Christopher Calott, AIA
Over three decades, Christopher Calott, AIA, has been committed to building communities and creating projects that make cities more beautiful and inclusive. An award-winning architect, urban designer, real estate developer, and academic, he brings a uniquely interdisciplinary practice, collaborating with design-focused people, communities, and enterprises.
He is the inaugural Lalanne Chair in Real Estate Development, Architecture & Urbanism at UC Berkeley (2015-19), and founding Faculty Director of the Master of Real Estate Development + Design Program, which he launched in 2018. He has also served as the Chair of Berkeley's Master of Urban Design Program, where he continues to instruct on urban design practice, theory, and large-scale urban redevelopment. Before Berkeley, Calott directed the Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development Program at Tulane University, working in post-Katrina New Orleans. He has pursued research in urbanism, housing, informal settlements, and social infrastructure through invited academic appointments across the United States, Mexico, Latin America, and Italy, where he is now a Visiting Professor at Sapienza University of Rome. Recently, he was an Affiliated Artist and Scholar in residence at the American Academy in Rome, researching 20th-century Roman social housing and urbanism, where he completed the manuscript for his book: The Casa in Linea and the Evolution of Social Housing in Rome: 1903–1982.
Calott's current professional practice involves consulting with real estate developers and municipalities on strategies that create more vibrant, resilient communities. He has organized large master plan competitions with many of the world’s leading architecture and urban design firms, helping developers realize their design and community goals. Over 11 years consulting with Sand Hill Property Company, he has helped design and entitle a 3.5-acre, 550-unit mixed-income infill housing development under construction; two separate 15-acre, 1,071-unit and 13-acre, 805-unit redevelopment master plans, with 30% affordable units and no displacement; and a new 6-acre mixed-use Town Center — all in the majority-minority community of East Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In the Washington, DC area, he has advised a minority-owned affordable housing developer on site acquisition and design, and a private developer on redeveloping a riverfront resort in Virginia’s nearby Shenandoah Valley. As a consultant for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, Calott has advised the mayors of Fresno and Santa Ana, California, and Rochester, New York, on urban redevelopment, and recently supported Portland Parks and Recreation in a design workshop and competition for the redevelopment of downtown Portland’s derelict O’Bryant Square. Presently, he is guiding a design competition process for a Nashville development consortium working on several residential infill sites, engaging a number of nationally renowned architects.
Formerly, he was a founding principal of CALOTT + GIFFORD Architecture / Urban Design, and founding partner of the real estate development firm INFILL SOLUTIONS: Innovative Urban Design and Development, based in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. For over 15 years, his two firms worked together on innovative mixed-use infill developments, affordable housing, historic adaptive reuse projects, and vibrant public community spaces, earning more than 65 regional and national design awards. Calott began his career as a lead project designer in Antoine Predock Architect's Albuquerque office, leading the design of several international competition-winning projects, including the Classroom, Laboratory, and Administrative complex at Cal Poly Pomona, the U.S. World’s Fair Pavilion in Seville, Spain, and the Palm Bay New Town & Convention Center for the King of Morocco in Agadir. He later established and led Antoine Predock's Los Angeles office, completing projects on several University of California campuses, for the Disney Development Company in Orlando and Paris, and the City of Thousand Oaks Civic Center.
Calott is regularly called on for his practical expertise in housing, urban design, and redevelopment, notably as a frequent Urban Land Institute (ULI) Advisory Services Specialist. In recent years, he has served on ULI panels providing recovery and resilience strategies for the municipality of Toa Baja in post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico; prepared a report for Sonoma County, California, assessing land use, development, and local energy grid strategies amid rising wildfire risk; and supported infill residential density efforts in Washington, D.C.'s suburbs. He also joined the ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative's national task force guiding new federal infrastructure spending, and has served three times on a Technical Resource Team for the National Mayors' Institute on City Design. He helped the Mayor’s Institute pilot a new Alumni Assistance and Advising Program that helps mayors nationwide address complex urban challenges. And, he has long devoted his time and expertise to nonprofit boards addressing affordable housing, youth empowerment, and local planning and governance in New Mexico and the Bay Area.
Calott received a BA with Honors in Urban Theory & Design from Brown University, and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University. He was awarded a mid-career Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, in recognition of his design and development practice in service of building communities, and was recently elected to the Loeb Fellowship Alumni Council.
ARCH 209/RDEV 290: Architect Developer: Small-Scale Real Estate Development Design Seminar
Loeb Fellowship, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design
Sonoma County, California: Wildfire, Energy, and Economic Resilience, ULI Advisory Services Panel Report, published by Urban Land Institute, Washington, DC, 2021.
Toa Baja, Puerto Rico: Building Physical, Economic, and Social Resilience, ULI Advisory Services Panel Report, published by Urban Land Institute, Washington, DC, 2019.
"Lower 9 Vision Coalition Community Plan", published by the Tulane City Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, Spring, 2014.
"Housing as a Form of Non-formal Urbanism in Mumbai" published in Extreme Urbanism II, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013.
"Return to Common Ground: New and Revitalized Plazas in New Mexico," published in The Plazas of New Mexico, Trinity Press, San Antonio, 2012.
The Pacheco Street Lofts Infill Development, published in ULI Development Case Studies, Urban Land Institute, Washington, D.C., 2009.
"Urban Interlopers," published in Metropolis, March, 2008.
"Unexpected Opportunities of an Urbanist Practice," published in Professional Practice 101: Business Strategies and Case Studies in Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2006.
"FRONTERA / BORDER, 7th Concurso Internacional ARQUINE: A Border Crossing at Anapra, Ciudad Juarez –Sunland Park, New Mexico," published in ARQUINE: Revista Internacioanal de Arquitectura, Mexico City, 2005.
