Profile
Amna Ansari is a visiting critic and founding partner of Associates UltraBarrio, an urban design and architecture practice that aims to shape cities to be more civic, sustainable, and generationally connected by design. Ansari’s multidisciplinary background aligns architecture, urbanism, landscape, and technologies, allowing her to create socially vibrant, equitable, and enduring spaces.
UltraBarrio’s research regarding the urban impact of mobility and technology, "Shuffle City," a future vision for Houston, is among the source materials at the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management and has been recognized at the Smart Cities panel at ABX Boston. UltraBarrio’s project "METRO: Transit Environment Programming Catalog" won the AIA Houston Urban Design Award for unifying ambitions of sustainability, accessibility, and connectivity toward sites that blend ecology, safety, and equality with place making.
Ansari’s method of actively processing a broad range of scenarios concerning urban strategies for the future has been recognized through exhibitions in Washington, DC, Rome, Milan, and Boston. As a designer who has lived and worked in Shanghai, Vienna, Boston, and today Houston, her portfolio of architecture and planning projects has contributed to numerous AIA and ASLA design awards. Ansari has taught graduate and undergraduate architecture studios in Boston and Houston and enjoys bringing her research into teaching.