Profile
Amna Ansari is Professor in the Practice and founding partner of 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 combines architecture, urbanism, landscape, and technology, enabling her to create socially vibrant, equitable, and enduring spaces.
UltraBarrio’s research, "Shuffle City," a future vision for Houston regarding the urban impact of mobility and technology, 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 the ambitions of sustainability, accessibility, and connectivity toward sites that blend ecology, safety, and equality with placemaking.
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 currently in 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 the classroom.