Yale Urban Design Workshop

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Yale Urban Design Workshop The Yale Urban Design Workshop is a Community Design Center at the Yale School of Architecture.

New publication announcement đź“šThe newly released volume Navigating Dynamic Campus-Community Relationships: How Colleges ...
09/09/2026

New publication announcement đź“š

The newly released volume Navigating Dynamic Campus-Community Relationships: How Colleges and Universities Engage with Demographic Shift (Routledge / Campus Compact), edited by Suchitra Gururaj and Brianna Davis Johnson, features a chapter tracing the roots of our practice: “Building Bridges between Yale University and New Haven.”

Co-authored by YUDW executive director Andrei Harwell alongside founder Alan Plattus , Kate Cooney , Anne Gatling Haynes , and Anika Singh Lemar, the chapter examines a pivotal period in the early 1990s as Yale and New Haven wrestled with evolving challenges and began experimenting with new forms of place-based civic engagement. A central outcome of that turning point was the emergence of the Yale Urban Design Workshop itself.

Decades later, navigating that relationship remains an ongoing effort—and the lessons of that era continue to inform how anchor institutions approach demographic change, neighborhood equity, and sustained civic partnership.

Link in bio to read more about the book.

Extreme heat is increasingly shaping public health and daily mobility in cities, yet the transit infrastructure many res...
06/22/2026

Extreme heat is increasingly shaping public health and daily mobility in cities, yet the transit infrastructure many residents depend on remains poorly equipped to protect from heat exposure.

Cool Shelters sees public infrastructure as a means to create thoughtful interventions. Intended to replace a parking space, the reimagined bus stop departs from the car-centric nature of cities in favor of pedestrians, public transportation and neighborhood life.

Through research into existing systems of design, material selection, procurement, installation, and maintenance in Connecticut, with a focus on New Haven, the project establishes a practical design framework and proof-of-concept shelter that integrates heat mitigation, sustainably sourced mass timber, and place-based adaptation within real public infrastructure constraints.

The project emerged from the Yale Urban Design Workshop as a year-long investigation. The team—Amelia Lee, Meghana Ramesh, Shannon Lee, and Luke Louchheim—were supported by the Yale Planetary Solutions Impact! Grant and worked under the guidance of Andrei Harwell, Aicha Woods, Matthew Rosen, and Alan Organschi.









🌊 Event: Reimagining the WaterfrontThe Yale Urban Design Workshop is heading virtually to the Lehigh Small Cities Co-Lab...
02/25/2026

🌊 Event: Reimagining the Waterfront

The Yale Urban Design Workshop is heading virtually to the Lehigh Small Cities Co-Lab! We are thrilled to participate in their second Lunch and Lab on Friday, March 6, to discuss the future of our rivers and coasts. YUDW Founding Director Alan Plattus and partners from ARCADE and RiverWise to explore how small cities can transform their waterfronts into vibrant cultural and economic assets. YUDW Executive Director Andrei Harwell and Alan's article "On the Waterfront: Piloting and Ways to Begin" will be featured in the publication for this session, due to be out next week! We will keep you posted and link to it soon.

Scan the QR code in the flyer to register!

After two years of dedicated effort, we are proud to announce the launch of our new graphic identity and website. Our ne...
02/25/2026

After two years of dedicated effort, we are proud to announce the launch of our new graphic identity and website. Our new logotype is in a tightly set in Akzidens Grotesque, a deliberate nod to the era of Letraset letters and manual paste-ups that defined the emergence of community design centers as an alternative form of practice. This identity bridges our radical roots with our future commitment to providing professional design and planning services to New Haven and Connecticut’s towns and cities. The rotated circle W mark celebrates our main design methodology: a focus on the workshop as a way of gathering together different viewpoints and knowledge to hash out the work to be done.

As we move forward, we want to honor our history and the visual legacy that carried us for nearly two decades. We are officially retiring our previous logo, designed by Seher Erdogan .erdogan.studio in 2008. We are deeply grateful for Seher’s contribution to our identity and carry that spirit of rigorous, community-focused design into this next chapter.

Big news! 🌊 The Yale Urban Design Workshop is thrilled to announce the launch of a new project to develop a comprehensiv...
01/31/2026

Big news! 🌊 The Yale Urban Design Workshop is thrilled to announce the launch of a new project to develop a comprehensive Vision Plan for Lighthouse Point Park, in collaboration with the and the Board of Park Commissioners.

This iconic landmark is a vital part of our community’s history and future. We are excited to work together to reimagine its potential while preserving what makes it special. Stay tuned for updates on the planning process and how you can get involved!

YALE PRESIDENT’S PUBLIC SERVICE FELLOWSHIPS (PPSF) are now open for application! The Workshop is listed as a site for fe...
12/11/2025

YALE PRESIDENT’S PUBLIC SERVICE FELLOWSHIPS (PPSF) are now open for application! The Workshop is listed as a site for fellowship! Feel free to reach out to us for more information.

Seen here, the 2025 Workshop Fellows and Design Assistants surveying the Dwight Neighborhood in preparation for our community based planning effort.

For nearly 20 Years, YUDW faculty directors Alan Plattus and Andrei Harwell have collaborated at the Yale Urban Design...
11/19/2025

For nearly 20 Years, YUDW faculty directors Alan Plattus and Andrei Harwell have collaborated at the Yale Urban Design Workshop on community based projects across Connecticut, many of which have focused on public infrastructure and representation. They were recently invited to contribute a chapter in Gihan Karunaratne’s volume Resilient Urbanism. Using recent examples from YUDW work, they describe our critical approach to making infrastructure more social, didactic, and performative.

In 1992, our very first project as the Yale Urban Design Workshop started with a chance meeting between graduate archite...
11/05/2025

In 1992, our very first project as the Yale Urban Design Workshop started with a chance meeting between graduate architecture student Andrew Meyers and Winsted native and future presidential candidate Ralph Nader on an airplane. The student was studying participatory design processes and Nader invited him to bring a team of Yale faculty and students to Winsted to conduct a design charrette, a state of the art community engagement technique at that time. The project was sponsored by the Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest

Participants included Yale faculty Alan Plattus, Diana Balmori, Kent Bloomer, Peter DeBretteville, Douglas Rae, Mimi Converse Winkler, James Winkler, consultants Anne Tate, Joel Russell, Carla Cooke, Peter Blackburn, Chester Chelman, and graduate students Tara Brown, Steve Case, Erik Chu, Yelena Erceg, Tim Geisler, Louise Harpman, Katie Winter, Andrew Winters, and Diana Cadwallader.

As part of the preparation for a neighborhood planning process in New Haven’s Dwight Neighborhood, since 2022 we have be...
08/15/2025

As part of the preparation for a neighborhood planning process in New Haven’s Dwight Neighborhood, since 2022 we have been working with neighborhood residents, the Dwight Central Management Team, and the Greater Dwight Development Corporation to think about and measure local air quality.

By exploring air pollution (PM2.5) trends, our team aims to better understand how Dwight’s history, land use, and traffic patterns affect the air Dwight residents breathe today. This brief analysis, prepared by recent Yale School of Public Health graduate Aline Maybank draws on 2022 - 2025 data from air quality monitors installed by the project team and City of New Haven in and around Dwight. Research was funded by a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Read more about Dwight air quality at: dwightneighborhood.info

Images by Aline Maybank, a recent grad from School of Public Health

Are you hot?! We spent Saturday afternoon at Washington Park in Bridgeport hanging with our friends at groundworkbridge...
08/13/2025

Are you hot?! We spent Saturday afternoon at Washington Park in Bridgeport hanging with our friends at groundworkbridgeport talking to South Side residents about their experience of urban heat in the neighborhood. The Cool Corridors project, supported by a grant from Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) will develop a plan for urban cooling in the public realm.

Address

1221 Chapel Street, 2 FL
New Haven, CT
06511

Telephone

(203) 764-5696

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