Good Design: Affordable Housing

Max Abramovitz Distinguished Lecture; Planning Institute; Department of Urban and Regional Planning; Center for Advanced Study; Lorado Taft Fund

Thursday, March 2, 2006
6:00 P.M. - Lawrence J. Plym Auditorium
Temple Hoyne Buell Hall

Michael Pyatok
Principal, Pyatok Architects
San Francisco

Michael Pyatok, FAIA is an honors graduate of Harvard University and Pratt Institute Schools of Architecture. He has been a practicing architect and professor of architectural design for 37 years. His practice serves non-profit organizations and private developers in building market-rate and affordable housing, mixed-use developments and community facilities. Since opening his office in 1984, he has designed over 20,000 units of affordable housing for lower-income households in the U.S. and another 5000 in the Philippines, and more recently in Malaysia. His firm has won over 100 local and national design awards for housing designs. In addition, Mr. Pyatok has helped start two non-profit housing corporations and sat on the board of one for ten years, as it produced over 700 units of housing in Oakland, California.

Mr. Pyatok was a Fulbright Scholar in Helsinki, Finland where he researched the housing policies of Scandinavian countries. In 1983 he was appointed a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, where he used the resources of the Business School and the Kennedy School for Public Policy to explore strategies for affordable housing in this age of shrinking public involvement. In 1995 he was elected to the College of Fellows of the AIA in recognition of his contribution to neighborhood planning and the design of affordable housing. In 1996 he was funded by the national AIA and the NEA to co-author the book Good Neighbors: Affordable Family Housing about design issues related to neighborhood planning and affordable housing. In 2001, Harvard University appointed him its Buchsbaum Professor of Affordable Housing. Also in 2001 Residential Architect Magazine featured him on its cover as the “Architect-of-the-Year” in recognition of the quality design he has brought to the affordable housing sector. Mr. Pyatok continues to published articles about affordable housing, urban design and community participation in the US, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Japan.