Roger Sherman

Roger Sherman, AIA is senior project director of urban strategy at Gensler Los Angeles. Previously, he was founder of Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design in Culver City, California. From 2006 to 2015, Sherman was co-director, with Dana Cuff, of cityLAB, an urban design think tank at UCLA, where he is an adjunct professor. A graduate with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Roger Sherman has taught and lectured widely, including at New York’s MoMA and TEDx.

Roger Sherman’s work has been featured in Newsweek and Fast Company and on CNN and the History Channel. It has also been exhibited at many prominent international venues, including the 2009, 2010 and 2016 Rotterdam and Venice (IT) Biennales (for the design of the new town of Providencia, in the Ecuadorian Amazon; Playa Rosa, a public/private community-based development in South LA; and Thinking Outside the Big Box, an urban infill cum community investment strategy for Target); and at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Flex-Deck-Spec House, 2007). Award-winning larger-scale urban planning work includes RePark, an end-use plan for FreshKills Landfill (Staten Island, NY); UP THE BLOC, the re-purposing of a downtown LA parking structure; and Chia Mesa, the re-purposing of a Scottsdale, AZ strip mall. Since joining Gensler, Sherman has been at work on a new infrastructure and urban development plan for: northern Haiti; a digitally-driven signage and public space installation for the Sunset Strip (West Hollywood); and HYPO-PARK, a high density model of public recreation space for underserved communities in LA.

Sherman is author of several books, including LA Under the Influence: the Hidden Logic of Urban Property, RE American Dream, and most recently, Fast Forward Urbanism, with Dana Cuff. Roger Sherman serves on the board of Zocalo Public Square, and is a past board member of: AIA/LA; Livable Places, a non-profit affordable housing developer; and the Westside Urban Forum.