We gather designers, planners, developers and civic leaders to debate the defining issues facing our cities.
The Urban Design Forum is an independent membership organization that advances bold solutions to urban challenges. Our Fellows are architects, landscape architects, planners, developers, public officials, scholars, activists, lawyers and journalists committed to building dynamic, equitable, and resilient cities around the world.
Based in New York City, we produce programs and publications that showcase creative approaches to:
For nearly 40 years, the Urban Design Forum has shaped the conversation around the future of New York City and cities around the world. Through conferences, publications, and its network of Fellows, the Forum brings together leaders in the field of urban planning and design and energizes creative approaches to urban issues.
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Daniel Rose is Chairman of Rose Associates, a real estate organization based in New York City. He has developed such properties as the award-winning Pentagon City complex in Arlington, One Financial Center in Boston, and numerous projects in New York City. As an institutional consultant, his credits include the creation and implementation of the “housing for the performing arts” concept for New York’s Manhattan Library. Dan has served as “Expert Advisor” to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as “Expert/Consultant” to the Commissioner of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He also teaches, lectures and writes on a variety of real estate and planning subjects. He is the author of Making a Living, Making a Life.

Jamie is President and Design Principal of international architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, where he leads a staff of 750 people in 9 offices around the world. A major focus of Jamie’s work has been to heighten the role that large buildings play in making urban space with projects like Shanghai’s Jing An Kerry Centre, Seoul’s Lotte World Tower, and New York’s One Vanderbilt.
During his tenure as president, KPF has completed large-scale projects such as South Korea’s New Songdo City, and is currently at work on a new campus for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou. His current projects also include a 1000’ mixed use tower at 520 Fifth Avenue and Related’s Channelside cluster of laboratories, offices, and apartments in Boston.
Jamie has lectured at Harvard, Tsinghua, Tongji, Seoul National, and Yonsei Universities, and the ESA in Paris. He has taught at Yale as Saarinen Visiting Professor and currently teaches in the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Master’s degree in architecture from Princeton University.

Vincent is the Group Managing Partner with Grimshaw, an international architecture practice. He has been with Grimshaw since 1996 and has played an instrumental role in the expansion of the practice while maintaining a commitment to the quality, rigor and reputation for excellence that Grimshaw is known for. He established the firm’s New York office in 2001 and was instrumental in securing the AIA New York Chapter’s Medal of Honor Award in 2015. Vincent has led many of the practice’s most notable commissions in North America including Via Verde – the Green Way in the Bronx, Horno3: Museo del Acero in Monterrey, Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan, and the new master plan for Los Angeles Union Station. Vincent is a graduate of Cambridge University and is a registered member of both the Royal Institute of British Architects and the American Institute of Architects.

Michelle Delk is Partner and Discipline Director of Landscape Architecture for Snøhetta’s New York office. Michelle has led diverse projects with extensive engagement of community and client groups, including master plans for campuses, urban infill areas and brownfield developments, as well as downtown places, urban parks, and streetscapes. Currently, Michelle is leading the design of Willamette Falls Riverwalk in Oregon, the New Central Library Plaza & Gardens in Calgary, and Oak Plaza, part of a development project in downtown San Francisco. She is also leading several other design efforts, including the French Laundry Garden Renovation, the Penn District Master Plan, and the Temple Library Landscape.

Beatrice Sibblies is the managing partner of BOS Development, a community-focused real estate development firm based in Harlem, New York. Founded in 2005, BOS Development develops the spectrum of projects necessary for a vibrant community, including residential, religious, cultural, educational, hospitality, and commercial developments. She is actively developing church-anchored development projects in the Central Harlem core and Sugar Hill. Previously, she had a successful career in finance at J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley and served as Assistant Vice President for Economics for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Byron Stigge is the founding director of Level Infrastructure, a consulting firm based in New York City providing technical and planning advice for infrastructure and development projects worldwide. He practices innovative methods of delivering energy and climate change planning, water and wastewater management, transportation planning, and solid waste management through an integrated design process. He has engaged sustainability and resilience issues in some of the world’s neediest cities in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and South America as well as in Detroit and St. Louis in the United States. Previously, he led the Infrastructure and Environment Group in the New York office of Buro Happold Engineers.

J. Devereaux Hawley manages real estate at Yale University. He leads the strategy behind campus planning and pre-development along with Yale’s commercial property in New Haven, a total portfolio of over 17 million sf. He also manages all operations for the campus, an organization of over 900 staff. Previously, Dev was the Global Head of Capital Projects at Goldman Sachs, where he managed over 12 million sf and the interior development of Goldman Sachs Worldwide Headquarters in New York and new campuses in London and Bangaluru. He served as Director of Real Estate Development at The Walt Disney Company, where he helped develop the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and Downtown Disney at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA. Dev holds Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture II degrees. He currently also serves as Vice Chair of the Salvadori Center.

Meredith Kane is a partner and co-chair in the Real Estate Department of Paul, Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP, a law practice based in New York City. Ms. Kane’s experience includes all aspects of the finance and development of complex public/private joint venture projects. She was instrumental in the long-term lease acquisition of New York’s World Trade Center complex; the development of Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s far west side and of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn; and the development of a world-class engineering and applied sciences campus on Roosevelt Island; among many other projects. She was honored as the 2009 Woman of the Year by WX – New York Women Executives in Real Estate, and was named one of the Top 50 Women in Real Estate and one of 25 Current Leaders in the Industry by Real Estate Weekly and The Association of Real Estate Women. She served as a commissioner of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission from 1995 to 2004.

James Corner is the founder and director of James Corner Field Operations. His work is renowned for a strong contemporary design across a variety of projects types and scales, from large urban districts and complex post-industrial sites, to small design projects. Major projects include the High Line in New York, Seattle’s Central Waterfront, City Center in Las Vegas, Tsim Sha Tsui Waterfront in Hong Kong, Chicago’s Navy Pier, the Civic Center Parks in Santa Monica and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. He is also Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has been recognized with the National Design Award (2010) and the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Architecture (2004). He is the author of The Landscape Imagination (2014) and Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (1996).

Tommy Craig is a senior managing director and has been the regional officer and partner responsible for Hines’ New York Tri-State office since 1996. His responsibilities as senior project officer include managing the development, redevelopment, acquisition, construction, modification and/or interior fit-out on projects. Since joining Hines in 1982, Mr. Craig has been involved in a variety of development projects and transactions aggregating approximately 16 million square feet.
Tommy received his BA in History/Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his MBA from Columbia University. He served as an adjunct professor of Real Estate Development at the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia Business School from 2010 to 2015. He is a member of the Executive Committee and the Board at Phipps Houses, New York City’s oldest and largest non-for-profit developer for affordable housing. He was also a recipient of the Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA) Award in 2012 and 2007 and the Police Athletic League Award in 2009.

Patrice Derrington is the Holliday Associate Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development Program at Columbia GSAPP. Prior, she taught for three years NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Derrington bridges the fields of education and real estate, and brings significant global experience as an executive and board director of numerous property companies to the critical tasks of educating students, integrating academe and industry, and building an innovative knowledge base for the real estate profession.
A recipient of the prestigious Harkness Fellowship, Derrington studied for her Ph.D. in architecture/civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, adding to her Masters of Business Administration from the Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Architecture degree with First Class Honours and University Medal from the University of Queensland.
Her teaching career began at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and has been supplemented with over 12 years of real estate industry experience on Wall Street where she worked as an investment banker and advisor to major individual and institutional clients such as David Rockefeller, Keybank, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Timur Galen is executive vice president of Hudson Yards, where he helps oversee the company’s development of Hudson Yards, the largest private real estate development in the history of the United States. Previously, he served as global co-head of corporate services and real estate at Goldman Sachs, where he led the development of the company’s global headquarters at 200 West Street in Manhattan’s Financial District. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, he worked as an executive with the Walt Disney Company and Reichmann International.

Alexander Garvin is president of AGA Public Realm Strategists, a planning and design firm based in New York City. He is also Professor (Adjunct) of Yale University. From 1996 to 2005, he was managing director for NYC2012, New York City’s committee for the 2012 Olympic Bid. During 2002-3 Mr. Garvin was the vice president for planning, design and development of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency charged witht the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following 9/11. He has also held prominent positions in New York City government, including deputy commissioner of housing and city planning commissioner. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t; The Planning Game: Lessons from Great Cities; and Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities.

Paul Goldberger, who the Huffington Post has called “the leading figure in architecture criticism,” is now a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair. From 1997 through 2011 he was the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where he wrote the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City. He was formerly Dean of the Parsons School of Design, a division of The New School. He began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. He is the author of several books including Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, Why Architecture Matters, Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture, and Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York.

Tami Hausman is the founder and president of Hausman LLC, a leading public relations and marketing firm for the architecture, engineering and construction industries. For over 20 years, Tami Hausman has been an expert advisor to top firms who seek out her experience and insights. Her international roster of clients includes architects, engineers, construction firms, expeditors, interiors firms, real estate developers, project management firms, construction cost consultants, artists, and non-profit organizations.
Using her wide network of contacts in the media, Tami positions her clients’ knowledge and expertise to best advantage and opens doors to targeted audiences that strengthen their position in the marketplace. In addition to her experience in marketing and public relations, Tami is an architectural historian who frequently writes and lectures about trends and topics in architecture and urban planning. Tami is active in a number of professional organizations, including Docomomo and the Urban Design Forum. Tami has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University in Semiotics-French and a Master of Arts and PhD in Art History from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Jeff Hebert is President of HR&A Advisors and is a national expert in the areas of resiliency, redevelopment, equitable and inclusionary growth, and economic development. For nearly a decade, Jeff served Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the City of New Orleans in many capacities, including as the First Deputy Mayor & Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Resilience Officer, Executive Director of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, and as the Mayor’s blight czar. He has also served as the Director of Planning for Concordia, Director of Community Planning for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, and Vice President with the Water Institute of the Gulf. Jeff is an adjunct faculty member at the Tulane University School of Architecture and is the incoming Vice Chairman of FUSE Corps in San Francisco, and a trustee of the Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans. Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree from New York University, a master’s degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Achieving Excellence in Community Development program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow.
Judy Kessler is a development executive working with Vornado Realty Trust on their Penn Plaza portfolio. She is a former project manager for Zeckendorf Development and sits on the board of the Settlement Housing Fund.

An architect and urban designer, Margaret Newman FAIA currently leads her own consulting firm More Urban, focusing on design, urban planning, transportation and development projects., Most recently a Principal at Arup, an international firm of designers, planners, and engineers, Margaret led the Planning team in the NY office focusing on public realm projects prioritizing design excellence and transportation.. With extensive experience designing and building complex projects in urban environments, Margaret has played leadership roles in government as Chief of Staff for the New York City Department of Transportation under Mayor Bloomberg where she led the transformation of Times Square, in advocacy as Executive Director for the Municipal Art Society of New York, and as a founding partner in Marren and Newman Architects. LEED certified, Margaret managed the development of green infrastructure prototypes for NYC streets. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Ms. Newman was recognized for her role in changing the streets of New York.

AJ has been practicing real estate development in New York City since 2004. He started his career as a project manager for Peter Walker & Partners on the World Trade Center Memorial in downtown Manhattan. In 2007, AJ became a founding member of Alloy Development, a boutique real estate development company based in Brooklyn, NY. At Alloy, AJ manages the acquisition, capitalization, design, construction and disposition of projects that seek to promote thoughtful design and add value to the built environment of New York City.
AJ received a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst Collect and a Masters of Architecture and Certificate in Real Estate from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught and lectured in the fields of real estate development and design at Syracuse University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania and Parsons. AJ servers on the board of Community Bank Delaware, is a member of ULI and a supporter of the Architecture League of New York. He is a Licensed Architect, a LEED Accredited Professional and a Licensed Real Estate Salesperson. AJ lives with his wife and two children in Brooklyn, New York.

Melissa serves as Executive General Manager for Lendlease’s Development business in New York. She is responsible for leading and growing Lendlease’s development business in the New York market by pursuing and identifying development opportunities and large-scale urban regeneration projects throughout the greater metropolitan area. In addition, as the Executive Sponsor for Innovation in the Americas, Melissa leads the innovation program in the United States which provides mentoring, training and funding to innovators inside the business seeking to bring ideas to life that generate new opportunities for Lendlease and its customers.
Prior to joining Lendlease in 2015, Melissa served as Executive Vice President for Forest City Ratner Companies where she had overall responsibility for commercial and residential development. Melissa received her Bachelor of Arts in Government from Harvard College and her Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Henry Street Settlement, The Coro New York Leadership Center and the Citizen’s Budget Commission.

Marilyn Jordan Taylor is now Professor of Architecture & Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania where she was recruited as Dean of the School of Design from 2008 – 2016. During her prior 35 years of practice at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP, she led many of the firm’s largest and most complex transportation, urban design and master planning projects including JFK Terminal 4, Singapore Changi Terminal 3, the Columbia University Manhattanville campus, master plans for Downtown Newark, and the highly-acclaimed Denver Union Station neighborhood and transit hub. She became Partner and then Chairman of SOM while also earning a reputation for civic leadership at the AIA, RPA, NY Building Congress, Rebuild by Design and the Urban Land Institute. Her research and continuing work place emphasis on the importance of design excellence, place-making and innovative project delivery strategies that build community, enhance vitality, and create inclusive and long-term value.

Architect Weston Walker is Design Principal and Partner in charge of Studio Gang’s New York office, where he leads a talented team of architects and a diverse portfolio of projects. Weston’s work spans many different types and scales, including cultural institutions, universities, civic buildings, and towers. His current projects include a major expansion of the American Museum of Natural History, a new training facility for FDNY’s Rescue Company 2, and 40 Tenth Avenue in New York’s Meatpacking District. Weston is a graduate of Yale University, where he received his Master of Architecture and was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Music from Cornell University, graduating summa cum laude for his thesis work exploring systems of perception and meaning in both musical and architectural spaces.

Barika Williams is Executive Director of Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD), an organization building community power to win affordable housing and thriving, equitable neighborhoods for all New Yorkers. During her ANHD tenure she led impactful projects and initiatives – including ANHD’s mandatory inclusionary housing and equitable economic development. She’s passionate about policies that advance equity, inclusion, and opportunity in all neighborhoods, especially for low-income communities and communities of color. Prior to her appointment, Barika served as the Assistant Secretary for Housing for the State of New York under Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. There, she supported the Governor’s programs and initiatives to increase NY State housing affordability including the $20 billion housing plan and expanding tenant protections statewide. Barika holds a master’s degree from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
The support of our Director’s Circle and Company Members enables us to advance creative solutions to urban challenges in programs and publications throughout the year. We thank them for their continuing support.
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