page_title: Roger Katan
section_title: Architect and Advocate Planner (United States, 1960-76)
hierarchical_section_title: Roger Katan / Architect and Advocate Planner (United States, 1960-76)
caption_attribution_description: English: Roger Katan, Proposal for the Boston Waterfront (maquette), 1961. Won the first prize in the Boston Waterfront competition and was shown at Faneuil Hall. It included two thousand housing units, professional and commercial spaces, as well as parking. The design was inspired by Honfleur, a seaport in Normandy. Français&#160;: Roger Katan, proposition pour les quais de Boston (maquette), 1961. Premier prix du concours, ce travail a été exposé au Faneuil Hall. Inspiré par le port de Honfleur, le projet mettait en œuvre 2000 logements, des bureaux, des espaces commerciaux et des lieux de stationnement.
context_page_description: Roger G. Katan is a French-American architect, planner, sculptor, and activist born in Berguent, Eastern Morocco, on January 5, 1931. Based in the United States in the early 1960s, he was an active founder of advocacy planning, participatory democracy applied to urban planning. As a kinetic artist, he collaborated and exhibited with rising figures of postmodern art. After 1975, Katan became involved in humanitarian relief and continued to encourage participatory practices and self-management. His method favors traditional, sustainable agriculture and construction. In 1999 he moved to Sauve, southern France, where he resumed work on kinetic sculpture and publications.
context_section_description: Dore Ashton wrote in her cultural guidebook about New York:
  "Some of the advocacy planners, such as Roger Katan, insist that the architect can function only if he is prepared to extend himself to activities which were previously considered beyond his realm of competence. Katan's attitude is a long way from the aristocratic distance of a Richardson, whose clients took his word for law, and were always rich. Katan's clients are the community as a whole; they are mostly the very poor in the ghettoes of Harlem, and they share with him the planner's task. . . . By helping them to organize themselves and state their needs coherently, Katan is able to develop plans which make sense. He also recognizes the necessity of learning the intricacies of city bureaucracy, and how to deal with the political aspects of each citizen's existence. Over the years—he has lived in East Harlem for some seven years—Katan has slowly developed a number of alternative plans for rehabilitation and rebuilding in his neighbourhood."
  1955-1960 : Worked on various projects for architectural firms in France and Africa, including:
  Hospital and city hall of Saint-Lô, Normandy, destroyed by WWII bombing,
  Collège St Joseph, Dordogne, France,
  Housing competitions in Paris,
  Study for 2 dams on the Rhine river,
  French military base in Niamey, Niger (housing, restaurant, amphitheater, and hospital),
  Won competition for 3000 dwelling units with community and health facilities for US Army bases in France,
  Study for 100 social housing units in Bir Mourad Raïs (formerly Birmandreis), near Algiers,
  Optical store in Toulouse, France,
  Duplex dry-cleaning center in Paris,
  Villa Lehalle, Paradou, Algiers (1959),
  Huet residence, Toulon, France,
  2-family residence project in Toulouse, France.
  1961: First prize of the Boston waterfront competition. This project was part of his master's degree at MIT. It was shown at the Faneuil Hall. It was originally inspired by Honfleur, Normandy, where each house overlooks the harbor. In the Boston project for 2000 housing units, stepped terraces planted with greenery offered each family a view of the harbor. Families could choose their surface and develop it according to their income.
  1962-1964: Works for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, PA. Introduced by Prof. Lawrence B. Anderson, Katan worked for Louis Kahn's studio for two years and taught architecture and planning at Pratt Institute once a week. Katan occasionally assisted Louis Kahn during his weekly graduate seminars at the University of Pennsylvania. Participated or was in charge of:
  Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California,
  Master plan for Center City, Philadelphia, and Dhaka, Bangladesh,
  Presidential palace in Islamabad, Pakistan,
  Science Research Building, University of Virginia,
  Center for Performing Arts, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
  1965: Project for a medical cooperative in Antony (Berny), France, near Paris. Practice and housing facilities for 8 doctors and 2 interns.
  1964-1976: Director of Environmental Resource Associates (356 East 116th Street, East Harlem, New York City), one of the first Community Design Centers. Katan left Philadelphia and moved to East Harlem, where he started working on the creation of a community center and housing project for senior citizens. He put his talent in the service of the poorest, got involved in the civil rights movement, the student struggle for greater social responsibility, advocating the active participation of residents.
  1964-1968: Brooklyn Bridge and East Harlem Triangle Gateways. Proposal for a system of gateways to connect Manhattan bridges and tunnels. Traffic flows were analyzed for better distribution. New pedestrian and leisure spaces were designed. Specific studies for Brooklyn Bridge and 3 bridges of the East Harlem Triangle were published in the form of 2 brochures (32 and 38 pages respectively), financed by the Kaplan Fund, Inc.
  Milbank renewal project: A counterproposal by residents against the City's project. Publication of a 20-page brochure presented to the City of New York.
  116th Street renewal project: A stu
caption: Katan's first prize-winning proposal for the Boston waterfront (maquette), 1961.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "640", "Image ImageLength": "478", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:01:10 18:50:08", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9943", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "632", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "478"}