David Gouverneur

Biography

B.Arch., Universidad Simón Bolívar
M.Arch. in Urban Design, Harvard University

David Gouverneur received his M.Arch. in Urban Design from Harvard University (1980) and his bachelor's degree in Architecture from the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (1977). He was Chair of the School of Architecture at Universidad Simón Bolívar (1987-91), as well as a professor in the school's departments of Architecture and City and Regional Planning from 1980 to 2008. From 1991 to 1994 he was the Director, and from 1995 to 1996 the Adjunct Secretary of Urban Development of Venezuela. He was cofounder and professor of the Urban Design program and Director of the Mayor's Institute in Urban Design at Universidad Metropolitana, created with the support of Harvard University, in Caracas, Venezuela (1996-2008). He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania since 2002 as a visiting lecturer in The Department of Landscape Architecture from 2002 to 2010 and in the Department of City and Regional Planning from 2009 to 2010. He has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture since 2010.

His professional practice focuses on urban plans and projects for historic districts, the rehabilitation of areas affected by extraordinary natural events, new centralities and mixed use districts, improvement of informal settlements, and tourism/recreational areas. He has lectured and written articles particularly in Latin-America for over 3 decades, motivating academics, professionals, and notably the general public to engage collectively in important issues affecting the urban arena. His current area of research focuses on the notion of Informal Armatures. These may be considered a powerful tool to foster the sustainable growth of informal settlements, as the dominant form of territorial occupation in the developing world. The goal is to allow them to perform a la par and surpass the vitality, economic drive and environmental qualities of conventional forms of urbanization.

Students working under his supervision have won various awards since he has been at Penn including the Urban Land Institute Competition (ULI winner, a runner-up and several honorable mentions), a winner of the 2008 Edmund Bacon Foundation competition, and numerous student awards granted by the ASLA.

He received a G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2008.