The Alex Krieger Collection

Alex Krieger is a Professor in Practice of Urban Design (Emeritus as of 2021) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he has taught since 1977. He received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and a Master of City Planning in Urban Design degree from Harvard.

Some of his administrative positions at Harvard have been: Chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, 1998-2004, again in 2009-10, and during the academic year 2019-2020; Director of the Urban Design Program, 1990-2001; Associate Chairman of the Department of Architecture, 1984-1989.

Krieger’s publications include: City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America From the Puritans to the Present, 2019, Urban Design, 2009; Co-editing two volumes of Harvard Design Magazine, (focusing on the evolution of urban design as a discipline), 2005-06; Remaking the Urban Waterfront, 2004; Mapping Boston, 1999; Towns and Town Planning Principles, 1994; A Design Primer for Towns and Cities, 1990; and Past Futures: Two Centuries of Imagining Boston, 1988. He has written extensively on American urbanization for various publications.

In 2003, 2005, 2007, he was honored at the annual commencement dinner for Harvard honorary degree recipients as one of the outstanding teachers at Harvard University. In 2017 The Harvard Crimson named him one of “15 Professors of the Year’’. In 2007 Design Intelligence Magazine’s annual national survey named him one of seven “Architectural Educators of the Year.” In 2016 he also achieved the Boston Society of Architects Award of Honor, for “outstanding contributions to architecture and to the profession.” This is the BSA’s lifetime achievement award.

He serves on several university-wide roles including as senior planning advisor for Harvard’s campus expansion into Allston, and on the design review committees for both the Allston and Cambridge campuses. In addition to design studios and seminar courses at the GSD, he taught a core curriculum class at the College whose enrolment has been as high as 400 students.

He lectures frequently at national and international conferences and universities. A few examples from recent years: in 2014 Krieger lectured at 6 of China's leading architecture and planning schools including Tsinghua University in Beijing, Tonji University in Shanghai, Dongnan University in Nanjing, Xian University, Harbin University, and Tianjin University. In addition, he spoke about the importance of urban design to the staff of the Planning Bureaus of the cities of Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing and Fuzhou. In 2015 he delivered the keynote lecture at the Annual Conference of the Israel Planning Association, on that year's organizing theme of planning of large-scale urban infrastructure. In 2016 he gave the keynote lecture at the 50th anniversary conference of ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners, held in Gdynia, Poland, on the topics of urban waterfront regeneration. In 2017 he gave the keynote lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Nashville Civic Design Center, on how to prepare America for its Second Urban Age, and lectured at the second annual New Cities Summit in Dallas, Texas. In 2018 he gave the keynote lecture at the concluding event of a year-old study about Portland, Maine’s future, conducted jointly by the Portland Chamber of Commerce, the Portland Society of Architects, and The Muskie School of Public Service. Since 2019 he has lectured extensively on topics related to his latest book, and on American urbanism in general.

Krieger has been an advisor to mayors and their planning staffs, and serves on a number of boards and commissions. Among these: Director of the NEA's Mayor's Institute in City Design, 1994-1999; Founder and co-director of the Large City Planners Institute, 1999-pr.; Boston Civic Design Commission, 1989-1987; Providence Capital Center Commission, 1990-1998; Vice President, and one of the founders of the New England Holocaust Memorial 1989-2000; National Design Peer, General Services Administration, 2002-pr.; Historic Boston Incorporated, 2004-pr.; Joseph Riley Institute, Charleston, 2000-pr.; Chair of the Advisory Board at the Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library 2006-pr.

In 2013 he was appointed by President Obama to sit on the US Fine Arts Commission, and has recently completed his second 4-year term on the Commission. He has served on the juries of a number of national and international design competitions, including as the competition advisor for the National Capital Planning Commission for the redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, and the pending redesign of the E Street and the Ellipse to the South of the White House.

In 1983 he founded Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, (CKS) Architecture and Urban Design, a design firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts offering services in architecture, urban design and planning. The firm received more than two-dozen regional and national awards for its work and has served a broad array of clients in over thirty cities, focusing primarily on educational, institutional, health-care and public projects in complex urban settings. In 2010 CKS merged with NBBJ architecture and planning firm with offices in 12 cities and 5 countries, where he remains a principal and a director of the Boston office.

Several significant projects that he directed and on which he played a prominent design role are:

• Boston’s Downtown Master Plan, a more detailed follow up to the City’s comprehensive Boston 2030 Master Plan. 2019 and ongoing. • Campus plans for a number of universities including Northeastern, Suffolk, UMass Boston, Simmons, Brandeis, Louisiana State University, and eight community colleges in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. • The BRA’s Boston 2000 Plan, that established the urban design parameters for the surface treatment of the Central Artery demolition and became the basis for the design of Rose Kennedy Greenway. 1988-1991.; • The Master Plan and redesign of Shanghai’s Bund 2009-2013; • Riverfront redevelopment plans for a number of cities, three of which received national AIA honor awards: Pittsburgh (1998-2007); Washington DC (2000=2008); and New Orleans (2007-2010); • Three prominent healthcare buildings in the Longwood Medical Area: The Shapiro Clinical Center, for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, BIDMC (1990-1995);, and the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (2004-2008) and the Hale Building for Transformative Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (2010-2015).