Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation is pleased to announce the appointment of Neeraj Bhatia as Director of the M.S. in Architecture and Urban Design program and Associate Professor, effective July 2026.

Bhatia is one of the world’s leading voices in urban design today, particularly at the intersection of climate and housing urgencies. This appointment marks a significant moment for the program and reaffirms the School’s continued commitment to engaging territorial realities and infrastructural ecologies at the intersection of architecture and urbanism.

Having previously taught at GSAPP, Bhatia brings an interdisciplinary and design-intensive practice focused on the relationship between urban form, equity, and ecosocial transformations. His practice, THE OPEN WORKSHOP, examines collectivity, the commons, and the governance of shared space across scales. Recent exhibitions such as Life After Property, commissioned by OSU, or Commoning Domestic Space, presented at the Venice Biennale, underscore the transcalar nature of his work, which ranges from the territorial to domestic.

Bhatia is a licensed architect and urban designer. As part of his tenure at the California College of the Arts, he co-directs the school’s Urban Works Agency. He has held teaching positions at University of California, Berkeley, Cornell University, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rice University, and the University of Toronto. His most recent distinctions include the Rome Prize in Architecture, Emerging Voices Award, Canadian Prix de Rome, and the Architectural League Young Architects Prize. His practice has been commissioned by the Seoul Biennale, the Venice Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Bhatia is also the co-editor of the journals Bracket and Architecture Beyond Extraction, as well as the author of the book New Investigations in Collective Form.

Bhatia succeeds Kate Orff following her transformative tenure as Director of the M.S. in Architecture and Urban Design program, which she has held since 2015. A globally leading voice in landscape architecture and climate urbanism, Orff will continue to focus on the GSAPP Earth Studio and her strategic role in bridging GSAPP’s design strategy and action-oriented impulse with the scientific strengths of the Columbia Climate School.

We are thrilled to welcome Neeraj Bhatia to Columbia GSAPP.