The Board of Directors and staff of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization that uses the power of design and art to increase the quality of public participation in urban planning and community design, are delighted to announce the appointment of Christine Cerqueira Gaspar as its new Executive Director, effective September 1, 2009.
Christine has worked in the fields of architecture, planning, community design, and education for more than a decade, on projects that range from architectural design to mapping and spatial analysis to disaster recovery planning.
Throughout, she has focused on fostering community participation, understanding, and action around issues of the built environment.
Most recently, Christine was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, a nonprofit organization that provides architectural design and community planning services to low-income communities recovering from Hurricane Katrina along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Christine has led architecture and urbanism studios with graduate, undergraduate, and high school students at MIT, Boston Architectural College, Mississippi State University, and Lawrence Community Works.
As Executive Director, Christine is excited to take CUP forward and expand the organization's initiatives in community and youth education.
She hopes to address issues of urban ecology in New York, and to more actively engage the field of community design in CUP's work.