For more than three decades, the Yale School of Architecture’s award-winning Urban Design Workshop has used design to bring together communities around constructive, shared visions for the futures of their neighborhoods and towns. Part design atelier and part think tank, at the Workshop, faculty, students, and fellows collaborate on projects with community-based clients, bringing a unique combination of tools and methods to their work including engagement, collaboration, research, design, visualization, and storytelling.
The Workshop has both led and supported a variety of project types, from comprehensive plans, economic development strategies, and community visions, to the design of public spaces, streetscapes and individual community buildings. Clients for these projects have included small towns, city neighborhoods, planning and economic development departments, Chambers of Commerce, community development corporations, citizen groups, private developers, and other groups.
In all its work, the Urban Design Workshop is committed to inclusive, community-based processes, grounded in broad citizen participation and a vision of design as a tool for community organizing, empowerment, and capacity-building. Typical projects include design charrettes, focus groups and town meetings, as well as more conventional means of program and project development.
The Workshop maintains a 2,000 SF off-campus design studio on Chapel Street in New Haven’s Dwight neighborhood, two blocks from the School of Architecture, which includes meeting space, archives, a library and map collection, and workstations. Projects are staffed there by professional students of the School of Architecture supervised by faculty of the School, and sometimes include students and faculty from other Yale departments and professional schools, including most recently, Law, Management, Art, and Public Health. Students receive advanced training and mentorship through their participation in Workshop projects, extending their education, while contributing their new skills and knowledge to local communities. Some projects include collaborations with outside consultants and other local professionals.
The Workshop has collaborated on projects in 31 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities—many of these more than once. Through deep engagement with the local and regional landscape, its challenges and opportunities, the Workshop has developed special areas of expertise and interest which often overlap in projects. These include regeneration of post-industrial towns and cities, climate resilience and adaptation, neighborhood planning, public space, heritage and identity, community facilities, affordable housing, and visualization, representation and storytelling.
In 2024, the Yale Urban Design Workshop was recognized with a Special Chapter Award by the Connecticut Chapter of the American Planning Association for contributions to planning in Connecticut. In 2024, Workshop faculty also received the national Housing Design Education Award from the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for the affordable housing clinic organized through the Yale Urban Design Workshop, Housing Connecticut.
