Jose Gelabert-Navia: Architect of a City in Guyana

UM PROFESSOR AND PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, PERKINS&WILL

Professor Jose Gelabert-Navia has been teaching at the University of Miami since 1981. The former Dean of the School of Architecture also works as a principal at Gables-based Perkins&Will, considered one of the top firms in the country. A graduate of Cornell University, Gelabert-Navia’s primary teaching focus has been in Architectural Design and History of Colonialism and Globalization in Architecture. He was the founder of the School’s Rome Program and as part of it, he teaches a course in Italian Culture. He has lectured in Europe and Latin America, most recently in Brasilia and in Santiago, Chile.

All of this pales in comparison to Gelabert-Navia’s latest project: building an entire city from scratch in Guyana, an English-speaking, Caribbean country consisting predominantly of the Amazon Rainforest and one major city, its capital of Georgetown.

LATEST ACHIEVEMENT

Gelabert-Navia is now designing the proposed second major city of Guyana, Silica City.

His design combines the traditional plan of major cities (think Rome) and the people-focused approach of a sustainable, biophilic design – which means designing buildings that improve health and well-being. Guyanese President Irfaan Ali is working to capitalize on an oil-driven economic boom by building a new city, hoping to encourage the Guyanese diaspora to return. Gelabert-Navia. Completing Silica City will require the cooperation of UM and the people and government of Guyana. And, of course, building an entire city takes time. Gelabert-Navia’s plan has five-, 20-, and 50-year benchmarks that outline the steady development of the project.

WHAT HE SAYS

“I think what’s exciting about our time is that, for the period we’re living in, you can draw from history,” says Gelabert-Navia. “But what we need to draw from history is not making mutations of a Renaissance building. That’s just style. If we combine the lessons of what made those cities so beautiful, but now we make them livable… now, we can incorporate those technologies, and that’s where I think we can bring the best of the old and combine it with the new.” This idea, called “living design,” has been a major component of the professor’s curriculum at UM and is part of what distinguishes his specific architectural style, which he’s spent “every day of his life” for the past 42 years creating. – Patrick McCaslin


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