Shannon Bassett
Shannon Bassett is currently Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the USF School of Architecture and Community Design. There she has taught both advanced and beginning design studios, in addition to developing and teaching the Introduction to Urban and Community Design Core course, as well as the elective, Architecture and Urbanism in Modern China that she has taught both in Tampa and in Beijing.
She holds a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and a Bachelors of Architecture with Distinction from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. While at Harvard, she participated on a number of design studios, including the re-design of Martyrs Square in Lebanon, Beirut, sponsored by the Aga Khan, and most recently, prior to Hurricane Katrina, an urban design studio in New Orleans, LA. Her research and analysis on dynamic topographies linked to land uses, levee defensive strategies, as well as a design intervention for the waterfront is featured in the subsequent studio publication, New Orleans: Strategies for a City in Soft Land edited by Joan Busquets, c. 2005. While at Harvard, she was also a research assistant for the Center for Urban Development Studies, assisting with the preparation of the Chapter on Financing Urban Shelter in the 2005 United Nations Global Report.
Bassett has a research interest in cultural and regional landscapes and dynamic topographies and how they interface with urbanism. Her work intersects with the theoretical exploration of alternative methods and practices in designing and reading the city. Recent publications include an article for Canadian Architect exploring the remediation of a post-industrial brown field site of a former paper mill in Ottawa Canada and its possible remediation and retooling into a post-industrial economic engine and important cultural landscape for the nation’s capital. She has lectured internationally including in Beijing, China in the fall of 2006 at the International Forum on Sustainable Urbanism Conference (IFoU) organized by the Berlage (Rotterdam) and the Technical University of Delft, held at the Tsinghua University School of Architecture. Before coming to USF, she both taught and practiced architecture in Cambridge/Boston, Massachusetts for 9 years. She was the faculty advisor during the Summer 2008 for the China Summer Service Learning program, leading a group of USF students to China where they participated on an Alleviation Poverty program in rural China, in collaboration with 13 other American Universities and students from Beijing’s Tsinghua University funded by the Wang Foundation. This summer she will lead a group of architecture students to China again where they will participate in the design for the post-Olympic city in collaboration with Crossboundaries architects in Beijing who is working with the Royal Inst. of British Architects (RIBA) to mount a traveling world exhibit on this theme. She is currently researching and writing an article for Topos, The International Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design exploring the changing landscape and possible reconstruction Strategies for the area in Sichuan province that was devastated by last May’s earthquake there.