MEET THE SPEAKERS
– April 13, 2023 –
Moderator
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA, is president of ArchPlan Inc., an architecture and urban design firm in Baltimore specializing in community revitalization, adaptive re-use, historic preservation and transportation planning since 1992. He has been named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects for using his profession to affect communities through advocacy.
Klaus is or has been engaged in the nonprofit sector such as a statewide growth management group which he helped found (1994-2016) an urban land trust for which he is president, a non-profit design center in Baltimore which he co-founded, as chair of the Urban Design Committee of both the local Chapter of the American Institute of Architects until 2017, (AIA) and the national Regional and Urban Design Committee of AIA (RUDC); He was for 10 years a member of a Borough Council in Stuttgart. He currently chairs the Housing Subcommittee of the Social Determinants of Health Task Force at UMB.
Klaus earned a Master’s degree of Architecture in Stuttgart, Germany in 1975. He has also worked as an architect and planner in Stuttgart, Germany and London, England and has resided in the US since 1986. He has taught architecture and urban design as adjunct faculty at two local universities, writes the blog “Community Architect”, is a frequent speaker at conventions and events and a contributor to a statewide radio show in matters of urban design and transportation. He wrote a monthly architecture review in a local business paper, wrote the book “Baltimore, Reinventing an American Legacy City” and regularly publishes articles on his blog “Community Architect.”
Panelist
Theo Ngongang
Theo currently serves as Deputy Director and Chief of Policy for Baltimore City Department of Transportation (BCDOT). A close advisor to the Director and member of the senior leadership team, Theo is responsible for setting the overall policy direction for BCDOT. He manages several divisions, including planning, transit, sustainable mobility, citywide bike master planning and supervised the development of the first Complete Streets ordinance and its manual.
Prior to returning to Government, Theo was the Director of Design, Planning + Economics covering Maryland for AECOM. In that role, he was responsible for business development, recruitment, and marketing activities, with a focus on growing the urban planning practice of the firm in Maryland. In that capacity, he successfully secured and managed two planning contracts totaling over $500K Theo has served in various leadership capacities in City and State governments, from Assistant Director at the Department of Planning to Chief of the Planning and Project Development Division of the Baltimore Department of Transportation (DOT).
Earlier in his career, Theo acted as Central Business District Planner in the Baltimore City Department of Planning and as Regional Planner for the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). Theo started his career in the design field in Chicago, Illinois, working for several architectural firms.
Theo brings more than 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors in city/regional planning, transportation planning, public policy, and public administration. He holds a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, a Master in Urban Planning and Town Management (DESS) from Université de Paris-XII (Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris) and a Bachelor in Architecture (Diplome d’Architecte DESA) from Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris, France. He serves on numerous boards and is a graduate of the Greater Baltimore Committee’s LEADERship program class of 2014.
Panelist
Steve Preston
Steve Preston serves as the Park Design and Construction Manager at Parks & People. He oversees the design and delivery of park projects in Baltimore, including such efforts as the renovation of Henrietta Lacks Park, renovation of school yards throughout the city, and creation of numerous post-demolition parks, all of which equate to 17 acres of park space created/restored, with another 14 acres in the works this year alone.
Steve works closely with the communities he serves on, each project aiming to realize their vision; He is proud to be able to connect residents to new and reinvigorated parks and green space. To date, this effort has reconnected 20% of city residents within the underserved “Black Butterfly” with these invaluable resources. Steve has Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Landscape Architecture from Penn State University and has worked for the Parks & People foundation for the last 8 years.
Panelist
Maitreyi Roy
Maitreyi Roy serves as Executive Director for Bartram’s Garden, home of famed 18th century botanist John Bartram (1699-1777). Since 2012, Maitreyi has worked with the board, staff and community leaders to restore and transform Bartram’s Garden as a historic and cultural asset, advancing an ambitious strategic action plan and establishing the Garden as a vibrant civic commons and outdoor living room and class space for the Southwest Philadelphia community.
Maitreyi has served as senior vice president at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society overseeing its nationally recognized urban greening programs and as a landscape architect with the Boston Parks & Recreation Department on revitalizing and restoring its neighborhood parks.
As a 2007 Eisenhower Fellow, Maitreyi traveled to urban centers in Europe to study best practices in urban open space policies and landscape design.
Trained as an architect in India, Maitreyi’s interest in open space issues took her to the Design School at Harvard University where she earned a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture.
Panelist
Kate Foster
Kate Foster serves as the Mid-Atlantic Director of Trail Development for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, based out of the Baltimore field office. In that role, Kate’s focus is on advancing RTC’s TrailNation projects in the Philadelphia/Camden region, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Kate is an ordained Presbyterian minister, and has served churches in Memphis, TN and Baltimore. Prior to joining RTC, she founded and ran a mission and service-learning program that offers community engagement training for church leaders and places volunteers from all over the country with Baltimore-based community and neighborhood groups. She is particularly interested in equitable development and ensuring that historically excluded voices are centered in the process of designing and developing public spaces.
Kate is an avid hiker, gardener, and fitness enthusiast (who also sometimes rides her bike). She holds a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She has been published in numerous publications, including Duke Divinity School’s Faith and Leadership and The Huffington Post.
– April 20, 2023 –
Hallie Boyce
A Partner since 2009, Hallie’s focus is the design and planning of landscapes that weave together the elements of art and ecology, creating greater social and physical resiliency for cultural institutions and communities both in the US and abroad. Her passion is creating educational opportunities through the medium of landscape that engage current and future generations towards promoting their stewardship of our world and addressing its key issues of climate change, equity, and environmental justice.
Hallie’s award-winning work includes the design of courtyards, plazas, gardens, parks, campuses, and waterfronts. Recent projects include the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Museum of American History. Hallie has led the design of the grounds of the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill; the design of the National Geographic Headquarters Base Camp, a landscape focused on world biomes and biodiversity; the 11th Street Bridge Park, a destination landscape focused on the health of the Anacostia River and its adjacent neighborhoods; and Currie Park, a resiliency hub on the Intracoastal Waterway in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her realized projects include the new U.S. Embassy in London as well as the National Veterans Memorial and Museum and Spirit of Women Park in Columbus, Ohio.
Hallie holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Art in Art History from Bucknell University. She has taught studios at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and Temple University exploring the potential of designed landscapes as catalysts to sustainably transform communities in England, France, Belgium, Curacao, the Czech Republic, and the US.
Jason Long
Jason Long is a Partner at OMA who leads its New York office and diverse portfolio in the Americas. Since joining the firm in 2003, Jason has brought a research-driven, interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of OMA’s projects internationally.
A number of projects under Jason’s direction take a creative approach to adaptive reuse and preservation, including POST Houston, the transformation of a former post office warehouse into a mixed-use hub; the conversion of a historic parking garage in New York City into a new synagogue; the renovation of the historic Fitzgerald Building at University of Toronto into the university’s administration center; the adaptive reuse of Jersey City’s historic Pathside Building into Centre Pompidou x Jersey City; and LANTERN, the reimagination of a former commercial bakery into a community arts hub in Detroit.
Jason also leads projects in Washington D.C. that provide an innovative approach to recreation, public health, and equitable development at varying scales: a streetscape design for Washington D.C.’s convention center, the 11th Street Bridge Park connecting disparate communities on either side of the Anacostia River, and a masterplan for the RFK Stadium Armory Campus.
His diverse portfolio of residential projects include The Perigon in Miami Beach and Eagle+West, OMA’s first high rise towers in New York. In California, he oversaw the completion of The Avery in San Francisco and is currently leading the design of 730 Stanyan, a 100% affordable housing building in historic Haight Ashbury.
– May 4, 2023 –
Dr. Linda C. Samuels
Dr. Linda C. Samuels is a Professor of urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where she teaches architecture and urban design studios and seminars on Infrastructural Urbanism, urban history and theory, and alternative sustainability metrics. She is the founder and director of Infra_OPTS, an independent consulting firm in St. Louis and Los Angeles focused on the design, mapping, and metrics of public infrastructure to create more equitable cities.
Before coming to WashU, Samuels was the inaugural director of the Sustainable City Project, a multidisciplinary research, teaching, and outreach initiative at the University of Arizona. Samuels earned her Doctorate in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was a Senior Research Associate at cityLAB.
Samuels’ book, Infrastructural Optimism, which focuses on next generation infrastructure and the value of leveraging large scale infrastructural investment for greater social and environmental gains, is now available from Routledge.
