An internationally known planner and city designer, John Lund Kriken founded the Planning and Urban Design Studio of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s San Francisco office. He is known for his work on large-scale commissions designing large districts within cities, high-density inner cities, entirely new cities and plans for the conservation and development of open land. His Saigon South project for the expansion of Ho Chi Minh city won both an Urban Design Award from Progressive Architecture and a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. Both his Shanghai and Hong Kong Waterfront plans won National Honor Awards from the AIA in the year 2000.
Mr. Kriken received a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from University of California Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. He has authored a number of articles and book chapters including “The Design for Arid Regions” for Gideon Golany’s Town Planning and Cultural and Climate Responsiveness and the “Urban Design” chapter for the International City Managers Association and the American Planning Association’s The Practice of Local Government Planning. He recently published City Building: Nine Planning Principles for the Twenty-First Century, a book with Philip Enquist and Richard Rapaport, and in 2013, it was republished in Chinese. In 2012, John earned an Award for Global Excellence from the international Urban Land Institute for Saigon South which is for the expansion of HCM City Vietnam for one million people. In 2013, John earned a National AIA Urban Design Award for an Experimental Agricultural Village near the City of Jiaxing,China.