Mostafavi, Moshen

Mohsen Mostafavi was born in Isfahan and went to a UK boarding school on the Isle of Wight at the age of 6. He studied at the Architectural Association and later became Chairman of the AA and an instigator of  the MA Landscape Urbanism programme. Then he became Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design HSGD.  His books include Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (AA Publications, 2003) and Ecological Urbanism (Lars Müller Publishers 2010). See comment on Ecological urbanism.

The videos below are an introduction to Ecological Urbanism and a lecture to the Brookings Institue.

In the below video, Mostafavi as follows on the landscape planning of London's 2012 Olympic Park: 'And when we see the final results, it’s important to note that the outcome of these results is still very much rooted in certain traditions of modernist planning. In other words, the concept open space, of green, of residential buildings and things like that, it’s a very specific lineage of urban design that we are the inheritors of.' As an example of ecological urbanism Mostafavi shows a 2007 Gardenvisit image of New York as it should be: rich in roof gardens, parks and pools.