Curriculum Vitae for Dick Urban Vestbro

 

 
Name: Dick Urban Vestbro
Born: 24th of April 1940 in Solna, Sweden

Address: Div. of Urban Studies, Dept. of Infrastructure, KTH, Drottning Kristinas väg 30, SE-100 44 Stockholm, phone 46-8-7908522; fax 46-8-7908580; email: dickurba@infra.kth.se

 

 

Exams

1965      

 

Master of Architecture, The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm.

 

1975      

 

 

Doctor of Technology in Building Function Analysis, School of Architecture, The Lund Institute of Technology (thesis "Social Life and Dwelling Space. An Analysis of Three House Types in Dar es Salaam").

 

1984           

 

Title of "docent" (post-doc qualification) in Building Function Analysis, KTH.

 

 

Employments

1974-99 

Senior Lecturer/Assoc. Prof. in Building Function Analysis, School of Architecture, The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

1997-99         

 Acting Prof. of Div of Built Environment Analysis, KTH.

1997-99         

Head (Prefect) of Dept. of Architecture and Townplanning, KTH.

1999-05  

Professor of Built Environment Analysis, Head of Unit.

 

 

Teaching activities

Teaching activities comprise the following:

•   Human requirements on the built environment, theories on crowding and personal space, accessibility and universal designing.

•   Housing and urban life, including lifestyles, house form, design of multi-family housing units, neighbourhood planning, design for community, planning for social integration.

•   Course on Human Settlements and Housing within the international Master Programme Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Infrastructure.

•   Third World Housing, optional course with fieldwork in an informal settelements in a low-income countries.

•   Supervision of Master thesis work.

•   Supervision of thesis work of doctoral students.

 

Recent research activities

•   The development of people-environment studies in a perspective of modernism, postmodern­ism and the paradigm of sustainable development.

•   The role of architectural modernism in industrial and non-industrial countries.

•   Exploring the method of participant observation within housing research.

•   Analysis of housing and neighbourhood typologies in relation to densities (floor areas ratios) and urban lifestyles in low-income countries.

 

Special assignments

1987-  

Secretary, then Co-chair of ARC•PEACE, International Architects Designers Planners for Social Responsibility (with consultative status in the UN).

1989-92

Secretary of the Nordic Association for Architectural Research.

1990-

Member of the Board of Editors of the journal Open House International

1996-2000 

 Member of the Board of the International Association for People-Environ­ment Studies (IAPS), network co-ordinator.

1997-2004          

      Chairman of the international Master Programme Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Infrastructure given at KTH, Stockholm.

1998-  

Co-ordinator of a Sida-sponsored research co-operation programme between the University College of Lands and Architectural Studies (UCLAS), Dar es Salaam, and Swedish academic institutions.

2001-     

Co-ordinator of a Sida-sponsored research co-operation programme between the Faculty of Technology, Makerere University College, Kampala, and Swedish academic institutions.

2003-     

 

 

Chair of the Steering Comittee of the Baltic University Urban Forum (imple­menting sustainable strategies in city development 2003-2006).

 

Selected list of publications

•                 Kollektivhus från enkökshus till bogemenskap (Collective housing from one-kitchen houses to communal living),  The Swedish Building Research Council T28:1982.

•   Den nya generationen kollektivhus - förvaltning, social integration och utformning (The new generation of collective housing - administration, social integration and design), Stockholm: Byggforskningsrådet T16:1989 (with Alison Woodward and Maj-Britt Grossman).

•   "The Study of Collective Housing. A Swedish Perspective", in Arias, E (ed): The Meaning and Use of Housing: International Perspectives, Approaches and Their Applications,  Avebury 1992.

•   "From Central Kitchen to Community Cooperation - Development of Collective Housing in Sweden", in Open House International Vol 17, No 2 (1992).

•   Fem självbyggda kollektivvillor i Stockholm ("Five self-built cohousing projects in Stock­holm”), Dept. of Building Function Analysis, KTH Report 1:1995 (with Rolf Johansson).

•   "Collective Housing in Scandinavia - How Feminism Revised a Modernist Experiment", in Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Vol 14, No 4 (Winter 1997).

•   “People-Environment Studies - with or without Modernism? Lessons from Swedish Expe­riences”, paper for the IAPS 15 Conference Shifting Balances, Changing Roles in Policy, Research and Design, Eindhoven 11-15 July 1998.

•   How should the Post-Apartheid City be Planned? (together with a group of students), Div. of Built Environment Analysis, KTH, 1999.

•   “From Collective Housing to Cohousing – A Summary of Research”, the Journal of Archi­tectural and Planning Research, Vol 17, No2 (Summer, 2000).

•   The role of design and planning professionals for solving the global housing problem, Report from a Workshop at the Conference ‘Challenges for Science and Engineering in the 21st Century’, organised by the International Network for Engineers and Scientists (INES), Stockholm, 14-18 June 2000, ARC•PEACE International Architects Designers Planners for Social Responsibility (editor and author of one chapter).

•     Architecture as Politics. The Role of Design and Planning for Peace and Sustainable Deve­lopment, ARC•PEACE International Architects Designers Planners for Social Responsibility in collaboration with the Div. of Urban Studies/Built Environment Analysis, The Royal Insti­tute of Technology, Stockholm, 2002 (editor and author of two chapters).

•   “Modernism as a Tool for Development”, in Open House International, Vol 28, No 3, 2003 (with Barnabas Nawangwe).

•   “Saving by Sharing. Collective Housing for Sustainable Lifestyles”, paper presented at the IAPS 18 conference Evaluation in Progress, Vienna, July 7-10, 2004.

•   “Participant Observation – a Method for Inside Views”, in Vestbro Hürol & Wilkinson (eds): Methodologies in Housing Research, The Urban International Press (2005).

•   Methodologies in Housing Research, The Urban International Press, 2005 (editor with Yonca Hürol and Nicholas Wilkinson).

•   “Conflicting perspectives in the development of Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm”, http://www.infra.kth.se/bba/ (pdf).