Speaker Info
Harrison Fraker
Professor and Dean Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Harrison Fraker was educated as an architect and urban designer at Princeton and Cambridge Universities and is recognized as a pioneer in passive solar, daylighting and sustainable design research, while teaching at Princeton for 15 years. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for creating a new College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota and appointed the founding Dean. He was granted Fellowship in the AIA for his award-winning career bridging education and practice. He has published seminal articles on sustainable design and urban design principles for transit-oriented development, including the China Eco Block concept. He stepped down as the 5th Dean of CED in June 1908, after 121/2 years and serves on the Places Journal Executive Committee. His research on sustainable communities is summarized in The Hidden Potential of Sustainable Neighborhoods, 2013, Island Press. He is past Chair of the Energy Resources Group at UCB, and served as the Ax:son Johnson Guest Professor in the Sustainable Urban Design Masters program at Lund University, Sweden, 2008-18. He received the 2014 Topaz Medallion, the highest award given in architectural education by AIA and ACSA. While he has retired from full time teaching after a 50 year career, he continues to conduct research on the Oakland Ecoblock – A ZNE, Low Water Use Retrofit Neighborhood Demonstration Project, which just received $5million of Phase 2 funding from the California Energy Commission to construct and test the pilot project. He is currently writing a book on the impacts of neuroscience insights on the poetics of sustainable urban design.