Joan Busquets

¿Plans vs. Projects?
Plans and Projects

A lecture by Joan Busquets, an Architect, Urban Planner, and the Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Busquets discussed how city design today responds to different patterns depending on the program, intentions, and ambitions of each reality.

Joan Busquets is the first Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at the GSD, starting in 2002. Formerly, he was Chair-Professor at the School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona. He served as Head of Urban Planning for the Barcelona City Council during its formative years, from 1983 to 1989, and contributed to the preparations for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, which also included key improvements to public spaces in existing neighborhoods.

Busquets was awarded the International Erasmus Prize in 2011, in 2012 he received the Grand Prix Spécial de l'Urbanisme, and in 2016, was elected Full Member of the Académie d'Architecture de France. In 2021, he won the Patrick Abercrombie Prize of Union Internationale des Architectes. Busquets has participated in strategic urban planning and design — most involving public-private partnerships — for the cities of Den Haag, Lisbon, Marseille, Rotterdam, Singapore, Sao Paolo, and Barcelona.

Busquets has published widely, including Barcelona: The Urban Evolution of a compact city (2005, 2014, and 2020), Cities X Lines: A New Lens for the Urbanistic Project (2007), and Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design (2019).

Free and open to the public.  Organized by Columbia University GSAPP Urban Design Program.