Tim Love

Tim Love is the founding principal of Utile and leads the firm’s urban design and planning practice. He is also a Lecturer and Senior Fellow in Real Estate and Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches courses that focus on topics at the intersection of design, policy, and real estate development. In addition, Love is the Assistant Director of the Master in Real Estate program.

Love’s expertise ranges from innovative zoning approaches; to a comprehensive understanding of market-driven building types; to the strategic layout of streets, blocks, and parcels; to the design of Complete Streets and the larger public realm. He has also led research initiatives that are meant to unlock housing production, including a report that makes a case for single-stair building code reform and a proposal for a new model of form-based zoning geared towards municipalities with underutilized parcels within older residential neighborhoods.

Love’s clients include municipalities, state authorities and agencies, and national developers. He is especially adept at exploring alternative development scenarios in collaboration with engineers, landscape architects, and real estate finance experts. Design alternatives are shaped by financial goals, the regulatory context, environmental considerations, a social agenda informed by community input, and a place-specific design vision. Rather than simply balance these factors, Love seeks a visually compelling synthesis that can inspire elected officials, potential development partners, and the full range of stakeholders. 

Love has a BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master in Architecture from the Harvard GSD, where he received the Henry Adams Medal. In addition to his academic position at Harvard, Love has taught at Northeastern University, Yale University, the University of Toronto, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He was also the 2014 President of the Boston Society of Architects and currently serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of Virginia School of Architecture.