Anne-Marie Lubenau

Lecturer in Urban Planning

Anne-Marie Lubenau is an architect, urbanist, and educator dedicated to increasing understanding of design of the built environment and its impact on our lives. She has more than three decades of experience—working in academic, municipal, nonprofit, and private sector settings—leading organizations, programs, and projects that engage people and communities in urban design and planning to foster more beautiful, equitable, and resilient cities.

Anne-Marie is a Lecturer in Urban Design and Planning at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she teaches studios and seminars that introduce students to the principles and practices of urban design and planning. As an independent consultant, she advises clients and develops strategies for local and national arts, culture, and design-related programs and initiatives.

Anne-Marie was the Director of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence at the Bruner Foundation. For more than a decade, she oversaw the national design award program that promoted innovative thinking and exchange about urban design by investigating, documenting, and sharing the stories of transformative places that contribute to the economic, environmental, and social vitality of American cities. Anne-Marie increased the visibility and reach of the program and its resources through collaborative events, educational programs, research, and writing in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners, Harvard, Northeastern University, and Metropolis magazine.

Prior to joining the Bruner Foundation, Anne-Marie was President and CEO of the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh. During her decade-long tenure, she led the nonprofit organization’s growth into a valued resource and advocate for design in the Pittsburgh region. The organization launched the Design Excellence Lecture Series and became a national and international model for community design practice. Anne-Marie was a founding member and chair of the Pittsburgh Civic Design Coalition and an inaugural member of the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning’s Contextual Design Advisory Panel.

In private practice, Anne-Marie designed award-winning affordable and supportive housing, historic preservation, and adaptive reuse studies and projects for architecture and planning firms in Maryland and Pennsylvania including Perkins Eastman. Her work has been recognized by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and exhibited in the National Building Museum.

Anne-Marie has developed and taught educational curricula on architecture and planning for K-12, university, and adult learners. In addition to Harvard, she has been an instructor at Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh, and a guest critic and presenter at Boston Architectural College, Columbia University, MIT, Northeastern University, NYU, The New School, Universita Ca’ Foscari in Venice, and Yale. She curated and co-hosted Inspiring Design: Creating Beautiful, Just, and Resilient Places in America, a 14-week speaker series for Northeastern University’s 2021 Open Classroom.

Anne-Marie contributes to local, national, and international forums on design and urban development. She has written articles for Metropolis and Building Design + Construction and essays for Boston Idea City: How to Make Boston More Livable, Equitable, and Resilient and Extreme Urbanism: Speculations and Alternative Futures for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Anne-Marie has presented at conferences and events hosted by the Association for Community Design, Association of Architecture Organizations, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, American Institute of Architects, American Planning Association, International Downtown Association, and Urban Land InstituteShe serves on the Boston Civic Design Commission, Association of Architecture Organizations board of directors, and Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Council.

Anne-Marie holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Carnegie Mellon and was a 2012 Harvard Loeb Fellow. She is a registered architect in Pennsylvania.