ROGER SHERMAN
Roger Sherman is founder and principal of Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design, in Venice, CA. (RSAUD) has been featured on CNN, in Newsweek, Fast Company and the New York Times, in addition to numerous design publications. Focused largely on work in the urban arena that negotiates the relationship between public and private investrment, RSAUD’s acclaimed projects include Playa Rosa, a public/private mixed-use community-centered development in South LA, exhibited at the 2010 Venice Biennale (Italy); Thinking Out of the Big Box, a development strategy for Target, featured at the 2009 Int’l Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, NL; Railyard Park, the redevelopment of the Santa Fe Pacific railyard in Santa Fe, NM (2002); and RePark, an end-use plan for FreshKills Landfill in Staten Island, NY (2000). Currently, RSAUD is at work on the design of a new inland port town in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The firm’s projects also include award-winning residential projects, including the 3-in-1 House (Santa Monica, CA), named Home-of-the-Year by Architecture magazine in 2006; and the Flex-Deck-Spec House in the UK, exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) in 2005.
RSAUD adopts a trans-disciplinary, research-based design approach that considers cities as complex problems, the keys to which are not able to be solved by architecture alone. Our solutions are synthetic, operating across different scales and mediums: from lighting to graphics to new modes of transportation. We use a scenario-driven approach that demands collaboration with other experts, in an effort to uncover and exploit each project's underlying potential—from cultural habits to the agendas of likely funding sources to market research. Scenario planning also enable RSAUD’s design strategies to accommodate future change, given the rapidly changing climate of development and short horizon of electoral politics. Our work actively engages the exigencies of implementation, building in strategies that are as innovative in the way a design unfolds as in what it envisions.
RSAUD has been the recipient of numerous design awards include those from the American Institute of Architects and Urban Land Institute. Projects include:
Puerto Providencia Strategic Design Plan, Sucumbios (Ecuador): current
Broadway Corridor Visioning Study, Long Beach, CA: current
Westwood Village Revitalization Plan, Los Angeles: 2011
Playa Rosa Multi-use Public , Watts (South LA): 2010
Thinking Out of the Big Box Site Development Strategy Study, Target Corp.: 2009
Strip Center Repurposing, Scottsdale, AZ: 2008
Gateway Park and Recycling Center, Toledo, OH: 2005
Railyard Park, Santa Fe, NM: 2005
Fresh Kills Landfill End Use Plan, Staten Island, NY: 2002
Transit-Oriented District Development Plan, North Hollywood, CA: 1998
Multi-Use Public Plaza, Weingart Center Assoc., L.A., CA: 1997
West Hollywood Civic Center and Park, West Hollywood, CA: 1992
RSAUD’s founder and principal, Roger Sherman, is Co-Director of cityLAB, an urban design thinktank at UCLA, where he is also an Adjunct Associate Professor. He was recently named a Senior Fellow at the Global Cities Institute at the Univ. of Toronto. Sherman is author of “LA Under the Influence: the Hidden Logic of Urban Property” (Univ. of Minn., 2010); “Re: American Dream: Six Higher Density Housing Prototypes for Los Angeles” (Princeton Architectural Press, 1995); and co-editor, with Dana Cuff, of “Fast Forward Urbanism: Reconnecting Architecture with the City” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). Roger is a graduate with Distinction of the Harvard Design School, and is a recipient of the SOM and Wheelwright traveling fellowships there. He has taught and lectured widely, including at Harvard, Princeton, Zocalo Public Square, and New York's Museum of Modern Art.
