Richard Plunz

Richard Plunz is an American architect, critic, and historian. He is Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in the City of New York and the Founder and Director of the Urban Design Lab, a research unit of Columbia's Earth Institute, where he also serves as professor.

Education and career
Plunz studied architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he earned B.S. in engineering, B.Arch, and M.Arch degrees. There, and at Pennsylvania State University, he researched urban history and development and began developing field techniques related to the anthropology of building and people's relationship to the built environment.

He has been at Columbia since 1973, and served as Chair of the Division of Architecture and Director of the post-professional Urban Design Program from 1992 to 2015. Plunz has also held visiting professor positions at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Flanders, and Polytechnic University of Turin, in Italy.

Research and publications
Plunz has pursued research related to housing, urban history, anthropology, urban parametrics, and design. During the 1970s, he undertook anthropological field research in a series of major studies using digitized environmental modeling to help understand the divergent urban contexts of Mantua, in West Philadelphia, the frazione of San Leucio in Southern Italy, and in the Adirondack High Peaks region in New York State.

Other significant work includes a 40-year study in Turgutreis, Turkey, which documented the transformation of small villages into a modern city through the experiences of 15 families, and a Millennium Cities Initiative-developed strategic analysis of Accra, Ghana's Ga Mashie and Nima neighborhoods.

His A History of Housing in New York City tracks the city's housing developments from 1850 and was published in 1992, and republished in 2016 with new research and an introduction by urban historian Kenneth T. Jackson. Urban planner Peter Marcuse wrote of the book in a 1992 review, “For its wealth of information and description, for its humane perspective, and for the illumination it provides on the role of architecture in the shaping of housing in New York City over the decades, this is a most valuable book.”

Awards
Plunz received the Andrew J Thomas Award from the American Institute of Architects for his pioneering work in housing.