On December 8th the Urban Design Lab celebrated 10 years of research pushing the frontiers of urban innovation and interdisciplinary boundaries. There was acknowledgment of meaningful partnerships all over the world, and optimism about further collaborations. In a festive and warm atmosphere colleagues and partners from various professional backgrounds came together at Steelcase on Columbus… read more

The Urban Design Lab (UDL) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute is pleased to announce the release of “Spatial Strategies for Manyatta: Designing for Growth”, a collaboration between UDL, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), and the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI). This publication proposes innovative solutions to some of the most complex and pressing… read more

The Urban Design Lab (UDL) announces its most recent publication, titled Alternative Futures for New Rochelle: The Next Generation Live/Work City. This comprehensive urban study was sponsored by the City of New Rochelle in order to help devise alternative spatial strategies for a series of development clusters located in its downtown. The project proposes to transform New Rochelle from a mainly commuter… read more

In January 2014, Columbia University’s Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI), Urban Design Lab (UDL), and Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) Urban Design Program hosted a team of 30 post-professional architects and landscape architects undertaking field studies in Kisumu, Kenya – Africa’s first Millennium City. These field studies heralded the start of a semester-long… read more

In December, the ongoing Urban Design Lab (UDL) strategic development studies for the City of New Rochelle hosted the final design review of projects from the joint Urban Ecology Studio between Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Under the direction of UDL Director Richard… read more

In December 2013, Urban Design Lab Director Richard Plunz was an invited speaker in Seoul, South Korea, at the Seoul Institute speaking on “Lessons from the Manhattan Highline Project” as part of an international forum addressing the future of the mega-block Seun Sangga project in Seoul, dating from the 1960s.

In September 2013, the National Science Foundation announced that the Urban Design Lab (UDL) had been awarded a five year, $2.5 million Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) grant to study how New York City urban green infrastructure can mitigate coastal zone pollution. UDL Co-Director Patricia Culligan leads a team integrating urban planning and… read more

Katia Perini, an Urban Design Lab post-doctoral researcher, lectured in November 2013 at the Illinois Institute of Technology on greening the building envelope: green façades and living wall systems for sustainable urban areas.