Co-Founder, Director of Research and Partnerships
Wes Hiatt, AIA, NCARB, is a Co-Founder and Director of Research and Partnerships of Lehigh’s Small Cities Lab. An Assistant Professor of Architecture, his research focuses on coalition building, urban change, and community-led design visioning projects. He is deeply committed to reorienting architects away from traditional technocratic thought and market-based services, working instead through partnership coordination and place-based design proposals to imagine necessary change alongside communities. His work focuses on smaller cities and towns across the United States, which have historically been understudied and underserved relative to larger metros.
Wes’ work has received over $1.6 million in funding from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the New York State Council for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, and grants from United States Senator Bob Casey and Representative Susan Wild. As an architect, Wes is Managing Principal of Jaff Hiatt Architecture, D.P.C., an architecture practice based in Brooklyn, New York.