Miho Mazereeuw

Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism; Director, Urban Risk Lab, MIT

Miho Mazereeuw is the MIT Climate Mission Director for Empowering Frontline Communities, an MIT-wide problem-solving community. Trained as an architect and landscape architect, she is an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT and is the associate head of Strategy and Equity in the department. Mazereeuw taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and worked in the offices of Shigeru Ban, Dan Kiley as well as the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam prior to joining the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her forthcoming book, Design Before Disaster: Japan's Culture of Preparedness, is being published by the University of Virginia Press in late 2025.

Mazereeuw also leads the Urban Risk Lab, which focuses on designing resilient cities that prepare for climate risks such as flooding, cyclones, and heat stress as well as seismic disasters. The multi-disciplinary team engages in action research through extensive field work and community workshops both locally and abroad to meet the needs of diverse cultures and contexts. The Urban Risk Lab aspires to change the course of current global development trends through a radical shift in education and action with the goal of increasing resilience and proactively embedding preparedness in this rapidly urbanizing world.