Madhu C. Dutta-Koehler

Faculty Associate
Associate Professor of Practice and Director, City Planning and Urban Affairs
duttam@bu.edu
617-353-3025

Education

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Expertise

Climate Change; Sustainable Development; Urban Planning; Urban Design; Planning in South Asian Mega Cities

Biography

Madhu C. Dutta-Koehler has over fifteen years of experience as an educator, researcher, and practitioner in the fields of urban planning, urban design and architecture. Her current scholarship focuses on climate change adaptation in urban South Asia and sustainability in the built environment. She has previously explored topics ranging from Colonial-era urban planning in India and modern-day U.S. “company towns,” to the hybridized and virtual milieus in the “new frontiers” of digital architecture.

Dutta-Koehler has her own international architectural practice specializing in residential design. In addition to her experience in India’s Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), among others, she has also worked on various international design competitions and projects during her career. Her architectural designs and planning solutions have won awards from the Building and Social Housing Foundation (World Habitat Award), Indian Institute of Architects, American Institute of Architects, and U.S. Department of Energy, among others.

Dutta-Koehler has also held tenure- track academic appointments at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. She has also been an adjunct professor at MET since 2006, and received the Dean’s Citation for Teaching Excellence in 2011. Her teaching reflects a praxis-oriented pedagogy, through which she challenges students to apply classroom lessons to real-world issues in socio-cultural, economic, physical, and political contexts. She moreover draws upon two decades of eclectic artistic pursuits, including photography, graphic arts, and Indian classical dance, to inform her design sensibility.