Nadia M. Anderson

Nadia M. Anderson
Architecture
Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban Design
CCB 1007
704-687-0117

Faculty Research Connections Profile

Nadia M. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Director of the City Building Lab at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her project work uses community engagement to generate co-creation design processes that facilitate agency in marginalized communities. This work engages multiple scales from pop-up installations to regional watershed studies and includes affordable housing, local food systems, renewable infrastructures, and post-disaster mitigation. Professor Anderson has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Institute of Architects, and the Gambrell Foundation to support this work. Her writing and theoretical investigations focus on how power has been distributed through system structures in architectural practice and education. She has brought this work into organizational discourses as Chair of the ACSA Education Committee, a member of the College of Arts + Architecture Diversity Council, and convener of UNC Charlotte’s Urban Complexities symposia. She is considered an expert on community engagement in design and has been invited to speak and conduct workshops on this topic in Perú and the Czech Republic as well as multiple locations in the U.S.


Professor Anderson’s recent work includes addressing systemic racism through systems-based affordable housing and local food systems; developing new architecture pedagogies that overcome hegemonic white supremacy; and identifying how informal spatial practices generate opportunities for sovereignty and identity creation in the built environment. Prior to joining the faculty at UNC Charlotte, she was a member of the faculty at Iowa State University for eleven years. She practiced architecture and urban design in Chicago, Warsaw, and Vienna and holds a license to practice architecture in Illinois. She received her Master of Architecture degree in 1994 from the University of Pennsylvania and her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988 from Yale University. While she has lived in multiple cities and countries, Professor Anderson considers herself a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota.


Explore her recent work

headshots of 8 professors

Anderson served on the College's inaugural Diversity Council making a conscious effort to not only recognize the campus community as diverse but also to prepare our students for life’s diverse conditions. Read more  → 

participants sitting in chairs with papers on a table at a recreation center

Anderson, director of the City Building Lab, has been approved for a $25,000 “Grants for Arts Projects” award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support neighborhood visioning workshops. Read more →

skyline of charlotte nc with blue sky and trees

Five faculty research teams have been selected for the second cohort of the Gambrell Faculty Fellows program. Anderson is planning to create a “Design Toolkit for Affordable Homeownership.” Read more