Richard Plunz

Richard Plunz
Richard Plunz
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Occupation	Architect
Notable work	A History of Housing in New York City (1990); Two Adirondack Hamlets in History (1999); Turgutreis 1974 (2016)

Last updated March 04, 2019

Richard Plunz is an American architect, critic, and historian. He is Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in the City of New York and the Founder and Director of the Urban Design Lab, a research unit of Columbia's Earth Institute, where he also serves as Professor.^[1]

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York City, also known simply as GSAPP, is regarded as one of the most important and prestigious architecture schools in the world. It is also home to the well-regarded Masters of Science program in Urban Planning, Urban Design, Historic Preservation, and Real Estate Development.

Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Established in 1754, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world.

The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States and thus also in the state of New York. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km²), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.

Education and career

Plunz studied architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he earned B.S. in engineering, B.Arch, and M.Arch degrees. There, and at Pennsylvania State University, he researched urban history and development and began developing field techniques related to the anthropology of building and people's relationship to the built environment.^[2]

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI, is a private research university and space-grant institution in Troy, New York, with additional campuses in Hartford and Groton, Connecticut.

Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital District. The city is one of the three major centers for the Albany Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which has a population of 1,170,483. At the 2010 census, the population of Troy was 50,129. Troy's motto is Ilium fuit. Troja est, which means "Ilium was, Troy is".

A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years, or a person holding such a degree.

He has been at Columbia since 1973, and served as Chair of the Division of Architecture and Director of the post-professional Urban Design Program from 1992 to 2015. Plunz has also held visiting professor positions at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Flanders, and Polytechnic University of Turin, in Italy.^[3]

KU Leuven Dutch-speaking university in Leuven, Flanders, Belgium

The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, abbreviated KU Leuven, is a research university in the Dutch-speaking town of Leuven in Flanders, Belgium. It conducts teaching, research, and services in the sciences, engineering, humanities, medicine, law, and social sciences.

Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics and history, and sometimes involving neighbouring countries. The demonym associated with Flanders is Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish. The official capital of Flanders is Brussels, although the Brussels Capital Region has an independent regional government, and the government of Flanders only oversees the community aspects of Flanders life in Brussels such as (Flemish) culture and education.

The Polytechnic University of Turin is a partly-public engineering university based in Turin, Italy. Established in 1859, it is Italy’s oldest technical university. The university offers several courses in the fields of Engineering, Architecture and Industrial Design.

Research and publications

Plunz has pursued research related to housing, urban history, anthropology, urban parametrics, and design. During the 1970s, he undertook anthropological field research in a serious of major studies using digitized environmental modeling to help understand the divergent urban contexts of Mantua, in West Philadelphia,^[4] the frazione of San Leucio in Southern Italy,^[5] and in the Adirondack High Peaks region in New York State.^[6]

Urban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urban sociology, urban geography, business history, and archaeology. Urbanization and industrialization were popular themes for 20th-century historians, often tied to an implicit model of modernization, or the transformation of rural traditional societies.

Anthropology is the scientific study of humans and human behavior and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the norms and values of societies. Linguistic anthropology studies how language affects social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.

Parametricism is a style within contemporary avant-garde architecture, promoted as a successor to post-modern architecture and modern architecture. The term was coined in 2008 by Patrik Schumacher, an architectural partner of Zaha Hadid (1950-2016). Parametricism has its origin in parametric design, which is based on the constraints in a parametric equation. Parametricism relies on programs, algorithms, and computers to manipulate equations for design purposes.

Other significant work includes a 40-year study in Turgutreis, Turkey, which documented the transformation of small villages into a modern city through the experiences of 15 families,^[7] and a Millennium Cities Initiative-developed strategic analysis of Accra, Ghana's Ga Mashie and Nima neighborhoods.^[8]

Turgutreis is a town in Turkey about a 60-minute drive from Bodrum International Airport. It is the second largest town on the Bodrum peninsula and is part of that district, in Muğla. The town is a popular holiday destination with 5 kilometres of sandy beaches, waterfront restaurants and bars, and is considered a resort town.

Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Greece and Bulgaria to its northwest; Georgia to its northeast; Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the south. Ankara is its capital but Istanbul is the country's largest city. Approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority; the size of the Kurdish population is a subject of dispute with estimates placing the figure at anywhere from 12 to 25 per cent of the population.

The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) is a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Founded by Earth Institute director Professor Jeffrey Sachs in 2006, MCI aims to assist through research and policy analysis selected mid-sized cities across sub-Saharan Africa, located near Millennium Villages, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The project's initial focus is on policy analysis impacting foreign direct investment (FDI), with a view to creating employment, stimulating domestic enterprise development and fostering economic growth. In addition to foreign investment, the MCI is working to promote an integrated City Development Strategy. The MCI draws upon, and strengthens, the MDGs work already underway by adding a focused urban-based component. MCI aims to demonstrate through its research and policy analysis that more FDI can be attracted to regional urban centers in Africa, with the resulting employment and economic growth effects. The Initiative will also produce urban development strategies issuing from the Initiative’s own MDG-based needs assessments that will inform municipal and national governments and their donors of the accurate, actual costs of achieving the MDGs.

His A History of Housing in New York City tracks the city's housing developments from 1850 and was published in 1992,^[9] and republished in 2016 with new research and an introduction by urban historian Kenneth T. Jackson.^[10] Urban planner Peter Marcuse wrote of the book in a 1992 review, “For its wealth of information and description, for its humane perspective, and for the illumination it provides on the role of architecture in the shaping of housing in New York City over the decades, this is a most valuable book.” ^[11]

Kenneth Terry Jackson is a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. A frequent television guest, he is best known as an urban historian and a preeminent authority on New York City, where he lives on the Upper West Side.

An urban planner is a professional who practices in the field of urban planning.

Peter Marcuse is a German-American lawyer and professor emeritus of urban planning.

Awards

Plunz received the Andrew J Thomas Award from the American Institute of Architects for his pioneering work in housing.^[12]

Bibliography

City Riffs. Urbanism, Ecology, Place. Zurich: Lars Müller, 2017. ISBN 978-3-03778-500-3
A History of Housing in New York City. Tokyo: Kajima, 2005; New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, 2016. ISBN 978-0-231-17835-8 , 978-0-231-54310-1
Turgutreis 1974. (co-author with Suha Özkan). Istanbul: Literatür, 2016. ISBN 978-975-04-0706-2
Urban Climate Change Crossroads (editor with Maria Paola Sutto). New York: UDL, 2008; Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4094-0078-3 , 978-0-7546-9980-4
Eco-Gowanus: Urban Remediation by Design (editor with Patricia Culligan). Columbia MSAUD New Urbanisms 8. 2007.
The Urban Life World. Formation Perception Representation (editor with Peter Madsen). London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-23177-9
Two Adirondack Hamlets in History. Keene and Keene Valley (editor). Fleishmanns, New York: Purple Mountain Press, 1999. ISBN 1-930098-04-9
Habiter New York. La Forme Institutionalisée de l'Habitat New Yorkais, 1850-1950. Liège, Belgium: Pierre Mardaga Editeur, 1982. ISBN 2-87009-172-9
Design and the Public Good. Selected Writings, 1930-1980 by Serge Chermayeff (editor). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1982. ISBN 0-262-16088-9
Housing Form and Public Policy in the United States (editor). New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980. ISBN 0-03-056839-0
San Leucio. Vitalità d'Una Tradizione. Traditions in Transition. New York: George Wittenborn and Company, 1973. ISBN 0815006810
Mantua Primer. Toward a Program for Environmental Change. Baltimore: United States Public Health Service, November, 1970. LCCN 79-606719

External links

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References

↑ GSAPP faculty profile https://www.arch.columbia.edu/faculty/53-richard-plunz
↑ Urban Design Lab profile http://urbandesignlab.columbia.edu/our-team/richard-a-plunz/
↑ Design Trust profile http://designtrust.org/people/fellows/richard-plunz/
↑ "Mantua Primer: Toward a Program for Environmental Change | Pennsylvania State University".
↑ "San Leucio: vitalità d'una tradizione: traditions in transition | Pennsylvania State University".
↑ "Two Adirondack hamlets in history: Keene and Keene Valley | Purple Mountain Press". OCLC 43095901.
↑ "Turgutreis 1974 | Literatur Yayincilik".
↑ "Urban Development in Accra, Ghana: an Implementation Toolkit | Urban Design Lab".
↑ "A History of Housing in New York City | Columbia University Press".
↑ "A House Divided: The Dual Histories of Home Ownership in NYC | The Brian Lehrer Show".
↑ Marcuse, Peter (1992). "Plunz, Richard 1990: A history of housing in New York City: dwelling type and social change in the American metropolis. New York: Columbia University Press". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 16.2 (2): 333–334. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.1992.tb00178.x.
↑ American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter, Awards Archive https://www.aiany.org/architecture/awards-archive/

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[1] GSAPP faculty profile https://www.arch.columbia.edu/faculty/53-richard-plunz

[2] Urban Design Lab profile http://urbandesignlab.columbia.edu/our-team/richard-a-plunz/

[3] Design Trust profile http://designtrust.org/people/fellows/richard-plunz/

[4] "Mantua Primer: Toward a Program for Environmental Change | Pennsylvania State University".

[5] "San Leucio: vitalità d'una tradizione: traditions in transition | Pennsylvania State University".

[6] "Two Adirondack hamlets in history: Keene and Keene Valley | Purple Mountain Press". OCLC 43095901.

[7] "Turgutreis 1974 | Literatur Yayincilik".

[8] "Urban Development in Accra, Ghana: an Implementation Toolkit | Urban Design Lab".

[9] "A History of Housing in New York City | Columbia University Press".

[10] "A House Divided: The Dual Histories of Home Ownership in NYC | The Brian Lehrer Show".

[11] Marcuse, Peter (1992). "Plunz, Richard 1990: A history of housing in New York City: dwelling type and social change in the American metropolis. New York: Columbia University Press". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 16.2 (2): 333–334. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.1992.tb00178.x.

[12] American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter, Awards Archive https://www.aiany.org/architecture/awards-archive/