Announcing New Faculty Members & Visiting Professors

Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning Lidia Cano Pecharromán and Assistant Professor of Architecture Hans Tursak will join us as our newest permanent faculty; Carlos H. Blanco begins a two-year stint as our 2025-2027 Emerging Scholar in Design; and this fall, visiting scholars Toshiki Hirano and Nanako Umemoto join us as the 2025 Ruth Carter Stevenson Visiting Professor and the O’Neil Ford Centennial Visiting Professor, respectively.  

Lidia Cano Pecharromán, Assistant Professor, Community and Regional Planning 

Lidia Cano Pecharromán is an assistant professor in the Community and Regional Planning program at UTSOA and Director of the Extreme Weather Adaptation Lab at the LBJ School. Lidia joined the faculty in 2025 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she completed her Ph.D. as part of the Environmental Policy and Planning Group and the Science Impact Collaborative within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Lidia also graduated with a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and a Law Degree from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.  

Her research addresses the challenges at the intersection of environmental policy, governance, and planning. Within that intersection, she focuses on planning for climate adaptation and how new methodologies can help appraise and prepare for weather extremes. Her research also examines the innovations that emerge from the participation of the other-than-human in decision-making and through non-anthropocentric approaches to decision-making. 

Hans Tursak, Assistant Professor, Interior Design  

Hans Tursack is a designer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a BFA in studio art from the Cooper Union School of Art, and an M.Arch from the Princeton University School of Architecture where he was the recipient of the Underwood Thesis Prize. He has worked in the offices of LEVENBETTS Architects, SAA/Stan Allen Architecture, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. His writing and scholarly work have appeared in Perspecta Journal, Pidgin Magazine, Plat, Crop Journal, Thresholds Journal, Log Journal and ACADIA. He was the 2018-2021 Pietro Belluschi Fellow at the MIT School of Architecture + Planning and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Sam Fox School, Washington University in St. Louis (2022-2023). Hans is currently a Ph.D. student in Electronic Arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Department of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. 

Carlos H. Blanco, 2025-2027 Emerging Scholar in Design Fellow 

Carlos H. Blanco, a Salvadorian architect, artist, and educator, is an interdisciplinary designer who explores architectural themes through his writings, paintings, and photography. He joins UT Austin with the generous support of the Graham Foundation to pursue his research and scholarly work for the project “Casas de Cartón - Rural Memories of the Dry Corridor”. He earned his M.Arch from Yale University, where he received the James Gamble Scholarship, and his Bachelor’s of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, with a minor in city planning and urbanism in developing countries. Blanco’s research focuses on domestic architecture, geography, exhibition curation, and the cultural production of marginalized urban and rural narratives in Latin America, with an emphasis on Central America. His work reflects on his personal experiences as an immigrant navigating complex environments and seeking solace in the built world. Blanco is a professor at the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and previously served as a teaching fellow at Yale School of Architecture. 

Toshiki Hirano, Ruth Carter Stevenson Visiting Professor 

Toshiki Hirano is an architectural designer, researcher, and educator based in Tokyo, Japan. He is the co-director of the International Architectural Education Platform (SEKISUI HOUSE - KUMA LAB) at the University of Tokyo established by Kengo Kuma in 2020. He also leads his design studio THD (Theoretical Hole Design). 

Hirano’s research and practice are situated at the crossroads of architecture, art, technology, crafts, and philosophy, exploring the vast, uncharted 'hole' that exists within this intersection. Hirano's work has received international recognition and has been exhibited at venues and events including the London Design Biennale, the British Embassy in Tokyo, and Tokyo Midtown. 

Nanako Umemoto, O’Neil Ford Centennial Visiting Professor 

Nanako Umemoto is a principal of RUR Architecture DPC. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper Union in New York, following studies at the School of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at the Osaka University of Art. Nanako has taught at various schools in the US, Europe and Asia, including Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, EPFL in Lausanne Switzerland, Hong Kong University, Kyoto University, and the Cooper Union, and she has lectured widely at various educational and cultural institutions throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. She is a Professor of Practice at Washington University in St. Louis.  

Reiser+Umemoto, RUR Architecture, is an internationally recognized architecture office and design atelier. Since its founding by principals Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, the firm has remained at the forefront of contemporary architectural design through its built and speculative projects, critical writings, workshops, lectures, teaching, and mentorship. Awards and honors include the Chrysler Award for Excellence in Design, the Academy Award in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Citation and John Hejduk Award from the Cooper Union, and the USA Booth Fellowship from United States Artists for Architecture & Design.