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 sculptureSee Roger Katan: Kinetics (Website) . and publications.
Biography 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.
He supported the Civil Rights Movement and the students' claim for social responsibility. In 1964, Katan was already prescribing participation and putting his talent as an architect in the service of the poorest when Paul Davidoff tossed the phrase advocacy planning. Concurrently, Katan's publications and conferences helped spread the word throughout the United-States, Europe, and beyond. He was invited by student organizations calling for social change. His talks included Yale, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, etc. Katan obtained American citizenship in 1968.
From 1963 to 1975, Katan was also involved in the art world. As a kinetic sculptor, he exchanged views and exhibited with artists such as Allan Kaprow, Roy lichtenstein, and Robert Smithson."R. Smithson, A. Kaprow & R. Katan: What is a Museum?," Oct. 19, 1966 in Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt papers, 1905-1987, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/robert-smithson-and-nancy-holt-papers-7105/more The early sixties saw the emergence of Pop Art and the revival of the kinetic movement, initiated in Europe in the 1930s. Using scrap materials like egg cartons, Katan developed structures evoking abstract cities. "Eternized" by a resin bath, his materials captured and reflected natural and artificial light. His sculptures became models of imaginary cities and villages, some of which resemble the artist's birthplace in Morocco.
From 1975 to 1999, he was actively involved in humanitarian relief and development as a consultant, mostly in Africa and Latin America, on behalf of the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank, and the French Technical Cooperation. Faithful to his principles, the advocate planner kept privileging the interests of the people and encouraging self-management. His intervention programs included resettlement, microcredit, education, etc. In both agriculture and construction, Katan has always encouraged traditional methods as well as local, sustainable materials.
Hired by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Katan monitored the creation of a local microcredit network in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa, in 1976-78. The network has now grown to become a national organization, Réseau National des Caisses Populaires du Burkina. He supervised a displacement program in Mali in 1978 and the creation of a National Construction Standards Institute (appropriate technology) in Bamako in 1979. After 1980, he was hired on short-term contracts by the European Union, the United Nations, and various NGOs for missions in Central and South America. Katan helped individuals restore their traditions through small self-managed productive projects. In 1980, he advised the Dutch Technical Cooperation in Colombia to rethink rural education and in 1984 Katan built the first New Rural School (Escuela Nueva) for the Colombian government. Over 15,000 rural schools based on this model now exist throughout Latin America.
In 1981 photographs and plans of an adobe house designed by Katan for a displacement in Mali were shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The "Architectures de terre" (Earth Architectures)See Roger Katan: Handmade Houses (Website). exhibition was curated by Jean Dethier.
Katan has published two books in French, De quoi se mêlent les urbanistes? (Actes Sud, 1979), about advocacy planning, and Bâtir ensemble (CILF, 1988), a methodology for participatory practice. De quoi se mêlent les urbanistes? was translated into Italian. Construire ensemble received a grant from the Graham Foundation in 2010 for its English translation and update. Building Together was released in the U.S. by New Village Press in 2014, with two new chapters by Ronald Shiffman, founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development in 1963 and pioneer of advocacy planning.New Village Press, New York (publisher): http://www.newvillagepress.net/book/?GCOI=97660100841460
In 1999 Katan moved to Sauve, southern France, where he helped his current wife Julie, a ceramic artist, and Aline Crumb, a comic strip artist, launch their art gallery, Galerie VP. There Katan has exhibited his early kinetic works together with his latest sculptures. His new works use state-of-the-art technology, including plastics, LED, and Wireless devices.See François Charcellay, « Roger Katan retrouve à Sauve le soleil de son Maroc natal », Midi Libre, 18 août 2012, p. 3.
Education
Katan attended primary school in Berguent (today's Aïn Bni Mathar), Eastern Morocco, near the Algerian border, whose population was then about 800. 1943-1949: Secondary education in Meknes and Oujda, Morocco. Aged 17, Katan won the Oujda High School logo competition and decided to study architecture. 1951-1953: Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts d'Alger (Algiers School of Fine Arts). Trained for competitive entrance examinations. 1954-1957: Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Katan would travel in France and work for architects to pay for his studies and visit two or three European countries every year. 1959: Licensed architect's degree (DPLG), Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. 1957-1960: Military service in Paris during the war in Algeria. Late 1960: Grunsfeld Fellowship for a semester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a study travel in the United States. 1961-1962: Master's degree in Architecture and Urban Design from the MIT, supervised by Imre Halasz and Lawrence B. Anderson. Katan also spent a semester traveling across the United States, studying works by Frank Lloyd Wright among other.
Architect and Advocate Planner (United States, 1960-76)
Dore Ashton wrote in her cultural guidebook about New York: "Some of the advocacy planners, such as Roger Katan, insist that the architect can function only if he is prepared to extend himself to activities which were previously considered beyond his realm of competence. Katan's attitude is a long way from the aristocratic distance of a Richardson, whose clients took his word for law, and were always rich. Katan's clients are the community as a whole; they are mostly the very poor in the ghettoes of Harlem, and they share with him the planner's task. . . . By helping them to organize themselves and state their needs coherently, Katan is able to develop plans which make sense. He also recognizes the necessity of learning the intricacies of city bureaucracy, and how to deal with the political aspects of each citizen's existence. Over the years—he has lived in East Harlem for some seven years—Katan has slowly developed a number of alternative plans for rehabilitation and rebuilding in his neighbourhood."Dore Ashton, New York: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting (World Cultural Guides), London: Thames and Hudson, 1972, p. 202. 1955-1960 : Worked on various projects for architectural firms in France and Africa, including: Hospital and city hall of Saint-Lô, Normandy, destroyed by WWII bombing, Collège St Joseph, Dordogne, France, Housing competitions in Paris, Study for 2 dams on the Rhine river, French military base in Niamey, Niger (housing, restaurant, amphitheater, and hospital), Won competition for 3000 dwelling units with community and health facilities for US Army bases in France, Study for 100 social housing units in Bir Mourad Raïs (formerly Birmandreis), near Algiers, Optical store in Toulouse, France, Duplex dry-cleaning center in Paris, Villa Lehalle, Paradou, Algiers (1959), Huet residence, Toulon, France, 2-family residence project in Toulouse, France.Roger Katan's 1967 resume in Exhibition records of the Contemporary Wing of the Finch College Museum of Art, 1943-1975, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Box 5, Folder 1: https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/exhibition-records-contemporary-wing-finch-college-museum-art-8114/series-3/box-5-folder-1 1961: First prize of the Boston waterfront competition. This project was part of his master's degree at MIT. It was shown at the Faneuil Hall. It was originally inspired by Honfleur, Normandy, where each house overlooks the harbor. In the Boston project for 2000 housing units, stepped terraces planted with greenery offered each family a view of the harbor. Families could choose their surface and develop it according to their income. 1962-1964: Works for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Introduced by Prof. Lawrence B. Anderson, Katan worked for Louis Kahn's studio for two years and taught architecture and planning at Pratt Institute once a week. Katan occasionally assisted Louis Kahn during his weekly graduate seminars at the University of Pennsylvania. Participated or was in charge of: Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, Master plan for Center City, Philadelphia, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, Presidential palace in Islamabad, Pakistan, Science Research Building, University of Virginia, Center for Performing Arts, Ft. Wayne, Indiana. 1965: Project for a medical cooperative in Antony (Berny), France, near Paris. Practice and housing facilities for 8 doctors and 2 interns."Roger Katan's 1967 resume in Exhibition records of the Contemporary Wing of the Finch College Museum of Art, 1943-1975, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Box 5, Folder 1: https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/exhibition-records-contemporary-wing-finch-college-museum-art-8114/series-3/box-5-folder-1 1964-1976: Director of Environmental Resource Associates (356 East 116th Street, East Harlem, New York City), one of the first Community Design Centers. Katan left Philadelphia and moved to East Harlem, where he started working on the creation of a community center and housing project for senior citizens. He put his talent in the service of the poorest, got involved in the civil rights movement, the student struggle for greater social responsibility, advocating the active participation of residents. 1964-1968: Brooklyn Bridge and East Harlem Triangle Gateways. Proposal for a system of gateways to connect Manhattan bridges and tunnels. Traffic flows were analyzed for better distribution. New pedestrian and leisure spaces were designed. Specific studies for Brooklyn Bridge and 3 bridges of the East Harlem Triangle were published in the form of 2 brochures (32 and 38 pages respectively), financed by the Kaplan Fund, Inc.