Alex Krieger Appointed Interim Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design
Dean Mohsen Mostafavi announced on June 12 the appointment of Alex Krieger as Interim Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design as of July 1, 2009. Alex Krieger has taught at the GSD since 1977, as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design; Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urban Design; and, from 1993, Professor in Practice of Urban Design. He served as Associate Chair of the Department of Architecture from 1985 to 1987, and as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design from 1998 to 2004.
He has served in several University-wide roles including planning advisor for Harvard’s campus expansion into Allston and design review committee member for both the Allston and Cambridge campuses. In addition to advanced design studios and seminar courses at the GSD, he teaches a core curriculum class (“Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form”) at the College whose enrollment is regularly among the largest at Harvard. In 2003, 2005, and 2007 he was honored for outstanding teaching by the University president.
Professor Krieger has published widely, serving as volume editor or contributor for: Urban Design, 2009; two volumes of Harvard Design Magazine (on the evolution of urban design as a discipline), 2005–06; Remaking the Urban Waterfront, 2004; Mapping Boston, 1999; Towns and Town-Making Principles, 1991; A Design Primer for Towns and Cities, 1990; and Past Futures: Two Centuries of Imagining Boston, 1988. Alex has authored many essays on American urbanization for various publications, and he lectures frequently at conferences and universities both in the United States and abroad.
He is founding principal of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, an architecture and urban design firm in Cambridge that focuses on educational, institutional, health-care, and public projects in complex urban settings. The firm has received more than two dozen national and international awards for its work. Alex is a frequent advisor to mayors and their planning staffs, and serves on a number of boards and commissions including: NEA's Mayor's Institute in City Design (director, 1994–1999); Large City Planners Institute (founder and co-director, 1999–2006); Boston Civic Design Commission (1989–1997); Providence Capital Center Commission (1990–1998); New England Holocaust Memorial (vice president, 1989–2000); General Services Administration (National Design Peer, 2002–present); Historic Boston Incorporated (2004–present); Joseph Riley Institute, Charleston (2000–present); and the Advisory Board of the Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library (chair, 2007–present).
In addition to welcoming Alex Krieger to his new position, Dean Mostafavi took the opportunity to thank Professors Jerold Kayden and Rodolfo Machado for their outstanding leadership during their tenures as co-chairs of the department.