Håvard Breivik-Khan

Håvard Breivik-Khan is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Master of Architecture program at Columbia GSAPP. His teaching and research focus on the architecture and urbanism of places used for displacement management and contingency planning purposes. His research critically examines the spatial and programmatic transitions between emergencies and daily life, and the complex interactions between global displacement management policy and the localized spatial manifestations of these provisions. While his research is spatial, it is fundamentally about people’s dignity, health, and well-being, whether displaced, living in fear of being displaced, or when access to places that constitute a person’s everyday life is disrupted.

The empirical data in his research reflects his alternating professional roles: emergency response expert, academic researcher, and educator. Breivik- Khan has over a decade of experience in global displacement management and contingency planning. He has been deployed to the Government Ministries of Moldova and Romania, and United Nations agencies in Haiti, Nepal, North Macedonia, Hungary, and United Nations Headquarters in New York through the Norwegian Refugee Council’s emergency standby roster, NORCAP. He is co-creator of the In Transit Studio at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) established in partnership with NORCAP in 2016 to address the limited knowledge exchange between the domains of architecture and urbanism, and crisis prevention and response.

Breivik-Khan has authored and edited several books, articles and contributed to many publications. He holds a master’s degree in architecture from AHO’s Institute of Urbanism and Landscape, with residencies in Paris, France (ENSAPLV) and Shanghai and Chongqing, China. Based in New York since 2012, he currently lives in Brooklyn.