Chris Reed
Chris Reed is Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is also Founding Director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism . He is recognized internationally as a leading voice in the transformation of landscapes and cities, and he works alternately as a researcher, strategist, teacher, designer, and advisor. Reed is particularly interested in the relationships between landscape and ecology, infrastructure, social spaces, and cities. His work collectively includes urban revitalization initiatives, climate resilience and adaptation efforts, speculative propositions, adaptations of infrastructure and former industrial sites, dynamic and productive landscapes, vibrant public spaces that cultivate a diversity of social uses and cultural traditions, and numerous landscape installations. His work can be found in cities as diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Dallas, Detroit, Galveston, Abu Dhabi, and Dongshan, China. His work through Stoss has been recognized with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture; the Topos International Landscape Award; and various other practice- and project-based awards from Progressive Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architects, Azure’s AZ Awards, World Landscape Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, the Waterfront Center, EDRA / Places, and the Boston Society of Architects.
Reed is the co-editor of Projective Ecologies with ecologist and planner Nina-Marie Lister, and co-author of the book Mise-en-Scène: The Lives and Afterlives of Urban Landscapes with photographer Mike Belleme. He is a recipient of the 2012 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Landscape Architecture, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the 2017 Mercedes T. Bass Landscape Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. Reed received a Master in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and an AB in Urban Studies from Harvard College.
Antoine Picon
Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the GSD where he is also Chair of the PhD in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and technology. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the relationships between architectural and urban space, technology, and society, from the eighteenth century to the present.
His French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (1988; English translation, 1992) is a synthetic study of the disciplinary deep structures of architecture, garden design, and engineering in the eighteenth century, and their transformations as new issues of territorial management and infrastructure-systems planning were confronted. Whereas Claude Perrault (1613-1688) ou la Curiosité d’un classique (1988) traces the origin of these changes at the end of the seventeenth century, L’Invention de l’Ingénieur Moderne, L’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851 (1992) envisages their full development from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1850s by focusing on the changes experienced by the engineering profession.
Picon has also worked on the relations between space, technology and utopia. This is in particular the theme of Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie (2002), a detailed study of the Saint-Simonian movement that played a seminal role in the emergence of industrial modernity. His interest in utopian thought is actually traceable from his early work to his more recent publications such as his book on cities and nature.
A series of Picon’s books offer a comprehensive overview of the changes brought by the computer and digital culture to the theory and practice of architecture as well as to the planning and experience of the city. He has published in particular Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Profession (2010), Ornament: The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity (2013), Smart Cities: Théorie et Critique d’un Idéal Autoréalisateur (2013), and Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence (2015).
At the intersection of an enduring interest for the history of construction and his research on digital culture in architecture, Picon has developed a theoretical and historical approach to the question of materiality that has led to his book The Materiality of Architecture (2021). How is the digital, the recent rise of artificial intelligence in particular, transforming the materiality of architecture is among his current topics of investigation.
It is almost impossible to work on the history of technology without encountering the question of nature or rather of the relationship between the natural and the artificial. This question is at the core of Picon’s latest book, a history of urban natures from the seventeenth century to the present. Natures Urbaines: Une Histoire Technique et Sociale (2024) follows two main threads: the technological component of the presence of nature in cities as well as its social and political dimension.
Picon has received a number of awards for his writings, including the Médaille de la Ville de Paris, and twice the Prix du Livre d’Architecture de la Ville de Briey, a well as the Georges Sarton Medal of the University of Gand. In 2010, he was elected a member of the French Académie des Technologies. In 2015, he became a member of the French Académie d’Architecture. He is Chevalier des Arts et Lettres since 2014. He was Chairman of the Fondation Le Corbusier from 2013 to 2024.
Picon received science and engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique and from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, an architecture degree from the Ecole d’Architecture de Paris-Villemin, a PhD in history and a Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
Pablo Pérez-Ramos
Pablo Pérez-Ramos is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core Studio and teaches research seminars and lecture courses in landscape theory. He holds Doctor of Design and Master in Landscape Architecture degrees from the GSD and is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM).
Pérez-Ramos’s research focuses on the aesthetic and formal associations between design and the natural sciences, and is informed by interests in material culture, the environmental humanities, and the philosophy of science. He has delved into the origins of ecological narratives in contemporary landscape architecture by examining the central debates in ecological theory throughout the twentieth century. His interest in the intersection of science and design has broadened more recently to encompass the fields of thermodynamics, biological systematics, and evolutionary theory. This theoretical agenda underpins ongoing research on climate adaptation strategies, traditional knowledge, and agroecological practices in productive landscapes in conditions of extreme heat and aridity, including the Maghreb region, Northwest India, Peru, and the Central Valleys in Oaxaca, Mexico. His work is ultimately concerned with the formal tensions and interferences existing between human technology and the other physical forces and processes—tectonic, atmospheric, biological—that shape landscapes.
Prior to his appointment at the GSD, Pérez-Ramos coordinated the Urban Landscape Program at the Northeastern University School of Architecture and taught at the Boston Architectural College (BAC) and the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as regional planning coordinator for the 2025 Masterplan for the Metropolitan District of Quito, and before that, he practiced as a licensed architect in Madrid.
He was a member of the editorial board of the New Geographies journal between 2013 and 2018 and editor-in-chief (with Daniel Daou) of New Geographies 08: Island (Harvard GSD, 2016). His writings have also been published in the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA), The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA), PLOT, MONU, Revista Arquitectura (COAM), Landscape Research Record (CELA), and in the edited volumes The Landscape as Union between Art and Science: The Legacy of Alexander von Humboldt and Ernst Haeckel (Quodlibet, 2023), MedWays Open Atlas (LetteraVentidue, 2022), Architecture is All Over (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Urban Landscape: Critical Concepts in Built Environment (Routledge, 2015), among others.
Pérez-Ramos’ research and academic work at Harvard has been funded by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the William F. Milton Fund, the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program, La Caixa Foundation, and Caja Madrid Foundation among others, and his design work has received numerous awards in competitions of architecture and urbanism.
Mohsen Mostafavi
Mohsen Mostafavi, architect and educator, is the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and served as Dean of the GSD from 2008-2019. His work focuses on modes and processes of urbanization and on the interface between technology and aesthetics.
He was formerly the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University where he was also the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture. Previously, he was the Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He studied architecture at the AA, and undertook research on counter-reformation urban history at the Universities of Essex and Cambridge. He has been the Director of the Master of Architecture I Program at the GSD and has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge, and the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule).
Mostafavi is a Trustee of Smith College, an Honorary Trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation, and served on the Board of the Van Alen Institute as well as the Steering Committee and the Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. At Harvard, he co-chaired the Harvard University Committee for the Arts, served on the Smith Campus Center Executive Committee, the Harvard Allston Steering Committee, and co-chaired the Steering Committee on Common Spaces. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Harvard Innovation Lab Advisory Board, the Executive Board of The Laboratory at Harvard, and the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies.
Mostafavi has chaired the jury of the Mies van der Rohe Prize for Architecture and the European, Global, and North American juries of the LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction. He served on the design committee of the London Development Agency (LDA), the juries for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Gold Medal and Annie Spink Award, and the advisory committee on campus planning of the Asian University for Women.
He is a consultant on a number of international architectural and urban projects. His research and design projects have been published in many journals, including The Architectural Review, AAFiles, Arquitectura, Bauwelt, Casabella, Centre, Daidalos, and El Croquis. His books include On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (co-authored 1993), which received the American Institute of Architects prize for writing on architectural theory; Delayed Space (co-authored 1994); Approximations (2002); Surface Architecture (2002); Logique Visuelle (2003); Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (2004); Structure as Space (2006); Ecological Urbanism (co-edited 2010 and recently translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish); Implicate & Explicate (2011); Louis Vuitton: Architecture and Interiors (2011); In the Life of Cities (2012); Instigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape and the City (co-edited 2012); Architecture is Life (2013); Nicholas Hawksmoor: The London Churches (2015); Architecture and Plurality (2016); Portman’s America & Other Speculations (2017); and Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political (2017).
Rahul Mehrotra
Rahul Mehrotra is the founder principal of RMA Architects . He divides his time between working in Mumbai and Boston and teaching at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University where he is Professor of Urban Design and Planning and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization.
His Mumbai-based firm, RMA Architects, was founded in 1990 and has designed and executed projects including government and private institutions, corporate workplaces, private homes, and unsolicited projects driven by the firm’s commitment to advocacy in the city of Mumbai. The firm has designed a software campus for Hewlett Packard in Bangalore, a campus for Magic Bus (an NGO that works with poor children), led the restoration of the Chowmahalla Palace in Hyderabad, and formulated a conservation master plan for the Taj Mahal with the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative. The firm also recently designed and built a social housing project for 100 elephants and their caretakers in Jaipur as well as a corporate office in Hyderabad. The firm has designed several single-family houses in different parts of India and one in Karachi, Pakistan. In 2015 RMA Architects completed the Lab of the Future on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland and were finalist in an international design competition for the Museum of Modern Art in Sydney. The recent projects of the firm include a Library for the School of Architecture at CEPT , the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University and a School of Public Policy at the IIM Ahmedabad. In 2018 RMA Architects were awarded the Venice Biennale juror’s ‘Special Mention ’ for ‘three projects that address issues of Intimacy and empathy, gently diffusing social boundaries and hierarchies’.
Mehrotra has written and lectured extensively on issues to do with architecture, conservation, and urban planning and design in Mumbai and India. His writings include coauthoring Bombay: The Cities Within, which covers the city’s urban history from the 1600s to 1990; Banganga: Sacred Tank; Public Places Bombay; Anchoring a City Line, A history of the city’s commuter railway; and Bombay to Mumbai: Changing Perspectives. He has also coauthored Conserving an Image Center: The Fort Precinct in Bombay. Based on this study and its recommendations, the historic Fort District in Mumbai was declared a conservation precinct in 1995 – a first such designation in India. In 2000, he edited a book for the Union of International Architects, which earmarks the end of the last century and is titled The Architecture of the 20th Century in the South Asian Region. In 2011, Mehrotra wrote Architecture in India – Since 1990, which is a reading of contemporary architecture in India which was extended through an exhibition he co-curated titled The State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in India, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in Jan 2016. This was followed in 2018 by a second co curated exhibition titled: The State of Housing: Realities, Aspirations and imaginaries in India which showed between Jan and March 2018 and is currently travelling in India. Since 2014 Mehrotra has been a member of the CICA – the International Committee of Architecture Critics.
Mehrotra is a member of the steering committee of the Laxmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard. In 2012-2015, he led a Harvard University-wide research project with Professor Diana Eck, called The Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City. This work was published as a book in 2014. This research was extended in 2017 in the form of a book titled Does Permanence Matter? This research was also extended into an invited exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Mehrotra co – authored a book titled Taj Mahal: Multiple Narratives which was published in Dec 2017. Mehrotra’s most recent books are titled Working in Mumbai (2020) and The Kinetic City and other essays (2021). The former a reflection on his practice evolved through its association with the city of Bombay/Mumbai. The second book presents Mehrotra’s writings over the last thirty years and illustrates his long-term engagement with and analysis of urbanism in India. This work has given rise to a new conceptualization of the city which Mehrotra calls the Kinetic City.
Sergio Lopez-Pineiro
Sergio Lopez-Pineiro is an interdisciplinary architect, whose work explores voids as socio-spatial phenomena of freedom, diversity, and spontaneity.
Lopez-Pineiro is the director of Holes of Matter, a design studio operating at the intersection of architecture and landscape. It aims to look at the mutual influence between sociocultural forces and spatial organizations, and imagine existing and potential gaps to redefine relations between individual and collective forms of life. Lopez-Pineiro is a lecturer in landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches design studios and theory seminars on architecture and landscape with a focus on the public nature of the built environment. He has previously held the 2006-07 Reyner Banham Fellowship at the University at Buffalo and the 2014-15 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellowship at Harvard University.
Lopez-Pineiro is the author of the volume A Glossary of Urban Voids (Berlin: Jovis, 2020). His projects and texts have been published internationally by a+t, MAS Context, Bracket, arq: Architecture Research Quarterly, Places, 2G, and others, and his work has received support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and MacDowell. Lopez-Pineiro is a licensed architect in Spain. He trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) and received his Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University, where he was awarded the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize. He previously worked at No.mad in Madrid and Foreign Office Architects in London.
Christopher C.M. Lee
Christopher Lee is the co-founder and principal of Serie Architects London, Mumbai and Singapore, and Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He previously served as the Arthur Rotch Design Critic in Architecture, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Design (2013-20) and Design Critic (2011-12) at the GSD. Prior to that he was the Director of the AA Projective Cities MPhil Programme (2010-12) and AA Diploma and Intermediate Unit Master (2002-09). Lee graduated with the AA Diploma (Honours) from the AA, received the RIBA President’s Medal Commendation Award, and his Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture and Urbanism from the Berlage Institute and TU Delft. He also served as the Mayor of London’s Design Advocate.
The work of Serie is underpinned by the exploration of the problem of type and the city, with particular emphasis on the renewed relevance of typological reasoning. His research and teaching focus on the typologies of urbanization, in response to climate adaptation and a globalized discourse on architecture and urbanism.
His distinctive and contextual designs have been recognized through many prestigious awards, including the President’s Design Award Singapore 2023, The International Highrise Award 2022/23, Domus 50 Best Architecture Firms 2022, World Architecture Festival Best Mixed-use Building Award 2019, Blueprint Award 2019, BD Young Architect of the Year Award, Architectural Record Design Vanguard and the Leading European Architects Review’s 10 visionary architects for the new decade. He is currently working on a string of high-profile, civic, cultural and campus research buildings, including the Singapore Science Park Cluster 1, and two tall buildings in Earls Court, London. He has completed the new Singapore State Courts, Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram, Sentosa Sensoryscape, Net Zero Energy School of Design & Environment 4, National University of Singapore, Housing & Development Board’s Oasis Terraces, Singapore, and the Jameel Art Centre, Dubai.
Christopher Lee is the author of Common Frameworks: Rethinking the Developmental City in China, Working in Series and co-authored Typological Formations: Renewable Building Types and the City. He also co-edited Wiley Academy Architectural Design Issue Typological Urbanism: Projective Cities. Christopher Lee lectures widely and the works of Serie have been exhibited as a travelling solo exhibition at Hong Kong University Shanghai Architecture Gallery, Shanghai in 2009 and culminated in the Architectural Association School of Architecture in November 2010.
Alex Krieger
Alex Krieger, FAIA, has combined a career of teaching and practice, dedicating himself in both to understanding how to improve the quality of place and life in our major urban areas.
Mr. Krieger is Professor in Practice of Urban Design, Emeritus at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he has taught since 1977. He served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design (1998-2004, 2006-2007, 2019-2020), Director of the Urban Design Program (1990-2001), and as Associate Chair of the Department of Architecture (1984-1989). In addition to design studios and seminar courses at the GSD, he taught a General Education course on the evolution of American cities at Harvard College. In 2017, he was named one of the Fifteen Professor of the Year by the Harvard Crimson.
Mr. Krieger is also a principal at NBBJ, a global design practice. He was founding principal of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz until their merger with NBBJ in 2009. Since 1984, he has provided architecture, urban design, and urban planning services to a broad array of clients in numerous cities worldwide, focusing primarily on educational, institutional, healthcare, and public projects in complex urban settings.
In addition to serving on university-wide committees to improve Harvard’s main campus and their expansion in Allston, Mr. Krieger has also served as: member of the United States Commission of Fine Arts (2012-present); member of the Riley Institute (2000-present); founder of the Big City Planning Directors Institute (1999-present); director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (1994-1999); member of the New England Holocaust Memorial Committee (1989-2000); and member of the Boston Civic Design Commission (1989-1997). He is also a board member for the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center and for Historic Boston.
Mr. Krieger received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and a Master of City Planning in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Major publications include: City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present (Harvard University Press, 2019); Urban Design (with William Saunders, University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Remaking the Urban Waterfront (with Bonnie Fisher et al., Urban Land Institute, 2004); Mapping Boston (with David Cobb and Amy Turner, MIT Press, 1999); Towns and Town-Making Principles (with Andrés Duany et al., Rizzoli, 1991); and A Design Primer for Cities and Towns (with Anne Mackin, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1989).
Remment Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas, Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design, founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Having worked as a journalist and script writer before becoming an architect, Koolhaas graduated from the Architectural Association in London, and in 1978, published Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections between contemporary society and architecture. At this moment Rem Koolhaas is heading the work of OMA as well as AMO – the conceptual branch of OMA, a think tank focused on social, economic, and technological issues.
At Harvard, Rem Koolhaas conducts the Project on the City, a research program investigating changing urban conditions around the world. The projects include a study on China’s Pearl River Delta (published as Great Leap Forward), an analysis of the role of retail and consumption in the contemporary society (The Harvard Guide to Shopping), and studies on Rome, Lagos, Moscow and Beijing.
Recently, OMA has completed the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, a campus center at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the Prada Epicenter in Los Angeles and the Public Library in Seattle. The Seattle Library was chosen by TIME magazine as The Best Architecture for 2004 and was described by the New York Times as “a blazing chandelier to swing your dreams upon. If an American city can erect a civic project as brave as this one, the sun hasn’t set on the West.” (May 16, 2004)
In April 2005, the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto was completed and was already voted as one of the most important concert halls in the world by the New York Times (April 10th 2005). In Asia, work has begun on CCTV — a 575,000m2 headquarters, studio, and cultural center for China’s national broadcaster, China Central Television, in Beijing. CCTV is OMA’s largest building to date, and is to be completed by 2008, in time for the Beijing Olympic Games.
Recent AMO projects include a study for the European Commission on the visual identity of the EU, image restructuring for Condé Nast magazines Lucky and Wired, a study on the future of the automobile for Volkswagen, and a study concerning preservation for the city of Beijing. By combining AMO and OMA Rem Koolhaas is seen as one of the most important thinkers of the last decades. Nicolai Ouroussoff, critic for Los Angeles Times, underlines this by: “There is little question that Rem Koolhaas is one of the most influential architects of the last 20 years. As an architectural thinker, his cool analytic approach to design, sprinkled with a healthy skepticism, has informed the profession that his fingerprints can be found on the work of almost any young architect today. Koolhaas has achieved the enviable stature of both cult idol and international celebrity.” (May 21, 2004)
The work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA has been celebrated as well by several international awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000) and the RIBA Gold Medal (2004). In 2005, Rem Koolhaas received the Mies van der Rohe Award for the Netherlands Embassy, Berlin. This award is presented every two years by the European Union and the Fundaci Mies van der Rohe (Barcelona) to acknowledge and reward quality architectural production in Europe. The jury singled out OMA’s design of the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin for the extraordinary relationship established with its surroundings. In making their decision to award the Netherlands Embassy, the jury commended the “quality of the urban reflection and intelligence of the concept implemented, especially as regards the unprecedented concept of ‘trajectory’ and the new potential it brings to this project of great complexity.”
Koolhaas’ work was the subject of an overview exhibition, Content, which opened at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin in 2003, and at the Kunsthal (built by OMA) in 2004. In conjunction with the exhibition, a book of the same name was published in 2003 by Taschen Books. Content illustrates the ways that Rem Koolhaas and OMA-AMO interact with the world and how the world in turn influences their work. An exhibition by AMO on representation in and the perception of Europe was on display last Fall in Brussels and at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. In Summer 2005, Rem Koolhaas curated one of the exhibitions titled Expansion & Neglect for the prestigious Biennale in Venice.
See projects at oma.eu
Rem Koolhaas recipient of the 15th Praemium Imperiale
Remment Koolhaas named the Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
Jerold S. Kayden
Jerold S. Kayden is the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Founding Director of the Master in Real Estate Program. He previously served as co-chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and director of the Urban Planning Program. His teaching and scholarship address issues of land use and environmental law, public and private development in cities, public space, urban disasters and climate change, and design competitions. His books include Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience; Urban Disaster Resilience: New Dimensions from International Practice in the Built Environment; Landmark Justice: The Influence of William J. Brennan on America’s Communities; and Zoning and the American Dream: Promises Still To Keep.
As an urban planner and lawyer, Professor Kayden has advised governments, non-governmental organizations, and private and public real estate developers in the United States and around the world. He has argued court cases, authored or co-authored amicus briefs in United States Supreme Court cases, and served as expert witness. He has drafted zoning laws for various U. S. cities on inclusionary housing and privately owned public spaces. On international work, he has consulted widely for such institutions as the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the United States Agency for International Development, and the United Nations Development Programme, working principally in Armenia, China, Nepal, Russia, and Ukraine on drafting and implementing land use, real estate, and housing laws. Since 1991, he has served as principal constitutional counsel to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. He leads Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, a non-profit organization he founded based in New York City. From 2009 to 2011, he was Principal Investigator for the Harvard-Netherlands Project on Climate Change, Water, Land Development, and Adaptation, a collaborative project between Harvard, the Dutch Government, and the Deltares Institute.
Among Professor Kayden’s honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the American Bar Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the Environmental Design Research Association. At the Design School, he was recognized schoolwide as “Teacher of the Year.” Professor Kayden earned his undergraduate, law, and city and regional planning degrees from Harvard and subsequently was law clerk to Judge James L. Oakes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University was established in 1957 from a bequest from Frank Backus Williams, a prominent New York City lawyer who played a significant role in creating the 1916 New York City zoning resolution, the first comprehensive zoning law in the United States. Among many publications, he wrote The Law of City Planning and Zoning (Macmillan, 1922) and co-wrote Model Laws for Planning Cities, Counties, and States (Harvard University Press, 1935). Professor Kayden is the sixth holder of the chair. Previous holders include Martin Meyerson (1957), followed by Charles Abrams, Fernando Belaunde Terry, Brian Berry, and William Doebele.