PennPraxis Design Fellows Program by University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Design Fellows Program PennPraxis 2022

Design in Action PennPraxis is the practice arm of the Weitzman School of Design that supports design action in solidarity with students and communities working for change. PennPraxis creates “beyond the market” projects that actively promote justice, inclusion, innovation, and social impact in places that design does not usually serve. Our projects create resources and support for diverse groups of students to work together to develop agency in the world and to explore the power of interdisciplinary design, art, planning, and heritage preservation. Praxis is a platform for collaboration that is unique among design schools. We develop and support real-world projects that allow students and faculty to join forces with leaders in communities and in other fields to solve problems imaginatively. We help faculty and students implement the good ideas and good will that their studios and research generate. Increasingly, this platform for collaboration is mobilized by students, faculty, and community leaders to counter disinvestment, racism, and unequal opportunity.

The Design Fellows Program Beginning in 2018, the Design Fellows program has made the outstanding graduate students and young alumni of the Weitzman School integral to applied projects in every discipline in the school, and to the vibrant community of collaborators Praxis is helping to build inside and outside the school. In less than 4 years, faculty and students have seen the Design Fellows experience deepen 220 students’ education and multiply the Weitzman School’s capacity for engagement. Praxis has evolved into a student-centered organization energizing the School’s push for design justice, producing beautiful and strategic work in alliance with community and Indigenous leaders, and pioneers in many fields.

PennPraxis

Vibrant Community of Collaborators

Fellow Jackson Plumlee

Fellow Gillian Zhao

Fellow Agatha Sloboda

Fellow Monique Robinson

Julie Donofrio

Randy Mason

Anu Mathur

Fellow Jenna Epstein

Fellow Marc Schultz

Fellow Matthew White

Fellow Kelly Yan

Michael Fichman

Fellow Ebony Powell

Ellen Neises

Fellow Lizzy Servito

Fellow Mrinalini Verma

Fellow Nicole Cheng

Bill Braham

Fellow Arely Pena

Nightlife community organization 24HrPHL

Fellow Emily Blanton

Fellow Zach Hammaker

Fellow Rudy Gerson

Fellow Dyan Castro

Michael O’Bryan

Dean Frederick Steiner

Emilio Martinez Poppe

Fellow Yixin Wei

Fellow Graciela Bolanos

Fellow Shawn Wang

Fellow A McCullough

Megan Ryerson

Fellow Maxwell Johnson

Fellow Amrita Stuetzle

Fellow Jonah Garnick

Fellow Alice Bell

Fellow Weslene Uy

Fellow Julia Verbrugge

Fellow Marissa Sayers

Fellow Jiansong Yuan

Fellow Gillian Tiley

Fellow Leah Janover

Fellow Umar Mahmoud

Fellow Madison Green

Nick Pevzner

Molly Lester

Design Fellows Program

Honoring Juneteenth In Kennett Square

Fellow Rohan Lewis

Fellow Sean Smith

Fellow Jessica Arias

Fellow Jessica Lin

Fellow Ian Dillon

Emmanuela Soria Ruiz

Nana Ntiriwaa-Berkoh

Tiara Campbell

Matt Miller

Fellow Jing Cao

Fellow Emily Bunker

Fellow Julia Marchetti

Fellow Joanne Yuan Zheng

Fellow Riley Studebaker

Vincent Reina

Fellow Shaoan Chiu

Fellow Caleb Ehly

Fellow Maggie Sollmann

Fellow Palak Agarwal

Fellow Jennifer Boggs

Fellow Joshua Lewis

Fellow Daniel Flinchbaugh

Fellow Erin Monroe

Fellow Ashna Jaiswal

Fellow Arden Jordan

Fellow David Johnson

Jessica Dejesus

Paul Farber + Sue Mobley

Fellow Jun Lee

Fellow Christelle Salloum

Fellow Tamani Simmons

Fellow Hadi El Kebbi

Fellow Reem Abi Samra

Fellow Alli Davis

Masoud Akbarzadeh

Fellow Enrique Morales

Fellow Katie Dunn

Fellow Celine Apollon

Sharon Hayes

Fellow Dara Epison

Frank Matero

Philly Thrive

Fellow Caitlin Livesey

Eduardo Rega Calvo

Meeting Clients At Roosevelt Community Center

Fellow Larissa Whitney

PennPraxis

Design Fellows worked with Philly Thrive, an organization in South Philadelphia focused on environmental justice, clean futures, and neighborhood stability.

Work of Design Fellows Alice Bell and Emily Bunker

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Praxis Design Fellows enabled a semester of collaboration between Weitzman School of Design students and environmental justice community leaders to build powerfully into the next phase. The Fellows brought consistency, tireless dedication, world-class skills, and an openness to genuine relationships—a combination rarely, if ever, encountered by a community organization in an academic partnership. I have no doubt the personal and institutional connection made between Philly Thrive and PennPraxis will continue, which is a significant contrast to lack of clarity and confidence felt with most short-term academic partnerships. However, the longevity of these kinds of partnerships has enormous power in terms of supporting a specific neighborhood like Grays Ferry to create dynamic solutions to issues holding the community back and to continue to be the protagonists of their story for racial, economic, and environmental justice. — Alexa Ross, Philly Thrive leader

Design Fellows Program

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_ How We Work The PennPraxis Design Fellows program works in two ways to create opportunity for students: 1 - Engine for Project Formation and Fundraising PennPraxis develops fee-for-service consulting contracts, and projects funded by grants and gifts, that students and recent graduates lead with faculty and staff support. Design Fellows work for local, tribal, regional, and international clients; sometimes with Praxis leading a complex project with many consultants, sometimes supporting other practices by delivering a focused scope of work. Praxis adds donor resources and the talent of Design Fellows to low-budget projects to make them more generous, to over-achieve and to attract other money to projects or places that are not getting attention. Gifts to the program allow us to launch projects that can respond immediately to social movements like Black Lives Matter, to the pandemic, to windows of opportunity for change created by community partners, and to timely proposals from faculty, students, and young alumni. Donor gifts often act as seed money for catalytic ventures, allowing Praxis to initiate new areas of work that build a case for foundation and government grants.

After a landscape architecture studio worked with Philly Thrive to develop proposals for the site of the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, several students continued to work with Thrive as Design Fellows. Shown here work of Elliot Bullen and Rohan Lewis.

2 - Support Structure for Faculty Practice In addition to developing and managing projects, Praxis also provides professional and administrative support for any faculty member who wants to bring their own consulting contracts to the school through Praxis and hire Design Fellows.

Dorit Aviv, Assistant Professor of Architecture, worked with Design Fellows in architecture to develop innovative climate design research. Shown here work by Design Fellows Jiewei Li and Mrinalini Verma.

PennPraxis

“

The work by PennPraxis allowed us to garner a $21.2 million US Department of Transportation RAISE grant—Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity—to close the largest gap in the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor and create access to schools, jobs and recreation in Allentown. Specifically, the work of PennPraxis allowed us to balance environmental management, pedestrian and bicycle accessibility, place making, and vehicular needs. The work visualized the potential of the project and communicated it to elected and appointed officials here, in Harrisburg and Washington, DC, to the private sector and to the community, who are more likely to speak to Arabic or Spanish than English. The design argued for the absolute necessity of quality. If you have ever doubted the need for strong scholarship partnered with exceptional graphics, I can assure you that the value is extraordinary. We raised over $34 million in private and non-profit sector match to support the $21.2 million in federal funds because of Praxis’ foundational work.

”

— Becky Bradley, Executive Director, Lehigh Valley Planning Commission

Work of Design Fellows Mick Ding, A McCullough, and Melita Schmeckpepper

Design framework for the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, an interdiscliplinary project that won an award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 2020

Center Valley

Bethlehem

Allentown

Whitehall

Trexler Nature Preserve Jacobsburg State Park

Easton

Lehigh River South Mountain

Bangor

Appalachian Trial Blue Mountain

Phillipsburg, NJ

Pennsylvania

Design Fellows Program

Delaware River New Jersey

_ Interdisciplinary, Community-Engaged Practice The Design Fellows tell us that the most valuable aspects of the Praxis experience are interdisciplinarity, opportunities to learn how to do community-engaged work, and the empowerment of being part of a flexible, activist practice that can respond to the times. Donor support allows us to create some of our own projects—often those that are most meaningful to students and communities. The energy and talent of Design Fellows, working with the support of faculty, is extraordinary. Fellows from every department and program—Architecture, City and Regional Planning, Environmental Building Design, Fine Arts, Historic Preservation, Integrated Product Design, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Spatial Analytics—bring diverse skills and perspectives to the work. Many of our clients use the term “world-class” to describe the quality of the people and the work that is produced in their collaborations with Praxis Design Fellows. Some feel that the relative youth and openness of Design Fellows shifts the power dynamics of typical professional consulting relationships, and creates more space for shared leadership of a project by community partners. Many projects that Design Fellows have led are outgrowths of their design, planning, and preservation studios—a “Studio +” in which we raise money to help faculty and students extend and apply the learning generated by a studio to better support community action and implementation. These projects are especially powerful because they transform the nature of the studio conversation at school, train students for action, and build long-term mutual relationships with communities that link the lifeblood of a design school—the studio— to concrete, lasting impact in the world.

Design Fellows assisted LISC and the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood CDC with the Historic Home Repair Program (SMHHRP)—which seeks to combat resident displacement through historic preservation.

Delaware Water Gap

PennPraxis

In the words of student Design Fellows, alumni, & faculty "We have been asked to collaborate to envision a bike lane pilot project for Harare, Zimbabwe, currently in early phases of conceptualization, site selection, design development, and implementation framework. This project would be the first of its kind in Zimbabwe, and it is supported locally by a coalition of private, public, and community-based groups. The goal of the project, involving two Design Fellows, is to provide general criteria for a city-wide bike lane system and a site-specific response for the selected pilot project, ensuring its viability, political and communal acceptance, and consequently its replicability. Penn Praxis is a powerful and flexible platform for community and institutional outreach. It allows our students and faculty to offer their skills to address compelling environmental, urban, and socio-cultural challenges. Similarly, this two-way collaboration allows participants on the Penn front to expand their expertise, engaging with different contextual conditions and local actors." — David Gouverneur, Professor of Practice, City Planning and Landscape Architecture

"During the summer of 2020, I was fortunate to work with two Design Fellows. They did research with me while engaging with Praxis' larger community of Fellows. Often research can be solitary, and the structure created by Praxis lead to a very productive research environment. The Design Fellows accomplished more than I hoped. Their work laid the foundation for two different research papers and an NSF-CAREER award (5 years of research support for early career faculty), which I was granted in December 2021. The Design Fellows had incredible cascading impacts!" — Allison Lassiter, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning

"I had the opportunity to work on two Praxis projects, both thoughtfully adjusted to better support my interests, and it was an invaluable summer for building professional connections… During a difficult summer of reckoning around racial and social equity and the roles each of us play within that, I felt incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to work with deeply thoughtful people who believe in the social importance of the work they do." — Ally Nkwocha, Master of Historic Preservation and Landscape Architecture, 2022 10

Design Fellows Program

" The Green Stormwater Infrastructure project was a real-world intersection between design and planning, and our team was able to use our design skills to contribute to a planning initiative that we believe in wholeheartedly. Leading a short-term project for PennPraxis was a great opportunity to engage with a professional client and gain project management experience. It was a special experience for me to share design, writing, and workflow techniques with a Design Fellow, and to gather feedback from professional advisors who work in multiple design firms. This type of quick project with lots of input from people with specialized knowledge was a unique dynamic that I hadn’t experienced in a designer-level job or internship." — Jessica Arias, Master of Landscape Architecture and City & Regional Planning, 2019

"The moment we are living through calls for rethinking norms and working outside of them. PennPraxis gave me the opportunity to do this by designing and teaching in the Design to Thrive youth development program, which allowed me to test out some of my ideas of what the future of public education might look like. Creating a curriculum that focused on student engagement and creativity, instead of testable material showed us, as well as these Philadelphia high school students, that the future of education can be an optimistic one!" — Daniel Flinchbaugh, Master of Landscape Architecture 2022

"PennPraxis offered Michelle Lopez and I an extraordinary opportunity to assemble a group of Fellows from all five Weitzman departments to support the development of an in-depth proposal for a public art project in Philadelphia. These artists, landscape architects, architects, preservationists, and planners each brought unique skills to the table but, more importantly, they brought distinct ways of imagining relationships between space, place, form, aesthetics, community, history, belonging, and civic and social activation. This group of collaborators allowed us to push our conceptual work farther than we could have on our own towards a stronger, more clarified, and infinitely deeper proposal." — Sharon Hayes, Professor, Fine Arts

"PennPraxis and Design Fellows have been foundational in helping us build and sustain a viable research to action partnership with local educational advocates mobilizing around school facilities planning processes. From conducting background research, to supporting the production and distribution of educational and advocacy materials, to pushing out messaging, Praxis and the Design Fellows have lent a variety of resources and support." — Akira Drake Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, City & Regional Planning

"PennPraxis has been the constant in an uncertain environment. I'm a Master of Fine Art (MFA) student, and with many residencies, internships, and opportunities closed due to Covid, PennPraxis enabled us to continue to engage in our practices at a pretty high level, all while learning and being mentored by faculty working on various projects. I've worked on two projects, one campus based, the other outside of Philadelphia, and I've seen the impact the work can have on communities. At its core, the two projects I've been on have centered around community engagement; the first dealing with campus iconography, the second with a community looking to be inclusive of all its members. Some of the most generative moments for me have come from observing and listening to how faculty members tackle these real world issues. This experience has directly translated to my work and practice. Thank you for this experience." — Enrique Morales, Master of Fine Arts 2022

"I graduated from Penn in 2019, and moved across the country soon after. Leaving the many ties the University and Philadelphia have to offer, combined with the inherent isolation of the pandemic, made it challenging for me to pursue any design interests beyond my office. Working with the PennPraxis’ Design Fellows enabled me to translate my passion for rural design and refugee resettlement into a long term project and collaborative initiative. It also allowed me to strengthen my confidence in mentoring and develop strong relationships both with students and alumni at Penn and individuals and organizations here in Texas. With PennPraxis support, I have helped to start a rural design initiative, established opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, and joined the board of a Texas refugee coalition. While it was a whirlwind of a summer, I couldn’t be more grateful for the doors PennPraxis opened and the relationships our team formed." — Lindsay Burnette, Master of Landscape Architecture 2019

"I would like to say thanks to all of you for making our Design to Thrive summer program a HUGE success. Thanks for sharing your knowledge of the world of design and presenting it in a way that educated and inspired (the same way it did a couple of months ago in the zoom meetings with my community). The impact of the program and the memories we created I'm sure will have a profound influence on each one of their lives. They had fun, they learned about new cultures and earned some money to help their families. Mission accomplished, y’all!" — Derek Hixon, a leader of Philly Thrive

“As a native West Philadelphian, I was elated to participate in projects that forced us to think critically about the design process and its beneficiaries while also living through the COVID-19 pandemic, gentrification in Philadelphia, and increasing crime and violence involving our youth. I had often asked myself how can we improve engagement with marginalized residents, and how do we design spaces and cities with positive health outcomes in mind? So it was great to host a 4-week course called Design To Thrive, which exposed local high school students to careers in design. The program allowed us to engage in activities around community building, policy development, video game development, and flying drones. Most importantly, the students learned how they could one day design the future of urban communities of color. Zoning Matters focused on educating and equipping 3rd District residents with information and terminology about how zoning impacts everyone from access to education, healthcare, housing, and most importantly, wealth opportunities. The project's goal was to empower residents to be change agents in their neighborhoods and to vocalize their ideas/ perspectives on neighborhood changes.” — Ebony Powell, Master of Public Health and City Planning & Regional Planning 2023

"The Design Fellows Program was a fantastic platform to connect interesting and meaningful projects with talented and eager students, in a way that generated lots of work, conversation, and experience that may not have happened otherwise. Having the opportunity to work on a project that made a tangible result was a great way to take one of the first steps in the professional world; with real budgets and deadlines and goals, while still having the support and conscientious direction of the University, it was irreplaceably valuable as one of my first projects." — Riley Studebaker, Master of Science in Design: Robotics and Autonomous Systems '21 PennPraxis

EXPERIENCE

Working with Community p.14

Rethinking Cultural Heritage p.16 Work of Design Fellow Xiaofan Wu

Making the Technical Accesssible p.22

Design Fellows Program

Mentoring & Inspiring Youth p.26

Supporting Faculty Initiatives p.30

Fostering the Next Generation of Design Leaders p.34

PennPraxis

Working with Community Praxis is changing the way students learn about community-engaged design, and the way leaders outside the university perceive and engage the resources of design schools. Praxis starts by taking on questions and projects of interest to community partners, and Design Fellows provide research, analysis, communications design, facilitation, planning, architectural design, and programming—whatever is needed to build our partners’ agendas and trust. This goes beyond engagement as community input or consensus-building; centering on community leaders and priorities as the drivers of transformation, and sticking with them longer, allows the work to evolve and the learning and partnership to deepen.

Design Fellows A McCullough, Melita Schmeckpepper, and Mick Ding developed all the visualization of planning initiatives for Future LV, the Lehigh Valley's long-term comprehensive plan.

Design Fellows Yi Shujing and Yue Hue are working to visualize future much-needed bicycle infrastructure in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Design Fellows worked on 24HR PHL, a community dialogue about strengthening nighttime and creative culture in Philadelphia.

Public exhibition of studio work that led to the formation of a Praxis project with 11 rural communities, resulting in the purchase of a slate quarry and the design of a heritage park by Design Fellows Joshua Ketchum, Jayson Latady, and Sharvari Mhatre.

Design Fellow Gabriela Newell worked closely with Latinx business owners in Kennett Square, PA on a plan to protect businesses during the onset of Covid-19.

Design Fellows Program

Source: https://www.corah.live/harare-cyclists-asked-to-pay-licences/

" We collaborated with local partners in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to use spatial analytics to map and understand the music, fashion, and design industries across multiple spatial and social contexts. The result was a comprehensive report with datadriven recommendations to help these industries recover from recent shocks. I’m glad to be working at the emerging intersection of creative economies and city planning. Mapping creative spaces is an incredibly important step in advocating for their support– now more than ever in the wake of the pandemic." - Asha Bazil, Master of City & Regional Planning, 2022

PennPraxis

Lenape Ceremonial Landscapes In 2021, Design Fellows studying historic preservation, fine arts, and landscape architecture worked on two projects for the Ramapough Lenape Nation Turtle Clan (who first partnered with us on a 2017 design studio). Working closely with Turtle Clan leaders in the New Jersey Highlands and later archaeologists from several schools recruited to join the effort, the team surveyed and mapped an area with numerous related stone formations that have ceremonial and historical significance to the Lenape people. The Design Fellows collaborated with Lenape leaders and scholars on a report and technical drawings to document the significance of the formations for preservation advocacy and to advance proposals for further research.

Design Fellows Program

In a second project, Praxis and the Clan Mother Michaeline Mann are heritage consultants on the design of a future state park in Kingston, New York— an important intersection of indigenous water and land routes. The team developed design drawings for a new park trail that would embody the traditional Lenape trail design vocabulary and walking experience. Both projects raise awareness that despite centuries of development, extraction, and erasure, the woods in our region remain alive with the spirit, megaliths, and architecture of Lenape cultural landscapes made from stone.

fi Design Fellows Rohan Lewis, Lizzy Servito, and Aislinn Pentecost-Farren collaborated with Turtle Clan leaders, archaeologists, and other experts throughout the project.

“

As Design Fellows, we were able to provide drone photography, mapping, and drawings to illustrate untold histories of the Lenape people. Working with Chief Vincent Mann and Clan Mother Micheline Picaro of the Ramapough Lenape Turtle Clan to document ceremonial stone formations has been an incredible learning experience. We hope our work continues to illuminate the cultural significance of these landscapes, as we develop partnerships with scholars and create additional interdisciplinary collaborations to push their heritage preservation project forward. — Lizzy Servito, Master of Landscape Architecture, May 2022

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Philly Thrive Collaboration Design Fellows are supporting the from 16 to 75, the Design Fellows work of Philly Thrive, the leading have enjoyed a master class in voice for environmental and how to organize a democratic climate justice in Philadelphia, to movement with a lot of heart. build a coalition of 21 communityThe relationship with Thrive began based organizations invested with pro-bono consulting related in shaping the future of the to clean up of the former refinery city’s massive former oil and site, and evolved into a design chemical refinery. The Design studio with a circle of 11 Thrive Fellows support the grassroots members interested in exploring mobilization of the United possible alternative futures for South / Southwest Coalition the refinery and community through research, interviewing benefits its redevelopment could and convening experts on create. The warmth of the many site contamination and meetings with Thrive, and the housing strategies, preparing mutual respect and responsibility materials, facilitating meetings, that evolved, gave many students analyzing data, and visualizing a new motivation to design and amplifying the ideas of and participate in local politics community leaders. In the during a time that everyone process of working with leaders was studying from home. of Philly Thrive ranging in age

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Working with Philly Thrive transformed my understanding of what meaningful engagement can look like from my position as a graduate student. Praxis empowered us to grapple with a complex redevelopment and remediation process by researching broadly across the development and design fields, while supporting us to fully participate in the neighboring community's effort to organize for equitable development and transparency. By diving deeply into both research and participation, we were able to contribute in a way that allowed for mutual learning and more meaningful engagement. We were lucky to be able to continue this work, which benefited from careful trust-building that was initiated in a studio the semester prior. — Emily Bunker, Master of Landscape Architecture, 2022

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fi Design Fellows Emily u B nker and a J ckson Plumlee helped coordinate a Thrive decisionmaking session; images of a transforming renery by Mrinalini eV rma and iJ ngyu h Z ang; Thrive leaders Derek Hixon and Alexa Ross.

PennPraxis

Rethinking Cultural Heritage Heritage transcends all of the disciplines at Weitzman—it is embodied in the built and natural environment, it influences how we approach and document community histories, it guides our thinking on voice and place, and shapes the way we design new layers of a cultural landscape. At Praxis, new approaches to interpretation of heritage sites and to the definition of the subject matter of preservation efforts animates many long-standing community partnerships, ranging from the design of a 14-mile section of a national heritage corridor to implementation of strategies for community resiliency in the face of neighborhood change.

Design for an Underground Railroad heritage trail by Yubing Ge in a studio supporting the work of Praxis Design Fellows with Voices Underground and the Square Roots Collective.

View of the American Bangor quarry heritage park design by Design Fellows Josh Ketchum, Sharvari Mhatre, and Jayson Latady — part of a plan now being implemented.

Design Fellows supported the preservation of built heritage as a tool for neighborhood stabilization in Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia.

Poster for an exhibition of studio work that led to the formation of a Praxis project with 11 rural communities in the Lehigh Valley.

Design Fellows Mick Ding, A McCullough, and Melita Schmeckpepper developed spatial and economic development strategies for revitalization of rural communities as part of the Future LV long-term comprehensive plan for the Lehigh Valley.

6 18

Design Fellow Xiaofan Wu designed a new amphitheater and expansion of an existing public park on the Jordan Creek in South Whitehall, Pennsylvania.

Design Fellows Program

PennPraxis

Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor Over several years beginning in 2018, PennPraxis led the development of a design and green infrastructure framework for a 14-mile section of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. This section of the D&L—an important gap in the 165-mile long heritage corridor connecting the Lehigh Valley region to Philadelphia— runs through environmental justice communities in Allentown, including the largest Syrian community in the United States, the infamous Walking Purchase, and many sites of historical importance including the place where anthracite

Design Fellows Program

coal was first burned in a commercially successful highheat furnace. Several waves of Design Fellows, including Shengyuan Zheng, Lucy Whitacre, Farre Nixon, A McCullough, and Melita Schmeckpepper, worked on phases of this catalytic project which fused major urban infrastructure for mobility and water management with new public space and heritage destinations, and economic stimulus. Our plan for this section of the D&L was adopted as the primary backbone of the valley’s bike mobility network in the Future LV

fi Heritage revitalization in Allentown, Catasauqua, and Whitehall by Linghui Liao, Shengyuan h Z eng, Margarida Mota, o J shua e K tchum, Xiaofan u W , Shuyang aW ng, and Cari rK ol

Plan, the Lehigh Valley’s longterm comprehensive plan and transportation budget. The US Department of Transportation awarded the project a $21 million RAISE grant in late 2021 to move forward with implementation, and state and city agencies have so far awarded the project another $35 million. Local leaders credit the Design Fellows’ compelling visualization of the potential of the project to transform Allentown’s waterfront and solve neighboring communities’ flooding problems with helping to build broad support for a much more ambitious project.

Strawberry Mansion Historic Home Repair Program

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The ideas and relationships formed during our historic preservation studio enabled Praxis to support the neighborhood’s Historic Home Repair Project, which values preserving the community’s social and cultural fabric alongside its physical fabric. Working at the intersection of preservation and long-term community engagement, Praxis’ ongoing partnership with Strawberry Mansion honors the time community preservation takes and contributes to innovative ways of defining what preservation can be.

To support implementation of the project, Design Fellows collected and mapped data, conducted a field survey and conditions assessment of all properties in the designated project areas, and worked together with resident leaders to develop a “theory of change” to guide monitoring and evaluation of the achievements and outcomes of the project. Fellows will continue to support the Historic Home Repair Program with additional data collection, analysis, and monitoring as the project takes root.

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fi o W rking closely together with resident leaders was an essential part of acheiving sucess on this project

”

— Katie Levesque, Master of City Planning and Historic Preservation, 2019

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community-based programming for additional homeowners including legal support for property ownership issues, estate planning, and financial planning.

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For several years, PennPraxis has supported a variety of heritage and capacity-building projects in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Strawberry Mansion. In 2020 and 2021 Praxis assisted the Local Initiatives Support Coalition and the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corporation (CDC) with the creation of the Strawberry Mansion Historic Home Repair Program—a program that combats resident displacement by supporting community capacity-building, historic preservation, and sustainable homeownership for owner-occupied households of modest income. The program supports repairs to dozens of owner-occupied homes in the neighborhood and provides

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AREA 3

PennPraxis

Making the Technical Accesssible As design professionals, one of our most important roles is making technical analysis legible and usable to many audiences, to guide decision-making and evaluate change efforts. Systems thinking, technical translation, applied research, and the design of demonstration projects and public policy, is work that interdisciplinary groups of Design Fellows and faculty are very engaged in, often with public agencies, and other schools at Penn. Design Fellows have used their skills to support the Housing Initiative at Penn’s work with housing agencies on rental relief policies for the pandemic, the Integrated Product Design program’s redesign of warning systems at the Children’s Hospital at Penn, a City Councilwoman’s effort to communicate measures in a zoning bill to citizens, and the Veterinary School’s initiative to reach farmers and increase the sustainability of agriculture.

Design Fellows Mrinalini Verm and Jiewei Li helped interpret the complexity of the first off-grid, community-based, floating climate lab in the US.

Shown here is web-based, public resource library for farmers and others developed for the Farm of the Future project by Design Fellows Zachery Hammaker and Katie Levesque.

BARTAM’S GARDEN

SLOUGH

Soil remediation strategies for the Philadelphia refinery developed by Design Fellows Elliot Bullen and Rohan Lewis in a research studio with Philly Thrive.

As part of Park at Penn’s Landing engagement project, community partner Make the World Better Foundation gathered design input with South Philadelphia residents using an interactive model, developed by Design Fellows Katie Levesque, Julian Harper, Katherine Payne, and Tobin Stuff.

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fi Mapping and reporting on interviews of renters in Atlanta

Rental Relief Program, Housing Initiative At Penn Since its 2020 onset, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the nation’s economy, and taken a toll on the economic, health, and overall well-being of the lowest income households across the country. At the beginning of the pandemic, cities across the country chose to use federal money to develop local rent relief programs for residents at an unprecedented scale and speed to help residents in need. Design Fellows Gillian Tiley, Sophia Winston, Sean Smith, Adam Ghazzawi, Emily Blanton, and Jason Schunkewitz worked closely with Faculty Director Vincent Reina, PhD and Director Claudia Aiken, MCP at the Housing Initiative at Penn (HIP), an initiative based at PennPraxis, to help 6 major cities develop

Design Fellows Program

rent relief programs, and launch a multi-city study that strengthened the understanding of the impact of these programs on a wide range of households. Design Fellows worked directly with senior housing officials in the most progressive housing departments in the country on a number of key analytical, communication, and evaluation tasks that extended the agencies’ capacity and allowed for information-sharing and economies of scale. The Design Fellows' work launched programs that collectively serve tens of thousands of households, and helped lay the foundation for understanding how the country’s housing assistance systems can best support the most vulnerable households in, and beyond, a national emergency.

“

Being a Design Fellow this past summer gave me a feel for what it might be like on the job as a city planner more so than any other experience I’ve had to date. Knowing that my work potentially had policy implications, gave me a heightened sense of awareness and urgency, I interviewed people navigating housing insecurity in real time; it was a whole different feel from the simulations we did in school. Workshop helped me think about how to approach problems. Design Fellows gave me the space to be ingenious. — Sean Smith Master of City and Regional Planning, 2021

”

The Swine Teac houses the swin facility which re stall with a mor

The dairy is primarily used in conjunction with feed trials for maximizing production. Researchers also study feed additives to combat methane emissions, behavior, and disease prevention. The dairy is primarily used in conjunction with feed trials for maximizing production. Researchers also study feed additives to combat methane emissions, behavior, and disease prevention.

Nearly two-third have adopted th also displays th feeding system, feeding regimes movement.

210 cows make up the Marshak Dairy herd, Each The Swine Teaching and Research Center cow produces 70 pounds or 8 gallons of a dayhouses the swine herd as a demonstration and the dairy yields about 525,000 gallons offacility which replaced the gestation crate or milk a year. stall with a more humane environment. Nearly two-thirds of Pennsylvania hog farmers have adopted this improvement. The swine facility also displays the widely-used electronic sow feeding system, which aims to improve individual feeding regimes without unduly restricting movement.

210 cows make up the Marshak Dairy herd, Each cow produces 70 pounds or 8 gallons of a day and the dairy yields about 525,000 gallons of milk a year.

The Swine Teaching and Resea houses the swine herd as a dem facility which replaced the gest stall with a more humane envir

The dairy is primarily used in conjunction with feed trials for maximizing production. Researchers also study feed additives to combat methane emissions, behavior, and disease prevention.

Nearly two-thirds of Pennsylvani have adopted this improvement also displays the widely-used ele feeding system, which aims to im feeding regimes without unduly movement.

210 cows make up the Marshak Dairy herd, Each cow produces 70 pounds or 8 gallons of a day and the dairy yields about 525,000 gallons of milk a year.

Corn and soy beans are grown on a three-year cycle, while the leased fields are usually in corn or hay.

Corn and soy beans are grown on a three-year

fi Drawings by Design Fellows cycle, while the leased fields are usually in corn or hay. Rebecca Sibinga and a Z chery The fields get a yearly cycle of mushroom soil, Hammaker; agroforestry installation byloosening, and pH correction for acidity. lime, soil 100 units of artificial nitrogen are applied on project partner Propagate eV ntures corn fields and mechanical aeration is conducted

The fields get a yearly cycle of mushroom soil, lime, soil loosening, and pH correction for acidity. 100 units of artificialAsnitrogen are appliedstorage on and increased rain overwhelms absorption aeration capabilities of grey-water/waste corn fields and mechanical isthe conducted infrastructure, waste used for every three years onmanagement both cropland and pastures. fertilization gets introduced into the waterways. There are several rain gardens on the northern part of campus, but they are aging, and struggle to keep up with the amount of water on site.

every three years on both cropland and pastures.

Corn and soy beans are grown on a three-year cycle, while the leased fields are usually in corn or hay.

Farm of the Future

The fields get a yearly cycle of mushroom soil, lime, soil loosening, and pH correction for acidity. artificialare nitrogen areon applied on Corn100 andunits soyofbeans grown a three-year corn fieldsthe andleased mechanical aeration is conducted cycle, while fields are and usually in corn every three years on both cropland pastures.

or hay.

The Farm of the Future advances resources for farmers worldwide. The fields get a yearly cycle of mushroom soil, the mission of Penn Veterinary The wasfor toacidity. convene lime, soil loosening, and pH goal correction 100600-acre units of artificial nitrogen on the merits School’s pioneering peoplearetoapplied analyze corn fields and mechanical aeration is conducted research and teaching farm and applications of creative every three years on both cropland and pastures. through the development of a strategies as the basis for the campus aimed at demonstrating development of new campus humane, climate-forward investments and experiments. techniques for animal-based Design Fellows studied food agriculture in the state of systems, the design of leading Pennsylvania. Rooted in the teaching farms and agricultural school’s commitment to the One school campuses, biodiversity, Health paradigm, the Farm of the soil carbon, water, manure, and Future will strengthen feedback regenerative grazing. They loops between sustainability shot and edited video of farm of land, water, insect and visits and conversation with plant life, and the well-being experts to make technical of animals and humans. information widely accessible. One part of the 7-part symposium To kick off research for the project, addressed youth in 4H and Design Fellows Katie Levesque, Future Farmers of America; all Emily Blanton, Rebecca Sibinga, parts engaged broad audiences and Zachery Hammaker, working including the Pennsylvania with PennPraxis organized a Secretary of Agriculture in virtual symposium on the future high-energy conversations. of farming that created online

“

As the project manager for the Farm of the Future, I am heading the charge on a collaboration of the schools of design and veterinary medicine to improve the sustainability of agriculture and animal health and well-being. Leading a group of other Design Fellows is exciting and challenging. We learn from each other and it fosters community and growth. The energy among us made the summer much brighter. — Zach Hammaker, Master of City and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture 2020

”

PennPraxis

Mentoring & Inspiring Youth Teaching and designing with young people has emerged as one of the most rewarding and creative areas of PennPraxis' work. During the summers of 2020 and 2021, 46 graduate students and young alumni serving as teachers and mentors led intensive design studios in New York and a career exploration course in Philadelphia that graduated 276 youth aged 13 to 18. Program evaluations and interviews showed that the studio programs we developed had a significant learning impact on the youth and on the Weitzman students who designed and taught the programs.

Participants age 13 to 18 who completed our summer career exploration program, Design to Thrive, were awarded skills certification by Penn, in addition to portfolio and resume development, career advising, and introductions to design programs.

Fresh Air Fund youth visiting an art installation on Governors Island as part of Praxis summer studio led by Design Fellows.

During the Summer 2021 program on Governor's Island, Fresh Air youth participated in design classes involving drawing, painting, model making, and many forms of play.

Design to Thrive participants visited Weitzman School of Design Advanced Research & Innovation Lab (ARI) on Penn's campus as part of the summer program in Philadelphia.

Youth participating in engagement for the Park at Penn's Landing developed by Village of Arts and Humanities and Praxis Design Fellows.

Design Fellows Program

PennPraxis

Fresh Air Everywhere Design Studio Our 2020 summer studio with the Fresh Air Fund was designed to operate entirely online, 5 days a week for 7 weeks, to accommodate youth aged 13 to 18 who were house-bound by COVID and the closure of youth programs in New York. Then in 2021, over 6 weeks in July and August, Design Fellows working with PennPraxis led an intensive design course for youth in New York City. The course met 4 days a week and engaged students in hands-on design and making. The home base for this studio was on Governors Island, where students came by ferry to make, learn, and play in a green, carfree park on the water. The team set up an outdoor classroom under tents, and access to a shop for welding and woodwork. PennPraxis delivered the curriculum in partnership with two creative youth-serving organizations in New York

—Beam Center in Brooklyn and The Point Community Development Corporation (CDC) in the Bronx. We structured the studios to allow students to make satisfying independent projects as well as larger group projects over the course of the summer, involving drawing, painting, model making, digital skills, and shop classes. Our studios asked youth to develop proposals for “breathing room,” which they could interpret as places for social activity, reflection, connection to nature, recreation, for exercise of political voice and racial protest, or simply public space designed to welcome teenagers. Skills certification by Penn, portfolio and resume development, career advising and introductions to attainable high school, community college, and undergraduate design programs were a key part of our program.

“

The Design Fellows program is so vital amid the country’s COVID-19 crisis and the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement... I’m glad to have taught in its studio for Fresh Air youth. It made me believe in the agency of the design professional and it opened avenues for me that I didn’t consider. I hope PennPraxis continues down this path of empowerment for the future of the discipline and the communities it is, and should be, involved with. — Dyan Castro, Master of Architecture, 2020

”

fi Design Fellows David Johnson, Dyan Castro, Illyaq Mousavijad, Jun Lee, Hadi El-Kebbi, Nana Ntiriwaa-Berkoh, Monique Robinson, Leah Janover, Amrita Stuetzle, Viola Bordon, Arely Pena, Jing Cao, Juan Carlos Javier, and Taesha Aurora led the 2021 summer program

Design Fellows Program

fi The Design to Thrive summer program was created by Design Fellows Daniel Flinchbaugh, Ebony Powell, Ana Stolle and Larissa Whitney with Derek Hixon of Philly Thirve; many faculty and outside collaborators contributed to the program

Design to Thrive Responding to a request from Philly Thrive that we create youth development programming for young people stifled by lack of opportunity and gun violence on the street, PennPraxis created a design career awareness program for teenagers in summer 2021. Design Fellows developed a curriculum that included tours, tech, and talk with charismatic creators, and opportunities to experiment with many design mediums. The program made excellent use of Weitzman’s faculty, facilities and technology, including the Fabrication Lab, Robotics Lab, Polyhedral Structures Lab, Environmental Modeling Lab, Printmaking Studio, and the University’s Pennovation Works campus.

The youth learned about many areas of creative design action and research, heard from a wide variety of artists, designers, and technical pioneers. A video game designer who led a digital modeling exercise that explored how accessible modeling tools like Minecraft could be used to democratize decision-making was one of the students’ favorites. Due to the overwhelming positive response of the pilot year, PennPraxis is working to raise money to expand the program’s reach to more youth.

“

Sharing a curiosity for design was essential to our interactions with the students and we urged them to look at the world with a critical lens in hopes of making them feel strength in their voices and their capacities to embark on careers to change the world and most importantly, understand that they can all design to thrive. — Larissa Whitney, Master of Landscape Architecture, 2022

”

PennPraxis

Supporting Faculty Initiatives The immense and diverse talent of faculty across Weitzman creates many opportunities for learning, advancing technologies, and student engagement, some of which require seed money to hire graduate students to make the most of them. Every year, Praxis supports some faculty projects by funding Design Fellows to work on timely and important work, particularly ones that generate openings for interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and community impact. These projects allow Praxis to support Design Fellows from every discipline in the school.

Installation of digitally-fabricated, sculpture wall at the Roosevelt Community Center was part of a design-build project led by Weitzman Architecture faculty members Andrew Saunders and Robert Stuart-Smith with Design Fellows Riley Studebaker and Matthew White.

2-3 Studies for Siteless House, an architectural research project led by Masoud Akbarzadeh and Robert Stuart-Smith with support from Design Fellows Jiansong Yuan and Yuxuan Wang. 4

The proposal for the Forum at Penn's Landing, a site-specific public artwork, was led by Michelle Lopez and Sharon Hayes with support from nine Design Fellows.

5-6 Design Fellow Patrick Danahy developed concept designs for the Center for Innovation and Precision Dentistry.

Design Fellows Program

PennPraxis

The Forum at Penn's Landing The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy commissioned an open competition through the City’s Percent for Art Program for a site-specific public artwork at the new 11.5-acre Park at Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River. The competition drew 158 applications from across the country. Weitzman School of Design Fine Arts faculty members Michelle Lopez and Sharon Hayes put forward one of the finalist proposals: "The Forum." Nine Design Fellows from every discipline in the Weitzman School worked with Lopez and Hayes during 2021 to conduct research

Design Fellows Program

and design components of the proposal, which uplifts complex histories of the waterfront. The design references the shape of the 18th century shoreline of the Lenapewihittuck, the name the Lenape gave to the Delaware River, and speaks to the Lenape custom of clearing land along riverbeds for ceremonial assembly. The design also features references to Pennsylvania Hall, an antislavery organizing forum near the waterfront that was burned down. This project enabled students to collaborate on an important civic project that will share the lesser-known narratives vital to the present and future of the city.

fi Design Fellows David o J hnson, Aislinn PentecostFarren, Celine Apollon, e J ssica Lin, u X e Fei Lin, Ashna a J iswal, m U ar Mahmood, Madison Green, Mila (Yiru) aW ng, Shannon Raerty, and Gi-Chul Choe worked with Fine Arts Faculty Michelle Lopez and Sharon Hayes on the proposed design for the waterfront.

Roosevelt Community Center & Library Weitzman School of Design Architecture faculty members Andrew Saunders and Robert Stuart-Smith led a team of Design Fellows who fabricated a unique wall that will help collaborators at Erdy McHenry Architecture to transform the Roosevelt Elementary School (designed in 1959 by renown Philadelphia Architect Clifford E. Garner) into a Community Center that will offer design education. The Roosevelt School goes beyond books to include community outreach and education functions that teach through experiential and tactile means. The central atrium space will be surrounded by tutoring rooms, a recording

studio, community collaboration spaces, and a hands-on maker space that features hands-on robotics and digital fabrication learning for the local community. This central space will include a 2-story digitally fabricated sculpture design by Andrew Saunders and created by Design Fellows in the Weitzman Robotics Lab. The large relief sculpture is based on concepts developed in Architecture studio courses led by Saunders. The sculpture will be a permanent feature of the community center, and an example of the artful outcomes of work with digital technologies.

fi aW ll under construction in the Advanced Research & Innovation Lab (ARI) by Andrew Saunders and e faculty Scott ErdyFellows and Andrew Saunders Design Riley Studebaker and Matthew White

er that will teach kids design technology

y Andrew Saunders and Design Fellows

PennPraxis

Fostering Next Generation of Design Leaders Praxis is working to expand our engagement of young alumni and students as mentors, project advisors, and collaborators. Young alumni have a strong appetite for participation in the Fellows program, especially in projects that are timely, intellectually and socially challenging, and create opportunities to be mentors for younger students. Seeing inspired ideas emerge from past fellowship participants, we have purposefully built more opportunities for projects of this type. This includes the New Rural Collaborative, an action-oriented group of young alumni and students from rural areas taking on design, planning, economic development, and conservation issues, as well as several student-driven projects we have funded.

Weitzman School of Design alumni Clay Gruber, Lindsay Burnette, and Zachery Hammaker worked with Design Fellows Alice Bell, Nicole Chen, Maxwell Johnson, and Erin Monroe to create the Praxis-supported Rural Futures Collaborative, a design initiative that aims to bring design thinking, research, and practice into rural regions across the United States.

Design Fellows Joshua Ketchum, Linghui Liao, Margarida Mota, Xiaofan Wu, Shuyang Wang, Cari Krol and Elisavet Kiretsi exploring the site of the new section of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor they were about to design.

Design Fellows Ebony Powell, Ana Stolle, Larissa Whitney and Daniel Flinchbaugh, and community partner Derek Hixon gathered with Design to Thrive students on the Weitzman School of Design plaza.

Design Fellows Program

"Working at PennPraxis gave me the unique opportunity to lead a team of students to design a quarry as a regional park. Meeting with community and government officials at the local and regional level gave me valuable insight into the mechanisms needed to realize a project of this scale, and the communication strategies that generate community engagement. Collaborating with classmates at PennPraxis gave us a rare opportunity to develop our own design strategies in a lively and engaging student-driven environment." - Josh Ketchum

PennPraxis

"PennPraxis was my first internship where I truly loved the work. I always like the people a lot, but the work is never very exciting-perhaps because I was never given too much responsibility. Here you gave me the opportunity to take the lead, but at the same time, you always had my back. You put a wonderful team together. Every single one stands out with her/his own distinct character, and together we make an amazing team." — Margarida Mota, Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 2018

"PennPraxis became the central venue and ally for putting my design questions into real world scenarios while at Penn. I can think of no greater educational experience than to see how the skills fostered in studio could be used and challenged through engaging with local communities." — Clay Gruber, Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 2018

"For most graduate students, crossing the commencement threshold signifies the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one. The Praxis Design Fellows program explores an alternative by facilitating a multiplicity of constructive ways for alumni to stay engaged with their alma mater. Whether it be through research, design-builds, teaching, or other modes of practice, the Design Fellows program provides a platform for alumni to share knowledge they have gained as junior practitioners with current students, while extending their education through sustained mentorship with current faculty. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of this growing initiative as a recent graduate myself, as it’s given me the opportunity to give back. I wouldn’t be where I am now without the support of others, so I am thrilled to be on the other side of the equation." — Faye Nixon, Master of Architecture and Landcape Architecture, 2019 36

Design Fellows Program

"Receiving support from the school has been indispensable in realizing our project… Our work looks critically and artistically at how groups of people come together, yet, we undertook this collaboration at a time when we could not come together ourselves. Despite never having met in person, the learning community we nurtured over the summer made it so that many of those boundaries were overcome. The team structure facilitated by the support of PennPraxis allowed us to foster one another’s creativity and resilience." — Emilio Martinez Poppe, Master of City and Regional Planning and Fine Arts, 2022 & Emmanuela Soria Ruiz, Master of Fine Arts, 2020

"I had the pleasure of working with PennPraxis, in collaboration with the Beam Center and the Fresh Air Fund, in a program called Fresh Air Everywhere. From the Zoom work sessions from home to the team building activities at Governors Island, this program enriched my summer with meaningful experiences, extremely devoted teachers and students, and an interest in teaching that would merge my passions of architecture and community engagement. It was great to be part of a wholesome program that empowered underprivileged youth designers in New York, and emphasized the power of collaboration in a holistic sense. — Hadi El Kebbi, Master of Architecture, 2022 "My role as a project manager for Praxis's Equitable Zoning Initiative expanded my leadership skills exponentially. I learned how to effectively lead a team of students with varying skill sets, coordinate with stakeholders, and develop long-term community-focused initiatives. I chose to work at Praxis between graduating with my Master's in City Planning and pursuing a full-time job and would not rethink that decision. This experience helped me build connections, confidence, and a portfolio that helped me throughout my job search and new position. My team and I worked hard to create print and social media materials to inform West Philadelphia residents about zoning so they can help shape development in their neighborhoods. This initiative allowed me to think creatively about community engagement, specifically about how education is the first step to advocacy, which then leads to community empowerment." — Gillian Tiley, Master of City Planning & Regional Planning, 2021 PennPraxis

fi Praxis supported Stages of Learning project led by students led by Emilio Martinez Poppe and Emmanuela Soria Ruiz and supported by A McCollough, Matthew Kohman, Reem Abi Samra, and Emily Bunker in 2020 and 2021. The project explored the role of active voice and performance as a mode of learning. In addition to designing and building engagement platforms, Design Fellows provided dynamic print materials to project participants that were specifically designed to serve as both information and documentation.

Contact us: Ellen Neises, Executive Director, RLA eneises@design.upenn.edu • 917-796-3168 Julie Donofrio, Managing Director, AICP donojt@design.upenn.edu • 336-682-0001

PennPraxis University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design 409 Duhring Wing, 236 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 www.design.upenn.edu / pennpraxis / about

D F P PennPraxis University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design 409 Duhring Wing, 236 South 34th Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 www.design.upenn.edu / pennpraxis /