RIchard Bender, M.Arch, B.C.E. Civil Engineering, is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture and former Dean of the College of Environmental Design.
Professor Bender is an architect, civil engineer and planner with a practice specializing in urban and community planning, town planning, campus planning and the planning and replanning of obsolete and damaged industrial and waste sites. He has been involved in the planning of new towns and large-scale urban development projects around the world.
Professor Bender serves as the director of the Urban Construction Laboratory at Berkeley, and is the Visiting “GC-5” Professor of Urban Design and Construction at Tokyo University and Honorary Professor at the Universit Europeene de Maitrise D’’Oeuvre Urbaine in Cergy-Pontoise, France. As the organizer and first chair of the City Planning Commission’’s Architectural Review Panel, he was involved in the “Downtown Plan” for San Francisco. Professor Bender was a founding director of the non-profit Bridge Housing Corporation.
Professor Bender was honored in 2012 with the creation of the Richard Bender Fellowship at CED. The Fellowship, established by an anonymous donor, will be used to support a dual-degree graduate student in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Department of Architecture, who focuses on the design of affordable housing in livable communities.