From Resistance to Resilience—Stories from the Urban Risk Lab

Miho Mazereeuw is Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and Director of the Urban Risk Lab at MIT. Operating at several scales, her research focuses on designing cities to prepare for disasters such as earthquakes, flooding, and typhoons. With the Urban Risk Lab, she engages in extensive field work and community workshops, focusing on the needs of diverse cultures and contexts. The Lab aspires to change the course of current global development trends through a radical shift in education and action to proactively embed preparedness and risk reduction in a rapidly urbanizing world.

Her forthcoming book, Design Before Disaster: Japan’s Culture of Preparedness (University of Virginia Press, 2024), offers a holistic framework to design for anticipated disasters and provides examples of resilient interventions in urban landscapes and architecture. She has also been the recipient of the Janet Darling Webel Prize, the Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship, and the Wheelwright Prize.

Mazereeuw is both a registered architect and a registered landscape architect, and prior to joining MIT, she was an associate at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Additionally, she held teaching appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Toronto. Mazereeuw received her Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Lectures made possible by the Jean Labatut Memorial Lectures in Architecture and Urban Planning Fund.