Hitoshi Abe

xLAB Research Center, UCLA, Director, Atelier Hitoshi Abe, CEO

Hitoshi Abe founded an international design practice based in Sendai, Japan in 1992, and Atelier Hitoshi Abe opened its second office in Los Angeles in 2008. As a designer and educator who lectures and publishes, he has earned a position among the leaders in the field of architecture and urban design for his ability to initiate productive interdisciplinary collaborations and establish professional partnerships with various constituencies. In 2011, together with a group of Japanese Architects, Hitoshi Abe initiated the Archi+Aid network, a voluntary network of architects established to help reconstruct the damaged community by the 2011 East Japan Great Earthquake and Tsunami. In 2017, he opened the xLAB at UCLA, an international think tank that examines architecture's elastic boundaries through interdisciplinary collaboration.