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SMART Presentation Summary

Dr. Douglas Kelbaugh presented his thoughts and images on a half dozen new green neighborhoods and towns that he recently visited in Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. These projects are seamlessly walkable, bike-friendly, and transit-oriented. They are full of energy efficient buildings that are contemporary in architectural language and well integrated into their urban landscapes. He also included some recent architectural projects of note in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stuttgart and Berlin.

• View his PowerPoint presentation (pdf)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Biography

Douglas S. Kelbaugh FAIA, is Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning. He is presently on leave serving as the Executive Director of Architecture and Planning at Limitless LLC, an international development company doing sustainable and often transit-oriented projects in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

He received his BA degree Magna Cum Laude and Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University. Between degrees, he co-founded a community design center in Trenton, New Jersey, and later worked for five years there as an architect and urban designer for the city. His 1975 solar house in Princeton was the first in the country to use a Trombe Wall and it became a familiar icon of the passive solar movement. In 1978, he founded Kelbaugh + Lee, a firm that won over 15 regional and national design awards and competitions in half as many years, and completed many pioneering passive solar buildings. His designs were published in over 100 books and magazines and featured in many exhibitions in the USA and abroad. In the late 1990s after moving to Seattle, his firm Kelbaugh & Calthorpe won several local and national design awards. In 1996, he was nominated for the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and AIA Michigan gave Dean Kelbaugh its 2001 President's Award for his contributions to architectural education and the profession.

Professor Kelbaugh has been a faculty member or visiting professor at nine schools of architecture in the USA, Europe, Japan and Australia, as well as delivered lectures at scores of other schools. He was the dean of Taubman College from 1998 to 20008. Prior to that, he was chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington for eight years. At the University of Michigan, he started an urban design program and a real estate development program, as well as a community design center in Detroit. He recruited 40 new faculty members, and served on many university, state, and national boards and committees. In 2007, he was selected as one of the top seven Architecture Educators of the Year by Design Intelligence.

Kelbaugh has co-chaired a large number of national and international conferences on energy, urbanism, globalism, and design, spoken to hundreds of professional and community groups, appeared on numerous local and national radio and television programs, and served on three dozen regional and national design juries. For example, he chaired the AIA National Urban Design Honor Awards jury and the 4th National Symposium on New Urbanism, as well as serving on the National AIA Gold Medal jury. With Peter Calthorpe he edited and co-authored in 1989 The Pedestrian Pocket Book, a national bestseller in urban design that documented early work in Transit-Oriented Development and helped jump-start New Urbanism. Kelbaugh authored COMMON PLACE: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design, a book on the theory, design and practice of regionalism published by the University of Washington Press in 1997, now in its second printing. Its sequel, Repairing the American Metropolis: Beyond Common Place, was published in 2002. More recently, he has edited The Michigan Debates on Urbanism (2005) and Writing Urbanism: an Urban Design Reader, published in 2008. His countless articles, essays and editorials have appeared in many journals and magazines all over the world.

One of the first to popularize the modern design charrette, he has organized and participated as a team leader in over thirty of these three- to five-day design workshops in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, some of which have resulted in publications and development projects. He has written, spoken and consulted on numerous private and public development projects here and abroad.

Doug Kelbaugh is a designer and planner of international renown; a leader in architecture, urban design, and community planning; an experienced educator; a prolific writer; a frequent guest commentator in the print and electronic media; a popular public speaker and facilitator; and a local civic activist.

He and his wife Kathleen Nolan normally live in downtown Ann Arbor with one automobile and two cats and are avid bicyclists, readers, art collectors, and world travelers.