Dennis Frenchman is the Leventhal Professor of Urban Design and Planning at MIT, where he is Associate Dean and chair of the Masters in City Planning program. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Real Estate. He has taught and practiced extensively in Asia, Europe, and South America and served as External Advisor on urban livability to the President of the World Bank.
Frenchman is a registered architect, and founding principal of ICON architecture in Boston an international architecture and urban design firm. Dennis Frenchman’s practice and research focuses on the transformation of cities. He is an expert on the application of digital technology to city design and has designed large-scale media oriented cities and industrial clusters including Seoul Digital Media City in Korea, the Digital Mile in Zaragoza, Spain, Media City: UK in Salford, England, Twofour54 in Abu Dhabi, and Ciudad Creativa Digital, Guadalajara, Mexico. He has a particular interest in the redevelopment of industrial sites and has prepared plans for the renewal of textile mill towns, canals, rail corridors, steels mills, coal and oil fields, shipyards and ports, including many of international cultural significance.
Currently he is leading an MIT research effort to develop new models for clean energy urbanization in China, sponsored by the Energy Foundation. He is the author of articles and books on advanced urban design, including Technological Imagination and the Historic City (2008, Ligouri, with William J. Mitchell, et al). His work has been widely recognized including awards from Progressive Architecture, the American Institute of Architects, and three citations from the American Planning Association for the most outstanding projects in the United States.