Stephen Gray

Stephen Gray is the founder of Grayscale Collaborative and Urban Design Program Director at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. His interests lie at the intersection of social justice, resilience, and urban design, and his work engages the relationship between race, class, and the production of space. Stephen has led or collaborated on over 25 community-engaged urban design projects ranging from public realm initiatives, campus planning efforts, urban design guidelines, park planning initiatives, online engagement tool development, design equity toolkits, and resilience planning projects, and his work has been nationally recognized by the American Institute of Architects with a national AIA Honor Award in 2015 and then again in 2020 with a national AIA Award for Collaborative Achievement.

Stephen’s academic research includes foregrounding systemic racism in the socio-spatial development of Boston with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative; process design for child-focused spaces on the Syria-Lebanon border with the Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children; and examining the interconnectedness of informality, vulnerability, resilience, and urban design in Metro Manila, the Philippines with the World Bank. He also co-developed the Community First Toolkit with the Urban Institute for the High Line Network, aimed at advancing racial equity in infrastructure reuse projects across North America.

Notable academic and professional appointments include serving on the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project Committee, Harvard University Committee on the Arts, Harvard Asia Center Council, Veronica Rudge Green Prize for Urban Design Committee, Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture Racial Imagination for Racial Justice Committee, Emerald Necklace Conservancy Board of Directors, Associate Director on the Board of the Boston Society of Architects (BSA), co-chairman of Boston’s 100 Resilient Cities Resilience Collaborative for “Resilient Boston: An Equitable and Connected City”, as well as being tapped to serve on several Urban Land Institute (ULI) advisory panels. Stephen holds a B.Arch. degree from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) degree with distinction from Harvard University where he received the Thesis Prize for Urban Design and the Award for Outstanding Leadership in Urban Design.