Prof Rodney Harber was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1940. He came to Durban to complete his Bachelor of Architecture degree at the University of Natal in 1965. and after five years in practice taught there for 36 years before retiring as Associate Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Housing, having taught in all three disciplines. He subsequently taught at TU Darmstadt and Durban University of Technology (DUT).
In 1969, he founded Harber & Associates: Architects, Urban & Regional Planners, a small practice operating from the Harber home where he and his wife Roz still practice their profession.
Rodney has been particularly enthusiastic in passing on his skills and accumulated knowledge to a new generation of architects. For over thirty years at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, he has lectured in the Undergraduate BAS and Advanced Architecture courses and served as the studio co-ordinator across all years of study.
Harber has taken part in numerous international exhibitions of architectural design, has written two books and has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is a founding member of the Built Environment Support Group (BESG) University of Natal in 1985 and has been a trustee and member of several charitable boards.
He has received numerous honours for his work and has also served as an adjudicator of numerous architectural competitions.
His research topics vary widely from issues surrounding land availability, low cost housing and the impact of architecture and design on HIV/AIDS, to monuments, heritage architecture and conservation. He has devoted his career to finding architectural solutions specific to the social, economic and climatic contexts he has worked in. Projects he has developed and worked on strive to respond to socio-political imbalances and to assist vulnerable communities to access resources.
Rodney is also a registered Urban and Regional Planner and now heads a busy multi-disciplinary practice focussing on developmental work all along the eastern seaboard of KZN and also as a heritage practitioner. He represents Africa on the UNESCO/UIA Validation Council as well as the UIA Education Commission.