Nico Larco is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, Director of the Urbanism Next Center and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Sustainable Cities Initiative, a nationally and internationally awarded, multidisciplinary organization that focuses on sustainability issues as they relate to the built environment. Professor Larco’s research focus includes sustainable urban design and the impacts of emerging technology on cities. The Urbanism Next Center, which he leads, is focused on how technological advances such as autonomous vehicles, new mobility, e-commerce and the sharing economy are changing city form and development. Prof. Larco assists cities and projects with future-proofing, has run workshops and charrettes nationally on this topic, and is currently coordinating work in this area with various municipal and state agencies around the country.

Professor Larco has received numerous national and international awards for his work, has been a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar in Chile and in Spain, and was a visiting researcher at TU Delft and TNO in the Netherlands. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Urban Design, the Journal of Urbanism, and the Journal of Architecture and Planning Research. His work has been the subject of articles in the New York Times, Wired, Forbes, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Streetsblog, Newsweek and the Financial Times of London. He is a licensed architect and has worked professionally in the fields of Architecture, Urban Design, Planning, and Development.

Larco is the principal of Larco/Knudson, an urban design consulting practice in Portland which focuses on sustainable urban design and assisting with the resilience of projects in the face of rapidly changing technology. Before joining the faculty at the University of Oregon he worked at KPF, SMWM (now Perkins + Will), ARC, and was a project architect at William Rawn Associates in Boston, where he completed a pair of residence halls at Amherst College that received an AIA New England Design Award and a BSA Honor Award for Design Excellence.