Dr Mireille Tchapi


Dr Mireille Tchapi (PhD urban design, MArch, MA-social science) is a licensed architect (Paris) and doctor in urbanism (University of Tokyo). She joined the University of Westminster to work on the research project - "London creative communities toward sustainability".

With an interdisciplinary spirit, her research interests and areas of competence cover urban design, sustainable urbanism and environmental transition, public space, urban identity & memory, urban ecology, landscape, perception, environmental psychology, wellbeing, urban morphogenesis, participative design & grassroots, and Asian studies (Pacific Asia context, Japan, Singapore).

Dr Tchapi took part to several research & teaching projects in Pacific Asia (Japan, China, Singapore, Taipei, Bangkok, Jakarta, and Jaipur) and Europe. She has been awarded research fellowships to work on neighbourhood’s urbanity of Tokyo and Kyoto (MEXT fellowship for her PhD, Tokyo; Far East French School - EFEO postdoc grant award, Tokyo-Kyoto). She also worked as a research fellow on landscape guidelines framework for public housings, at the National University of Singapore, and has been involved in several grassroots activities in London, Japan and Singapore.


Past and current research projects:

LONDON SOUNDINGS | London creative communities toward sustainability. University of Westminster, from 2018. http://londonsoundings.com/

The East-West Arc, Re-thinking Growth in the London Region. University of Westminster, from 2018. www.eastwestarc.co.uk

Tokyo and Kyoto | Memory and identities of outdoor spaces in vernacular neighbourhoods: Urban nature at the core of contested cultural landscape. Far East French School- AMUP research laboratory- ENSAS, from 2018 (grant award).

Biophilic towns, a framework to enhance the landscape of high-density, high-rise public housing in Singapore. National University of Singapore, 2015-2016 (research fellow).

Visual connectivity of the everyday outdoors as a landmark in the dense vernacular fabric of central Tokyo: A morphological approach in Wakaba-Shinjuku. University of Tokyo, PhD thesis, 2014 (MEXT grant award).

OASIS Project on the desertification and the water management on the Heihe River Basin'. University of Tokyo, APIEL (Asian Program for Incubation of Environmental Leaders)- CARRERI (Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences), 2010.


In brief

Research areas

sustainable urbanism and environmental transition, communities and climate emergency, urban design, urban morphogenesis, public realm, landscape, urban ecology, Asian urban studies (Japan, Pacific Asia, Singapore)