Roger Katan

Roger G. Katan
Architect Roger Katan (right) and neurologist Giovanni Castelnovo (left), Gard, France, May 12, 2011
Born	Berguent (Ain Bni Mathar), Morocco
Nationality	French American
Education	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris
Known for	Visual arts and architecture: lives and works in Sauve, France
Notable work	Building Together, New Village Press, 2014 Bâtir ensemble, CILF, 1988 De quoi se mêlent les urbanistes?, Actes Sud, 1979
Movement	Advocacy Planning, Kinetic art
Website	Handmade Houses Kinetic Sculpture

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston

Building Together, New Village Press, 2014

Bâtir ensemble, CILF, 1988

Handmade Houses

Roger G. Katan is a French-American architect, planner, sculptor, and activist born in Berguent (today's Aïn Bni Mathar), Eastern Morocco, on January 5, 1931. Based in the United States in the early 1960s, he was an active founder of advocacy planning, participatory democracy applied to urban planning. As a kinetic artist, he collaborated and exhibited with rising figures of postmodern art. After 1975, Katan became involved in humanitarian relief and continued to encourage participatory practices and self-management. His method favors traditional, sustainable agriculture and construction. In 1999 he moved to Sauve, southern France, where he resumed work on kinetic sculpture and publications.

After graduating from Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Katan won a scholarship to MIT in 1960, where he earned a master's degree in Architecture and Urban Design (1961). From 1961 to 1963, he worked for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. From 1964 to 1975, he lived and worked in New York City. Based in East Harlem, he taught architecture and urban planning at Pratt Institute, City College of New York, and Pratt Graduate School of Tropical Architecture for ten years, with one year spent at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY (in the Political Science Department), practicing and teaching advocacy planning. He created, with Pratt and City College graduate students, one of the first Community Design Centers, offering free technical assistance to community organizations.