Roger Trancik

Professor Roger T. Trancik, FASLA, is an educator and practitioner of urban design. He has written three national award-winning books and has authored 45 professional urban design and planning studies, journal articles, and scholarly papers. He has also lectured extensively at universities and international conferences and shown his work in gallery exhibitions. His areas of specialization are urban spatial design production, theory, aesthetics, and international practice in the U.S., Scandinavia, Italy, Panama, and China. Trancik is the founding principal of the award-winning firm Urban Design Consultants Inc., Cambridge, MA, and Ithaca, NY, which has been active since 1971.

Professor Trancik taught at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1970–1981, where he held professorships in urban design and landscape architecture, and at Cornell University since 1982, where he is currently professor emeritus. He was honored with the President's Merrill Scholars Distinguished Teaching Award from Cornell in 1988. He has served in several administrative capacities — as Deputy Director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard Graduate School of Design, 1974–1978 — and Director of Graduate Studies in Landscape Architecture at Cornell, 1994–1999. He has been a visiting professor and professor in residence at Chalmers University of Technology's Department of Architecture in Göteborg, Sweden; the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen, Denmark; Wuhan University School of Urban Design in China, and the University of Colorado in Rome. He has also taught several semesters in Cornell's Rome Program in Architecture, Art, and Planning and directed the international urban design studies program for Cornell at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark from 1983–2000.

Over his extensive career, Professor Trancik was awarded numerous research and publishing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Cornell Institute for European Studies, and the Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies. He served on design arts selection panels for the NEA and the New York State Council on the Arts, the American Society of Landscape Architects National Awards Committees, and the National Fulbright Screening Committees. Trancik received the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Panama in 2003–2005. He was also an urban designer in the offices of Ralph Erskine Architects in Stockholm, Sweden, CBT Architects of Boston, and the Boston–based global firm Sasaki Associates. He earned a B.S. magna cum laude with high honors in landscape architecture and urban planning from Michigan State University and holds the Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design degree with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he was awarded Harvard GSD's Jacob Weidenmann Prize for the most distinguished design achievement.

Related News

• Critic Speaks on Urban Design at Trancik Retirement Event
• Roger Trancik's Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design to appear in two Chinese editions
• Exhibit Reveals Urban Design of Panama Canal Area
• Trancik Publishes Garden Cities

Classes (Selected)

• Principles of spatial design and aesthetics
• Urban design studios/lectures
• Case studies in urban design
• Seminars on modeling urban form

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• American Society of Landscape Architects National Awards for Finding Lost Space (1986) and Layers of Rome (2001)
• American Planning Association National Best Project Award for Hamlets of the Adirondacks (1987)
• Cornell honors: Paramount Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching (1993) and President's Merrill Scholars Distinguished Teaching Award (1988)
• International honors: Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Panama (2003–05); the prestigious Jubileum Professor in Residence, School of Architecture and Urban Design, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden (1994-1995)
• Publishing Grants: National Endowment for the Arts, Layers of Rome (1995); Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Layers of Rome (1995, 1997), Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design (1982)
• Distinguished Alumni Award for Significant and Inspirational Contributions to Urban Design Theory and Practice, Michigan State University (2016)
• Elevated to National Fellow, American Society of Landscape Architects (1990)
• Harvard University Graduate School of Design honors: Jacob Weidenmann Prize for Most Distinguished Design Achievement (1968)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Modeling City Form: Exhibitions and Lectures. Professor Roger Trancik's Urban Design Studio at Harvard and Cornell, in NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, Ottawa, Göteborg, Copenhagen, Rome, and more... 1970–2016
• Gallery Exhibitions and Talks. Roman Views, On Drawing the City, and Garden Cities of the Panama Canal. At Cornell Hartell Gallery, Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and University of Panama galleries, 1992 and 2008
• China-Europe Forum. Finding Lost Space: Urban Design for High-Density Cities in China. Keynote Speaker, Tongji University in Shanghai, and lecture series at Tsinghua (Beijing), Chang'an (Xi'an), Hong Kong, and Wuhan Universities, 2011–2012
• 25 Years of Finding Lost Space. The McKeown Memorial Lecture, University of Oregon, 2012
• Territories of Urbanism: Urban Design at 50. Symposium Speaker, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2010
• Conference on The Future Metropolitan Landscape. Keynote Speaker, University of California, Berkeley, 2005
• Z Files: 3D Technology and the Urban Design of Rome. The Myer R. Wolfe Lecture, University of Washington, 2001 (this keynote lecture was also delivered at Chulalongkorn and Silpakorn Universities in Bangkok, Thailand)
• International Symposium on The Age of the City. Keynote Speaker, International House, Osaka, Japan, 1992
• Boston Harborfront: Conceptual Milestones in Urban Design. Award Citation Lecture, AIA National Conference on Urban Design, Boston, MA, 1980; (this keynote lecture was also given in Sweden and Denmark) 
• Eight New Town Images: A European Analysis. Multimedia film production of on-site visuals and sound. Supported by Professor Roger Trancik's Jacob Weidenmann Prize from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1970

Publications (Selected)

• Trancik, Roger T. Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design. Textbook. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold / John Wiley & Sons Inc. (1986–Present) 
• Trancik, Roger T. Hamlets of the Adirondacks: I, II, and III. Four books on urban design and planning in one hundred and thirty Adirondack villages and hamlets. NY: D.E.C. (1983–2013)
• Trancik, Roger T. Layers of Rome. Educational CD, user guide, and app on concepts of urban design. NY: Live and Learn Inc. (1999, 2021)
• Trancik, Roger T. Restructuring Anti-Space: With Applications in Göteborg’s City Core. Monograph. Chalmers University Press, Göteborg, Sweden (1982)