I am a founding partner in a small consultancy specialized in urban transportation planning, focusing on combining public transit with walking and cycling. I grew up in the United States and lived in Portland, Oregon before I moved to France in 2004. I was always fascinated with foreign languages, and it was important to me to speak more than one so I went to Lyon on a university exchange. The next year I moved to Paris, where I did my master's degree in urban planning, and I have been living mostly in France for the last thirteen years.

Interests

I'm very interested in architecture and urban form, particularly in residential and vernacular architecture, art deco, art nouveau, and the modern movement. I enjoy foreign languages from both the practical speaking and linguistics points of view. I appreciate good food made with fresh ingredients, home-cooked, home-grown, in a restaurant or on the street. My favorites include southeast Asian cooking and Turkish breakfast. I'd say I am attracted to pursuits that require a synthesis of intuition or emotion with technical mastery. I enjoy walking or hiking around cities and mountains to perceive the landscape from all angles. This approach also applies to the human experience, which can be seen from many different cultural angles. I try to take any opportunity to travel or live in a new place.

• arts
• architecture
• photography
• cooking
• music
• hiking
• anthropology
• cinema
• learning languages
• urbanism

Music, Movies, and Books

I love all sorts of music! Extracting from some playlists: The Heliocentrics, Can, Deepchord, Astor Piazzolla, Bartók, Tim Hecker, Morton Feldman, Gerard Grisey, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Miles Davis (especially early electric era), Charles Lloyd, Herbie Hancock, Samba, bossa nova, west African percussion, dub and minimal techno, new wave and electropop, Indian and Indonesian classical music and Jaipongan, Sonic Youth and Hendrix.

In film, I lean toward documentary and formal/visual or mystical pieces. Michelangelo Antonioni (Deserto Rosso), Tarkovsky, some Wenders (Falsche Bewegung), Buffet Froid, Koyaanisqatsi, some Jarmusch.

Books in no particular order: Christopher Alexander (A Pattern Language), Nathalie Sarraute, Susan Sontag (on photography), Baudelaire (Les fleurs du mal), Baudrillard (Amérique), Heinrich Boell, Ivan Illich, anthropology and architectural theory.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Coasting down from Hai Van pass into Da Nang at sunset on a Minsk. I am a fan of long-distance overland travel and besides crisscrossing Europe, I have gone from Saigon to Hanoi, Bali to Bandung, Sapporo to Nara, and Hong Kong to Harbin by rail.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Belgium, France, Hong Kong, United States

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