With over twenty-five years of proven experience authoring and implementing visionary urban architecture, Vishaan Chakrabarti is the Founder and Creative Director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism | PAU, where he leads the firm’s growing global portfolio of cultural, institutional, and public projects. Vishaan has been a principal at major architecture firms including SHoP Architects and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He is a registered architect in the States of New York, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and is registered with NCARB.

Chakrabarti is the author of the highly acclaimed book, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America (Metropolis Books, 2013), and is working on a second upcoming book for Princeton University Press entitled The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing Cities for Pluralism and Planet. Vishaan has served as the William W. Wurster Dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley and was a professor at Columbia University for a decade.

While serving under Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the director of the Manhattan Office for the New York Department of City Planning, Vishaan successfully collaborated on the now-realized efforts to save the High Line, extend the #7 subway line, rebuild the East River Waterfront, expand the Columbia University campus, and reincorporate the street grid at the World Trade Center site after the events of 9/11.

Vishaan lectures internationally; contributes articles and op-eds to the New York Times, Crain’s Business, and other publications; has appeared on CBS Evening News, MSNBC’s The Cycle, Charlie Rose, National Public Radio, WNYC, and other television and radio programs; and was a main-stage speaker at TED 2018: The Age of Amazement and a featured speaker at TED Connects 2020: Build Back Better. He serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York, the Regional Planning Association, the Norman Foster Foundation, and The World Around. He is an emeritus board member of Friends of the High Line and a former ex officio board member of the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Films Archive (BAMPFA). Vishaan is also a Mentor & Protégé for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a member of the National Council on US-China Relations and has served on the National Mayor’s Institute of City Design.

Vishaan holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Berkeley; a Master of City Planning degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and dual bachelor’s degrees in art history and engineering from Cornell University.