Joan Busquets (El Prat de Llobregat, Spain, 1946) is an architect, urban planner, and Professor of Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University, since 2002. He earned his degree in Architecture in 1969 and completed his doctorate at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB) in 1975, where he also served as a professor and co-founded the Laboratory of Urbanism of Barcelona (LUB). From 1979 to 2002, he was a visiting professor at international universities such as Urbino, Bouwcentrum, Leuven, Rome, Lausanne, Geneva, the AA in London, and Tsinghua.
In the 1980s, as coordinator of the Urban Planning Department of Barcelona, he was involved in planning the city for the 1992 Olympics and the New Areas of Centrality. Among other initiatives, railway infrastructure and the waterfront were major priorities, along with the improvement of neighborhoods and existing cultural facilities as urban subcenters, with particular emphasis on the revitalization of Barcelona’s Old City. In 2014, he led the initial phase of the update of the Urban Master Plan of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (PDU-AMB) as research director. The results were exhibited in Barcelona, Cambridge, Chicago, and Shanghai, and published in the exhibition catalogue and other publications.
Through his firm, BAU – B. Arquitectura i Urbanisme, founded in 1992, he has worked on the design and implementation of urban projects and planning strategies both in Spain and internationally. His work includes plans such as the «Special Plan for Toledo» (1995) and the PXOM and Port of A Coruña (2013); as well as urban projects across Europe in The Hague, Delft, Geneva, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Trento, Toulouse, or Avignon, among others; and around the world in Singapore, São Paulo, Shanghai, Ningbo, and Montreal.
Among the many national and international awards he has received are the Spanish National Urbanism Prize in 1981 (for the Master Plan of central Lleida) and 1985 (for the Improvement Plan for the Sant Josep neighborhood in Barcelona); the Toledo Foundation Prize in 1996; the European Gubbio Prize (Italy) in 2000; the Erasmus Prize 2011 (Netherlands), for «his contribution to the design of the public space of the city»; the Catalonia Culture Prize 2011 (CoNCA); and the Grand Prix Spécial de l'Urbanisme of Paris 2012 (France). He received the Patrick Abercrombie Prize 2021 from the International Union of Architects and, since 2016, has been a full member of the Académie d’Architecture of France.
His applied research on specific territories has been published in the GSD’s Case Study series, with studies on New Orleans, Lisbon, Manhattan, Chicago, Shanghai, Osaka, Rotterdam, Hangzhou, among others; as well as his theoretical research in books such as Barcelona: The Urban Evolution of a Compact City, Regular City: A Manual for Designing Grids and Urban Fabrics, Expos as Great Urban Projects, Present and Future, and his most recent Modern Architecture and the City: A Quick Immersion.
