Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (Columbia GSAPP) is pleased to announce the appointment of Neeraj Bhatia as Director of the Urban Design program and Associate Professor.

This appointment marks a significant moment for the program and reaffirms its continued commitment to urban design as a civic and ecological practice deeply engaged with the planetary forces shaping cities and territories.

Having taught at the School across programs, Bhatia brings a research-driven, design-intensive practice embedded in linking territorial systems, housing, and modes of governance to the pressing ecological and social transformations shaping urbanization today. His work has proven to advance urban design as an instrument for spatial justice, climate adaptation, and collective forms of life. Through his practice, THE OPEN WORKSHOP, Bhatia investigates how urban form mediates the relationships between environment, resource distribution, and social organization. In his teaching, Bhatia has also focused on commoning and the governance of shared spatial resources across scales, from metropolitan regions to domestic space.

Bhatia will expand the program’s capacity to engage climate, resource distribution, and metropolitan transformation as entangled spatial challenges. His approach situates urban design not simply as form-making, but as a mode coalition-building across institutions and territories.

Neeraj Bhatia is a licensed architect and urban designer. He is a Full Professor at the California College of the Arts, where he also co-directs the urbanism research lab and has also held teaching positions at GSAPP, Harvard GSD, UC Berkeley, Cornell University, Rice University, and the University of Toronto amongst others.His distinctions include the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award, Canadian Professional Prix de Rome, the Architectural League Young Architects Prize. His practice has been commissioned by the Seoul Biennale, Venice Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among other venues. Bhatia is also the co-editor of Architecture Beyond Extraction.

Bhatia joins a School energized by the ambitious leadership across its programs and by a long-standing culture of exchange across disciplines. Working in close dialogue with colleagues across Architecture, Planning, Real Estate Development, Preservation, and the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, he will further deepen Urban Design’s contribution to GSAPP’s broader research and pedagogical ecosystem.

Within this expanded framework, Kate Orff’s role remains instrumental. As a global leading voice in landscape architecture and climate urbanism, Her work has positioned GSAPP at the forefront of climate-responsive practice, advancing new forms of collaboration between science, architecture, landscape, and urban systems. Orff will continue to lead the program’s ability to mobilize climate design through initiatives such as the Earth Studios, developed in collaboration with the Columbia Climate School and focused on the territorial, ecological, and design dimensions of climate.