Vishaan Chakrabarti

Founder, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU); Associate Professor of Practice, Columbia University.

Vishaan Chakrabarti is the Founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism. Simultaneously, Vishaan is an Associate Professor of Practice at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (GSAPP), where he teaches architectural design studios and seminars on urbanism. His highly acclaimed book, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America (Metropolis Books, 2013), argues that a more urban United States would result in a more prosperous, sustainable, joyous, and socially mobile nation. Of the book, the Toronto Globe and Mail wrote: “In the world of urbanism and planning, there’s been a barrage of recent books on similar themes…but Mr. Chakrabarti has written maybe the most useful one, a polemic in favor of city living that makes the stakes clear.” Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradlee named A Country of Cities one of the top ten books of 2013 in the Huffington Post.

Chakrabarti has been a guest on The Charlie Rose show, MSNBC’s The Cycle, NY1, NPR, WNYC, and has been profiled in The New York Times and The Financial Times. Vishaan has lectured widely across Europe, Asia and the Americas. In April, 2014, the New York Times published his Op Ed, “America’s Urban Future.”

From 2012 to 2015, Vishaan was a principal at SHoP Architects where he co-led major architecture and urban design projects including the master plan and first building at the Domino Sugar site in Williamsburg as well as the master plan and first building at the Essex Crossing site at Seward Park, which together bookend the Williamsburg bridge in a new form of mixed use, mixed income urbanism.

From 2009 to 2015, Vishaan also served as the Marc Holliday Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Real Estate Development program at Columbia’s GSAPP. While there he became the founding director of the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE). Chakrabarti is widely credited for transforming the program into one of the finest programs of its kind by establishing an interdisciplinary mission that focused on the potential role urban development could play in generating groundbreaking design, greater sustainability, and shared economic prosperity.

From 2005 to 2009, Chakrabarti was the president of Moynihan Station Venture, and remains an ardent advocate for the reconstruction of New York’s Pennsylvania Station. In addition, Chakrabarti was the inaugural Jaquelin T. Robertson Visiting Professor in Architecture for the University of Virginia in 2009.

From 2002 to 2005, Chakrabarti served under Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the Director of the Manhattan Office for the New York Department of City Planning, where he successfully collaborated on the now realized efforts to save the High Line, rezone Hudson Yards, extend the #7 subway line, rebuild the East River Waterfront, expand Columbia University, and reincorporate the street grid at the World Trade Center site after the tragic events of 9/11.

Prior to 2002, Vishaan was an Associate Partner at the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LP. There he managed numerous skyscraper projects, including the new headquarters for the New York Stock Exchange, as well as the master plan for Columbia University’s new campus in Manhattanville.

Chakrabarti holds a Master of Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and dual bachelor’s degrees in Art History and Engineering from Cornell University. He is a registered architect in the State of New York.

He serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York, and the Regional Planning Association. He is a trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission, and is an emeritus board member of Friends of the High Line. He is also a member of the Young Leaders Forum of the National Council on US-China Relations and has served on the National Mayor’s Institute of City Design. Metropolis Magazine named Chakrabarti one of the top 12 “Game Changers” for 2012, he is a former Crain’s “40 Under 40” and David Rockefeller Fellow. Chakrabarti and his family live in Manhattan, where his spouse Maria Alataris is also a practicing architect.