Critical Resilience: Dialogue with Miho Mazereeuw and Perry Yang

You are cordially invited to attend the dialogue by Miho Mazereeuw and Perry Yang:

Date: Tuesday, 26 August 2025

Time: 12:30 – 14:00

Venue:  SDE3, Level 1 Exhibition Space

Kindly register your interest here: https://nus.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6x9mgBM0I7lZ382

 Critical Resilience: Dialogue with Miho Mazereeuw and Perry Yang

 With resilience representing a paradigmatic shift in planning and design in the face of uncertainty in recent times, what are the actual outcomes in the transformation of architectural and urban design research and practices? What has and hasn’t changed? What critical perspectives must we have toward the current practices? Associate Professor Miho Mazereeuw (MIT) and Professor Perry Yang (Georgia Tech) will share insights from their contrasting research and practices in community resilience design and innovations at the urban scale.

Speakers:

Miho Mazereeuw – Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Miho Mazereeuw is the MIT Climate Mission Director for Empowering Frontline Communities, an MIT-wide problem-solving community. Trained as an architect and landscape architect, she is an associate professor and leads the Urban Risk Lab, which focuses on designing resilient cities that prepare for climate risks such as flooding, cyclones, and heat stress. Her forthcoming book, Design Before Disaster: Japan’s Culture of Preparedness, is being published by the University of Virginia Press in September 2025.

Perry Pei-Ju Yang – Georgia Institute of Technology

Perry Yang is Professor of City & Regional Planning and Architecture and Director of Eco Urban Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology. His work focuses on incorporating data analytics into urban design to improve ecological and energy performance of cities. Beyond writing, he has been awarded more than ten prizes in international competitions continuously from 2005 in Asian cities. He has conducted smart cities research in Japan over ten years based on University of Tokyo.

Moderator:

 Jeffrey Hou – National University of Singapore

In a career that spans the Pacific, Professor Jeff Hou has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, fishers, and villagers in Asia and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities, on projects ranging from the conservation of wildlife habitats to bottom-up urban placemaking. Before his appointment as the Head of the Department at DOA in 2024, Hou was Professor of Landscape Architecture and led the Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He served as Chair of Landscape Architecture at UW from 2009 to 2017.