Damon Rich

Damon Rich is a designer, planner, and partner at Hector, an urban design, planning, and civic arts studio. From 2008 to 2015, he served as the planning director and chief urban designer for the City of Newark, NJ, where he led design and planning efforts with public and private actors to improve the city’s shared spaces. His achievements in Newark included completing the city's first riverfront park, launching the Newark Public Art Program, and drafting the first comprehensive update to the city's zoning regulations in over 50 years. His design work represented the US at the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture, and has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Netherlands Architecture Institute. In 1997, Rich founded the Center for Urban Pedagogy, a nonprofit organization that uses design and art to increase civic engagement. Rich served as an LOI panelist in Exhibitions & Public Interpretation in 2017.