Portland, Oregon, United States
I love cities and I am passionate about my niche in city-building—the art and science of placemaking. My work is aimed at creating whole and beautiful places that enrich the human experience and integrate nature at the aesthetic, cultural and systemic levels. I am an architect, planner and urban designer based in Portland, Oregon. I work to create resilient and regenerative infrastructure – the integrated energy, water, nutrient, local economic and socio-cultural systems that underpin thriving communities. From this platform, what my colleagues and I actually do is practice urban acupuncture with our clients and their communities at the site, block, neighborhood, campus, city and regional scale. While I enjoy access to a variety of technical tools, I find the greatest joy working with the actors in the place-making drama—community stakeholders, agency professionals, developers, artists, politicians, bankers, engineers, academics, students, children, and others—and helping them make our places equitable, diverse, and beloved. A city-region is a complex human-made organism, a continuously unfolding drama that, at its best, inspires the imagination and enriches the human prospect. Currently over three-fifths of the world’s population resides in urban areas. The question is, will we collectively be victims of rampant urbanization on a burning planet or residents of life-affirming city-regions? Could you and I collaborate to achieve the cities of our dreams?
Civic engagement for community resilience and strong local democracy.
Principal, Urban Design & Planning
Principal of a multi-disciplinary practice specializing in design and planning consulting for sustainable development projects.
Responsible for a variety of urban architecture, urban design and planning projects. Special emphasis on town planning, the design of public environment improvements and architecture and programming for cultural facilities.