Benjamin Gianni
Associate Professor
Benjamin Gianni teaches courses on housing and urban history. He leads the housing studio in the 4th year of the BAS program and coordinates the school’s urbanism major.
His research interests focus on housing and urban development. In particular:
– Public housing constructed in the decades following the Second World War in Europe and North America, and its redevelopment from the 1990s onward;
– Urbanization, suburbanization ,and the study of large-scale housing ensembles in contemporary China, questioning the legacy of modernism and its transposition to different cultural and temporal contexts;
– Redevelopment of informal settlements in China, India, and Africa, using design as a form of research to explore adaptable, culturally resonant, and market-friendly approaches to redevelopment.
Gianni is currently finishing a book on pre-Second World War suburbanization in Pittsburgh, PA.
He is a former director of both the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism and the School of Information Technology at Carleton University.
Education
MArch – Yale University School of Architecture, New Haven, CT, 1984
BA – University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1980
Courses
ARCS 4105, ARCU 4303, ARCC 4301 – 4th Year Undergraduate Studio in Housing and City-Building
ARCU 2302 – Fundamentals of Urbanism
ARCH 4201 – History of Modern Housing
Research
Urban Design and Sustainable Urbanization
Urban Morphology
Housing
Suburbanization
Redevelopment of Informal Settlements (China, India, Angola)
Development and Redevelopment of Post-WWII Social Housing
Practice
Vice Chair, Urban Land Institute Ottawa Chapter
Vice President, International Council on Canadian Chinese and African Sustainable Urbanization (ICCCASU)
Registered Architect (State of Ohio, 1986)