Ann Beha

Ann Beha, founder and president of Ann Beha Architects of Boston, has focused over the past 23 years on the revitalization and creation of landmark building throughout the United States. Her architectural design incorporates artistic vision and dynamic solutions for cultural resources.

Beha's firm contracts designs and maintenance for the performing and visual arts, libraries and academic buildings, museums, and cultural heritage sites.The firm has achieved architectural leadership in design of environments that support visual and performing arts and civic, educational, and spiritual life.

Beha earned her name by blending old and new in 1995 for Boston's Jordan Hall, a complex restoration of the 92-year-old hall. Other major projects have included crafting the master plan for the 100-year-old Boston Symphony Hall and creating renovation plans for the headquarters of the Massachusetts Historical Society, both buildings registered as National Historic Landmarks.

John P. DeVillars

DeVillars is Managing Partner of BlueWave Strategies, LLC ("BWS"), a company founded in 2002 to provide strategic planning and project support services to private and public organizations. BWS and its affiliated investment group, BlueWave Capital, LLC, currently serve more than a dozen renewable energy and environmental companies in project financing, capital sourcing, regulatory approvals, market analysis, green design, business development and other advisory services.

From 2000 to 2003, DeVillars served as Executive Vice President of Brownfields Recovery Corporation ("BRC"), a Boston-based real estate investment and development company that focuses on environmentally impaired properties. BRC's current development projects include a $250 million residential and commercial redevelopment of a manufactured gas plant site in Stamford, Connecticut, and a 1200-acre industrial port facility in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands - BlueWave is leading efforts to incorporate LEED green building standards and the use of renewable energy and distributed generation into the development plans.

DeVillars served as the New England Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1994 to 2000, where he directed the operations of 800 employees and a $400 million annual budget. He previously served as Secretary of the Environment for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and Chief of Operations for Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis. DeVillars also holds the position of Lecturer in Environmental Policy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rosalind Greenstein

Rosalind Greenstein is a Senior Fellow and Co-Chair of the Department of Planning and Development at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Prior to joining the Lincoln Institute, she was a Senior Regional Economist at DRI/McGraw-Hill, an international economic consulting firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts. In the public sector, she served as Research Director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Industrial Services Program, a quasi-public agency that provided training for workers laid-off from "mature industries" as well as technical assistance to businesses in those industries in order to avert plant closings and mass layoffs. She began her career teaching graduate students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Greenstein's expertise lies in the areas of research design and the political economy of metropolitan regions, with an emphasis on the social implications of economic development. Her current research work is on the identifying the role of land in housing costs as an aid to developing community-based policies to mitigate the negative effects of gentrification. In addition, she is currently editing a volume on vacant urban land. Her recent publications include book chapters on the Boston metropolitan region and a volume she co-edited, Urban-Suburban Interdependencies.

Andrea Kahn

Andrea Kahn is Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University. She has been on the core faculty of the Master of Architecture and Urban Design program since 1992, where she coordinates the Introductory Urban Design Studio and teaches advanced Urban Design theory seminars. She is also a Visiting Critic at Yale University and was recently a Visiting Professor of Urban Design at City College of New York. Her research focuses on the formative roles of site representation and analysis in the urban design process. In April 2002, Kahn co-organized a national conference, Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises. Currently, she is co-editing Site Matters, a multi-disciplinary anthology on the topic of sites and settlements. Over the past 17 years, Kahn has taught in many architecture programs in the United States, and has lectured widely in the U.S., Europe and Australia. In addition to her many journal publications she is the contributing editor of Drawing/Building/Text (1991).

Jerold S. Kayden

Jerold S. Kayden, a lawyer and city planner, is the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Design School, where he specializes in planning and environmental law, public and private development, and the relationship between design and law.

His most recent book, Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), now in its second printing, has won national awards from the Environmental Design Research Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners/Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, and the American Society of Landscape Architects. His previous books include Landmark Justice: The Influence of William J. Brennan on America's Communities (Preservation Press, co-authored), and Zoning and the American Dream: Promises Still To Keep (Planners Press, co-edited). He has written numerous articles on property rights and government regulation, land use regulatory instruments, and real estate issues.

Kayden has recently founded a new organization, Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, to promote improvements to New York Cityıs public space inventory. His international consulting experience includes work for the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the United Nations Development Program, among others.

Alex Krieger

Alex Krieger, FAIA, is Professor in Practice of Urban Design and Chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University. He is a founding principal of Chan Krieger & Associates. His recent work includes urban design & planning projects in Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Des Moines, Louisville, Minneapolis, Mt. Lebanon, Pittsburgh, Providence, Washington, DC and Worcester. Other projects include master plans for Boston's Seaport District and City Hall Plaza; campus plans for Brandeis University, Knox College and Rhode Island School of Design; the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport; the Carl J. Shapiro Clinical Care Center for Beth Israel Hospital in Boston; and an athletic facility for the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge. The firm's work has received prizes in eight national competitions, two Progressive Architecture awards and thirteen AIA awards.

An authority on the evolution of urban settlements, Krieger's publications include: Mapping Boston (1999) Design Concepts for Nippon-Daira and Its Region (1993), Towns and Town Making Principles (1991), A Design Primer for Cities and Towns (1990), The Architecture and Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood (1988), Past Futures: Two Centuries of Imagining Boston (1985), and essays for various architecture, design and planning periodicals.

William R. Morrish

In 1994, New York Times architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp hailed William Morrish and his late-wife, Catherine Brown as "the most valuable thinkers in urbanism today." This work is exemplified by their innovative urban design plan for The City of Phoenix, Arizona's public art plan that unites artist and public work engineers in the transformation of city utilities into a citywide cultural setting and new public realm. Morrishıs work recognizes infrastructure as the key concept in redefining professional design and planning practice that knits citizens, places, social institutions and the natural environment into coherent urban relationships.

Morrish is a member of the group called THINK - one of the six design collaborations competing in the World Trade Center competition in New York City. His design and policy research focuses on the future of America's metropolitan first ring suburban communities and city working class aging small home neighborhood. This research operates under the title, "Green by Addition." It seeks to realign the rules and production processes through which the acres of existing small neighborhoods can be transformed to meet society's changing social/economic demographics and sustainability opportunities.

Morrish was the founding director of the Design Center for American Urban Landscape at the University of Minnesota, where he created a nationally recognized think tank for professionals, academics and civic leaders on the issues of metropolitan urban design. He carries on this work at the University of Virginia, School of Architecture through teaching and research.

Chris Reed

Chris Reed is the founding principal of StoSS. He is a registered landscape architect with professional interests in strategic planning and urban framework design. Reed is also a lecturer in landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania; he has taught courses on contemporary landscape urbanism and landform at Penn and at the Rhode Islnad School of Design. He holds an A.B. Cum Laude in Urban Studies from Harvard College and an M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to founding the firm, Reed worked as an associate then senior associate at Hargreaves Associates, where he was project manager and designer for the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Riverfront Park in Little Rock, Arkansas; Waterfront Park in Louisville, Kentucky, and numerous planning, urban design, and open space design projects at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. He has also worked in teh offices of Wallace Roberts and Todd in Philadelphia and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates in Cambridge.

Reed's own work has been awarded, exhibited, and published nationally. He has given lectures and presentations at the Harvard Design School, the University of Wisconscin-Milwaukee, the University of Pennsylvania, the Rhode Islnad School of Design, and North Carolina State University. He is currently at work on papers for two upcoming publications: Brownfields + Graywaters, edited my Niall Kirkwood and Robert France, and Landscape Urbanism, edited by Charles Waldheim. Reed's review of Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape, ed. by Niall Kirkwood, will be published in Landforum this spring.

Willy Sclarsic

Willy Sclarsic, Senior Vice President of Wingate Development Corp., has recently been responsible for the successful real estate development of new properties totaling more than $100 million in real estate for Continental Wingate Co., and its subsidiaries and affiliates. Sclarsicıs responsibilities include site analysis and acquisition, selection and management of professional consultants, obtaining zoning and permitting approvals, coordinating the preparation of architectural and engineering plans and specifications, securing financing, obtaining construction bids and contracts, managing the construction and occupancy process, and selection and purchase of furnishings and equipment. As President of Wingate Real Estate Strategies, Inc., a subsidiary of Continental Wingate Company, Sclarsic is also involved with real estate development and project management for clients not affiliated with Continental Wingate Company.

Sclarsic practiced architecture for 17 years as a principal of EHA Associates, and worked as a senior project architect for several Boston architectural firms. He is a member of the Affordable Housing Business Coalition, and Citizens Housing and Planning Associates, Inc. (CHAPA). His recent publications include "There's No Place that Likes Home" - Architecture Boston - Spring 2001, and "Architecture and the Pro-Forma" - Architecture Boston - Summer 2002.

Roger Sherman

Roger Sherman is the principal of Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design in Santa Monica, CA. His interest and research on the politics of property ownership derive from his extensive experience working on controversial public projects. These include the West Hollywood Civic Center, a commission won by virtue of an international design competition in 1987, an NEA-funded Development Plan for North Hollywood in 1995, and a pedestrian shelter for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Funding for all three projects was rescinded due to the very political, economic and cultural partisanship that became a preoccupation for Sherman. This eventually served as an impetus for the nearly completed book, Under the Influence: Negotiating the Complex Logic of Urban Property, to be published by The University of California Press.

In addition to being a practicing architect, Sherman is a studio instructor and adjunct professor at SCI-Arc and UCLA. Between 1992 and 1995 Sherman organized, edited, and contributed a proposal to RE: American Dream (Princeton Architectural Press), which offers higher density housing prototypes for Los Angeles. In1996, he co-authored an essay with Harrison Higgins in SCI-ArcĠs Offramp Volume 6 titled, Out of Order: L.A.Ġs Other Landmarks. Sherman also guest-edited an issue of Lotus Documenti last year with Mary-Ann Ray and Mirko Zardini titled, Dense-City: After Sprawl.

Richard Sommer

As a partner in the design firm borfax/B.L.U and Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Richard Sommer's work ranges in scale from residences and furnishings to the design of large urban districts. As an architect and an educator, Sommer is particularly concerned with developing innovative techniques to map the competing desires and agendas that various constituencies bring to the process of planning cities in a democracy.

Sommer's recent projects include The Clear Lake House, a plan for the "Hell's Kitchen" neighborhood in New York City, and book project titled The Democratic Monument in America, 1900-2000. His essays and articles have been published in Perspecta, ANY Magazine, The Harvard Design Magazine and Arcade, among others.

George Thrush

George Thrush is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. His research, practice, writing, and teaching all revolve around contemporary urban issues in architecture. The department he heads, and for which he developed the curriculum, focuses on design solutions for Boston's "post-industrial landscape" of former transportation infrastructure and other difficult sites. He is among the primary authors of a comprehensive regional transportation and development proposal for the Boston metropolitan area called The New Urban Ring. His articles include "Ring City: Civic Liberalism and Urban Design" and "Boston's New Urban Ring: An Antidote to Fragmentation".

He is a frequent commentator on matters of public design in newspapers, magazines, and television, and has hosted public design charrettes at Northeastern University. Thrush's professional work includes residential and institutional architecture, and a variety of urban design work. Most recently, he has designed a mixed-se proposal for one of Boston's largest un-built sites. He designed a series of houses for Boston's South Shore called The Ocean Houses Series, which were profiled in Rome's L'Industria della Construzioni (1997). His earlier professional career included work on large urban development projects in Baltimore and Washington, DC. He has chaired the BSA Urban Design Awards Committee, and served on AIA State Awards Juries in Connecticut, North Carolina, and Virginia. He was one of three recipients nationwide of the 1996 AIA Young Architects Citation. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Tennessee in 1984, and his M. Arch. from Harvard University in 1988.

George Thrush has taught introductory design studios, studios focusing on type, urban design, and many other topics. He has taught undergraduate and graduate thesis studios focusing on the post-industrial sites in and around Boston. He currently teaches both terms of the two-part graduate thesis studio (ARC 686 & 687). Students are exposed to both the practical consideration affecting these complex sites, and the architectural and urban critical attitudes that have grown up alongside them. Lecture topics include Sitte, Venturi, Rossi, Rowe & Koetter, Moneo, Koolhaas, and Lynch.

Harriet Tregoning

Harriet Tregoning is the Executive Director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute. Prior to that, she was the Secretary of the Office of Smart Growth for the State of Maryland. She has been a leading thinker and advocate for the Smart Growth movement for over 10 years. In her work in Maryland, she coordinated key Smart Growth initiatives such as revitalizing inner city neighborhoods, historic preservation, increasing transit-oriented development, promoting walkable communities and preserving open space.

Harriet is interested in exploring how to bring design and planning professionals, practitioners, and academics together with civic, business and political leaders to re-frame planning and design issues as leadership challenges. The desired result of these collaborations is to find better ways of managing change within communities. She hopes to learn more about real estate development, game theory, affordable housing, and drawing.