a period of real reckoning for American higher education. The university was fending off repeated threats and legal challenges from the Trump administration while also trying to reset its priorities in the wake of the pandemic, campus protests against the war in Gaza, and what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have taken to calling “Woke 1.” What were your impressions of Harvard and its attempts to navigate this chaotic year?