Co-President
William A. Gilchrist, '77, MArch '82
William A. Gilchrist is the Director of Planning and Building for the City of Oakland, CA. Bill’s career has spanned public and private sectors.
In his previous roles as director of Place-Based Planning in New Orleans, LA and director of the Department of Planning, Engineering & Permits in Birmingham, AL, he oversaw the merger of city-departments including engineering, public works, planning, urban design, and building and inspection services, as well as integrating permitting processes to improve efficiency and customer service. His work has been recognized by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the National League of Cities, the American Planning Association (APA), and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Bill also was the director of the Urban Design Studio in the Atlanta Office of EDAW/AECOM. He has consulted in creating public processes for land-use policy in Romania and Ukraine.
Bill has engaged academic centers of excellence in design and planning as resources for local and regional development and served on advisory bodies to MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Tulane University and Auburn University. For over a decade he was a member on the Board of the National Association for Olmsted Parks.
He is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and past Chair of the Public Private Partnership Council, where he was a contributor to the ULI publication: The Ten Principles of Public Private Partnership and chaired the Hines Student Competition Jury. He wrote on urban development and design for the Birmingham News Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page. Bill served as an editor for the AIA Handbook on Professional Practice and John Wiley and Sons publications on architecture and urban design. He has been a spokesperson for the AIA concerning topics of urban design and architecture on National Public Radio and the PBS News Hour. Bill co-chaired the AIA Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT) and chaired the Nashville, TN 1999 R/UDAT, which received the President’s Citation from the AIA.
Bill is an alumnus of MIT’s Architecture and Planning School as well as the Sloan School of Management and of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He received MIT’s Karl Taylor Compton Prize for Excellence and Chandler Prize for Design. He was also among Harvard and MIT’s first Aga Khan Fellows, documenting historic Swahili settlements along the coast of Kenya.
His civic work includes a portfolio of award-winning projects in Birmingham and New Orleans as well as community designs in cities across the nation. He was inducted into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2006 for his distinction as an architect in public service.
As part of its 150th Anniversary Celebration in 2018, MIT’s Department of Architecture bestowed Bill with its Alumni Recognition for Civic Design.