architect educator urban planner author
Ghislaine Hermanuz was born on April 28, 1942, in Lausanne, Switzerland, to Max Hermanuz and Manotte Tavernier Hermanuz. She later moved to the United States, where her professional life developed around architecture, urban planning, higher education, and community-based design.
Hermanuz earned an architectural degree from the École Polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne in 1967. The Lausanne institution, now associated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, belongs to Switzerland's modern architectural and technical education tradition.
She studied at Harvard University in 1969 and completed a Master of Science in Urban Planning at Columbia University in 1971. Harvard's Graduate School of Design brought together architecture, planning, and design disciplines, while Columbia's urban-planning program placed her studies within New York's large-scale urban and housing challenges. Her graduate work was associated with housing construction and urban development in the West Indies.
Hermanuz began her American professional career with the Architects Renewal Committee in Harlem, working as an architect from 1971 to 1972. The committee operated within Harlem's community-design and neighborhood-rehabilitation movement, in which architects worked with residents and local organizations on housing and urban renewal issues.
From 1972 to 1973 she was an urban designer with New York City's Department of City Planning, and from 1972 to 1974 she lectured at Cornell University in Ithaca. City planning departments coordinated land use and development policy, while Cornell provided a major research and teaching setting for architecture and planning in upstate New York.
At Columbia University's architecture and planning programs, Hermanuz served as assistant dean for minority affairs and assistant professor from 1975 to 1982, then as associate professor from 1982 to 1984. Her Columbia work included organizing the Urban Technical Assistance Project and addressing urban-design questions connected with Harlem. In 1984 she became director of the Community Design Workshop, continuing the community-oriented approach associated with her earlier Harlem work.
From 1986 she was associated with the City College of New York Architectural Center, serving as associate director and executive director, and she became a professor of architecture at the college's School of Architecture. The center connected architectural education with public and neighborhood concerns. She also served as principal of Hermanuz, Ltd., a New York practice concerned with planning, architecture, and urban design, and later worked as an urban consultant, including work connected with the Huairou Commission.
Hermanuz developed a career linking architectural practice, university teaching, urban planning, and community design, with documented work in Harlem, New York City planning, Columbia University, and the City College of New York.
She contributed essays to Reweaving the Urban Fabric: Approaches to Infill Housing, a study of infill housing and neighborhood development generated from a Harlem design competition, exhibition, and symposium.
Her professional and public work addressed housing, neighborhood rehabilitation, and urban design for communities affected by disinvestment and social inequality.
(Co-authored with Marta Gutman and Richard Plunz. The volu...)
1988Hermanuz's professional work is associated with a community-oriented view of architecture and urban planning. Her writing and public activities address the relationship between housing, neighborhood continuity, social justice, and environmental quality, particularly in communities affected by disinvestment and urban decline.
Hermanuz was a member of the Société des Ingénieurs et Architectes de Suisse, a Swiss professional organization representing engineers and architects. Her professional activities also connected her with community-design, planning, and architectural networks working on housing and neighborhood development.
Hermanuz is the daughter of Max Hermanuz and Manotte Tavernier Hermanuz. She has a child, Dahoud P. Walker Hermanuz.
