Who We Are

Todd W. Bressi is a public art consultant, urban designer, educator and writer. He has managed his own public art consulting practice since 2008. 

As project manager and, before that, coordinator of artistic planning for Mural Arts Philadelphia, he has helped guide the artistic program of the nation’s largest public art organization. As coordinator of public art, creative activations and civic engagement for Philadelphia250, he is playing a lead role in the city’s preparations for the semi-quincentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence. 

Todd consults with public agencies, civic/community groups, cultural organizations and private developers throughout the U.S. and Canada. He has worked on more than thirty public art, arts district and placemaking plans, managed complex public art commissions, teamed with artists on collaborative design and community engagement projects, and provided on-call consulting to several public art and placemaking organizations. 

He is known for combining his knowledge of public art, placemaking and planning to curate creative, artist-led processes that broaden public outreach and produce outcomes that strongly that reflect the visions of the communities he works with. His public art  consulting has resulted in plans, policies / procedures, guidelines, ordinances and other essential underpinnings of public art programs.   

He also brings a keen sense of how architecture, landscape design, public art and information design can interact to create remarkable spaces at intimate and urban scales, and a practiced understanding of how to integrate artworks in architectural, landscape and infrastructure projects. His projects creatively meld the visual aspects of city design, the activation of public space, and the visions of the organizations and communities he works with.

Todd works as a sole practitioner and for each project he builds a team of creative professionals who are best suited to meet the client’s and the project’s needs. He excels at organizing, leading and inspiring cross-disciplinary teams whose skills are carefully tailored to client needs, and whose collaboration leads to exceptional results. In his 30 years as an urban designer and writer, Bressi has built a network of artists and art consultants; architects and landscape designers; graphic, lighting and industrial designers and others that can be tapped to create cutting-edge teams for projects in any region of the U.S. or Canada.

Prior to launching his own firm, Todd was a partner in Brown and Keener Bressi, an urban design firm in Philadelphia; a senior associate at Project for Public Spaces; executive editor of the design journal Places; and faculty member at PennDesign and Pratt Institute.

Bressi has a Master of Science in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s in Urban Studies from Columbia University. He is a member of the Americans for the Arts, Public Art Network, and the American Planning Association’s arts and culture division.

His consulting has also inspired more than a dozen projects that have been recognized by the Public Art Network “Year in Review.” His work has also won national recognition from the American Planning Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, the Environmental Design Research Association and the International Downtown Association. Read about our latest news on our 

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