People

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Andres Sevtsuk, PhD asevtsuk[at]mit.edu

 

Andres Sevtsuk is a Charles and Ann Spaulding Career Development Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where he also leads the City Form Lab. His work bridges urban design with spatial analysis and urban technology. Andres is the author of the Urban Network Analysis toolbox, used by researchers and practitioners around the world to model pedestrian flows along city streets and to study coordinated land use and transportation development along networks. Applications of this work have led him to study business location choices in cities, particularly in the retail, food and service sector. He is currently publishing a book entitled “Street Commerce: The Hidden Structure of Retail Location Patterns and Vibrant Sidewalks” with Penn Press. Andres is also leading the Future of Streets research initiative, which investigates how cities could adapt their streets and mobility infrastructure to newly emerging transportation technologies in ways that maximize multi-modal, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable outcomes. Andres has collaborated with a number of city governments, international organizations, planning practices and developers on urban designs, plans and policies in both developed and rapidly developing urban environments, most recently including those in US, Indonesia, Estonia and Singapore. He has led various international research projects; exhibited his research at TEDx, the World Cities Summit and the Venice Biennale; and received the President’s Design Award in Singapore, International Buckminster Fuller Prize and Ron Brown/Fulbright Fellowship. Before joining MIT, Andres was an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He holds a PhD from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and an SMArchs in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT.

RESEARCHERS

Kevin Chong  kchong[at]gsd.harvard.edu  

Harvard GSD, MArch 2020

Kevin is a Master in Architecture candidate at the Harvard GSD interested in studying empirical trends in the built environment across scales and speculating their architectural and social implications. He holds simultaneous degrees in mathematics and architecture from UC Berkeley and worked as an architectural designer for commercial tower projects prior to graduate school. At the City Form lab, Kevin is researching retail cluster patterns in American cities and producing illustrations for the spatial analysis concepts explored in the Urban Network Analysis toolbox.

Alexander Mercuri  amercuri[at]gsd.harvard.edu

Harvard GSD, MUP 2016

Alex is an aspiring urban planner, with a background in art and design. Alex is focused on international planning & development in the Master of Urban Planning program at Harvard, and joined the City Form Lab as a research assistant in the spring of 2016. He is interested in exploring--or, if need be, creating--the intersection of social justice, land use policy, and technology.

Jia Gu  jgu[at]gsd.harvard.edu

Harvard GSD, MArch 2019

Jia is an architectural designer with a background in applied mathematics. She loves the power of numbers making sense of the world and the beauty of arts brightening up humanity. She is born and raised in Nanjing, but has lived in Shanghai, Beijing, Saint Paul, New York, Cambridge, Dover(Ohio), Copenhagen, and Paris after high school. She has a passion for exploring the world and generating sparks of collision in arts and science. At City Form lab, she currently works on prototyping structures using the new CFL fabrication technologies.

Karen Stolzenberg  kstolzenberg[at]gsd.harvard.edu

Harvard GSD, MArch 2019.

Karen is a designer and a maker. Karen is currently pursuing a Master in Architecture at the GSD. From generative design to open data to automation, Karen is interested in the spatial and social implications of technology in the built environment. At the City Form Lab, Karen works on small scale prototypes for new fabrication technologies.

Raul Kalvo  raul[at]inphysica.com

Estonian Academy of Arts 2009, Architecture and City Planning.

Raul is an architect, programmer, artist and humanist. Prior to joining the City Form Lab, he worked with 3+1 Architects in Tallinn and taught descriptive geometry and computation design at the Estonian Academy of Arts. At the City Form Lab, Raul has been the project manager for the SUTD Library Pavilion, the Archifest Pavilion, and the World Cities Summit exhibition.

Onur Ekmekci   onur_ekmekci[at]sutd.edu.sg

Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Stockholm 2012, Architecture and Planning.

Born in Istanbul, Onur is an architect and urban designer. He studied architecture at the City University of New York and worked at firms including Tsao & McKown and Curtis+Ginsberg Architects in New York City. He attended various academic programs, including Bauhaus Kolleg’s post-graduate level urban studies program “Cities of Tomorrow” (researching mainly on Singapore’s modernist urban development), as well as Berlage Institute (Netherlands), and TFH Berlin(Germany).  He recently received his master degree in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design from KTH-the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden).   He has contributed to journals including MONU, eOculus and Studio Magazine among others. At the City Form Lab, Onur has led documentation surveys of dense urban neighborhoods in Bugis and Punggol and explored novel analytic techniques for capturing their critical quality indicators.

Lisa Sweeney  lisa_sweeney[at]sutd.edu.sg

Senior Research Fellow

Harvard University, MLA Management 2010

Rice University, Biology 2000

Lisa is an expert in Geographic Information Systems and an advocate for useful, clean and free geographic data worldwide. Before joining CFL, Lisa was the head of Geographic Information Systems Services, MIT Libraries (2004 – 2012) and director of the GIS data centre at Rice university (2001-2004). At CFL, Lisa manages the City Planning Labs project with the World Bank in four Indonesian cities, spending much of her time traveling between Indonesia and Singapore.

Emily Royall  emily_royalli[at]sutd.edu.sg

Researcher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2014, Urban Studies and Planning.

Emily joined the City Form Lab as a researcher for six months during her Masters program in city planning at MIT. Trained as a neuro-biologist, Emily is interested in exploring the parameters of complexity in biological systems and how they may inform methods of urban design & planning. At CFL, Emily works with spatial analysis in Indonesian cities and investigates the use of computational methods for urban design in Singapore

Liqun Chen   liqun_chen[at]sutd.edu.sg

Research Fellow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2014, Urban Studies and Planning. Peking University 2012, City and Regional Planning & Psychology

Liqun is a city planner and research fellow from MIT. She has worked on research and practical projects in urban design, built environment, land use and spatial analysis in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Mexico. With a special interest in participatory planning, she co-found the Crowdsourcing Planning Initiatives in China. At the City Form Lab, Liqun works on spatial analysis of retail centers in Singapore. Besides doing research in the lab, Liqun also helps teach the Built Environment and Value course at SUTD

AFFILIATES

Michael Mekonnen   mikemeko[at]mit.edu

MIT 2013, Department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering.

Michael is a student in Electrical Engineering / Computer Science and Mathematics at MIT. He loves clever algorithms and good soccer. Besides collaborating with the City Form Lab, Michael has been working for Google.  

PAST RESEARCHERS

Lennard Ong   lo[at]plusF.co

Southern California Institute of Architecture (Sci-Arc) 2011, Architecture.

Lennart is an architect, designer and artist who has been working with the City Form Lab on designing and fabricating small scale structures and furniture products using 2.5D fabrication technology developed at the CFL. He works rapidly and effortlessly between physical and digital modalities to quickly prototype ideas and reveal hidden potentials in a project. Lenn believe in bold courage, intelligent curiosity and tireless creation.

Reza Amin Darbari   r.a.darbari[at]gmail.com

University of Michigan 2010, Taubman College of Architecture and Planning.

Prior to joining City Form Lab, Reza was a researcher in Making the Clean Energy City Project at MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and taught as an adjunct professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, in Boston. He holds a Master of Urban Design from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Architectural Technology and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tehran. He has also practiced architecture and urban design since 2003. Reza’s research interest concerns the role that urban form plays in socio-economic and environmental performance of cities, and conversely, how socio-economic forces change city form. His interests include also advanced spatial analysis techniques and GIS technologies required for investigating this reciprocal relationship.

Farré Nixon (Faye)   fayefaye[at]mit.edu

Faye joined the City Form Lab as a researcher after graduating as an undergraduate from MIT, where she majored in Urban Studies and Planning and Arts.