KSK Architects, Planners, Historians, Inc.

KSK Architects Planners Historians, Inc.
welcomes new Director of Planning and Urban Design

Paul A. Vernon, Director
Planning and Urban Design
KSK Architects Planners Historians, Inc.

Paul recently joined the KSK team of architects, planners and historians to bring new leadership to the firm’s planning practice. He brings with him over twenty years of planning and urban design experience in urban, suburban and rural communities and a personal portfolio in architecture with a focus on community-based projects and special needs populations. All of this work has been in conjunction with many years of volunteer service to community development and human service non-profit organizations.

With its long history in planning, focus on preservation and technical capacity in architecture, Paul is ideally suited for KSK as the firm continues working with communities whose goal is to protect cultural and physical resources, explore innovative ways to enhance existing resources and maintain or define their sense of character and place. KSK believes that planned physical changes around community resources should achieve a balance between sustainability, natural resource preservation, affordability, market demand and community preference.

Paul has extensive experience in public speaking, group presentation, facilitation and communication, which is in line with the firm’s philosophy of involving people in making places. He brings additional resources to the KSK team through graduate coursework at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and Kent State University.

He comes to us from Cleveland, Ohio, where he most recently acted as the Associate Director for the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC). The CUDC is part of Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design and is a regional planning and urban design practice providing education, outreach, research and design assistance throughout Northeast Ohio. At the CUDC, Paul also served as an adjunct faculty member in the College’s Master in Urban Design Program.

While at Kent, Paul’s work was included in publications of the CUDC’s Urban Infill series: Volume 1, Cities Growing Smaller, which focused on cities reimagining themselves in light of population loss and vacancy, and Volume 3, water|craft, which presented new ways of designing cities using regional water resources and best practices. Paul was also co-author of Envisioning Living Environments for People with Mental Illness, a best practices and design guidelines paper presented at the National Council for Behavioral Healthcare and published in Behavioral Healthcare magazine.

Please join us in welcoming Paul to Philadelphia and KSK.