Miho Mazereeuw is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism in the Department of Architecture at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

where she also directs the Urban Risk Lab. Mazereeuw is most known for her work in

disaster risk reduction Disaster risk reduction (DRR) sometimes called disaster risk management (DRM) is a systematic approach to identifying, assessing and reducing the risks of disaster. It aims to reduce socio-economic vulnerabilities to disaster as well as dealing w ...

Early life and education

Mazereeuw, who is part Dutch and part Japanese, grew up in Malaysia, South Korea, and Singapore. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture and Environmental Science from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

. While in college in 1995, she visited

Kobe, Japan Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, which ...

where her parents had recently moved after the

Great Hanshin Earthquake The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had ...

. She then earned her Master in Architecture and Landscape Architecture from the

Harvard Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...

(GSD). For her thesis, Mazereeuw designed an emergency infrastructure system as part of a subway station design, akin to the Urban Risk Lab's PrepHub project. Much of her research interest centers on coastal areas in the Pacific Rim of Fire.

Work

Mazereeuw's experience in design practice include working in the offices of

Shigeru Ban Biography
, The Hyatt Foundation, retrieved 26 March 2014 is a Japanese architect, known for his i ...

and

Dan Kiley Daniel Urban Kiley (2 September 1912 – 21 February 2004) was an American landscape architect, who worked in the style of modern architecture. Kiley designed over one-thousand landscape projects including Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis ...

as well as an associate position at the

Office for Metropolitan Architecture The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international architectural firm with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. The firm is currently led by eight partners - Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van ...

. Before joining MIT, she taught at Harvard's GSD and the University of Toronto. As the director of MIT's Urban Risk Lab, she leads multiple regional, national and international scale projects focusing on questions of resilience, design, and technology to improve disaster preparedness. The Urban Risk Lab's interdisciplinary work incorporates local communities, nonprofits, governments, educational institutions, and international corporations to develop "methods, prototypes and technologies to embed risk reduction and preparedness into the design of cities and regions to increase the resilience of local communities." Previous collaborations includes those with

FEMA The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Exec ...

USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...

Broward County, Florida Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...

, Tata Center,

Line Line most often refers to: * Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity * Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to: Arts ...

, Neighborhood Empowerment Network,

Singapore University of Technology and Design The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a public autonomous university in Singapore. History The founding president is Thomas L. Magnanti, who is a professor associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M ...

, and the Resichauer Institute of Japanese Studies at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. In 2016, the Urban Risk Lab was profiled in Fast Company for their partnership with San Francisco to create PrepHub, a pilot

urban resilience Urban resilience has conventionally been defined as the "measurable ability of any urban system, with its inhabitants, to maintain continuity through all shocks and stresses, while positively adapting and transforming towards sustainability". Ther ...

infrastructure project.

Projects

* Resilient San Francisco 2080 * PrepHub * Housing Pre-Planning Toolkit
Urban Risk Map

Awards

* Janet Darling Webel Prize, Harvard GSD * Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship in Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD * 2017 - LafargeHolcim Awards Acknowledgement Prize: Water Collective: Multifunctional Public Space in Thecho, Nepal * Wheelwright Prize 2006-2007, Harvard GSD

References

External links

Urban Risk Lab

PrepHub project

Neighborhood Empowerment Network

Resichauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mazereeuw, Miho Living people MIT School of Architecture and Planning faculty Architects from Connecticut Wesleyan University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Wheelwright Prize winners