Catherine Seavitt at a studio review (photo: Eric Sucar)
FOREWORD
Landscapes in Process documents a year in the life of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design during the 2023–2024 academic year. This is the 28th issue in this series, and my second as the Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture.
As well as including selected student work, Landscapes in Process provides a summary of the program’s history, philosophy, and curriculum. The issue also includes a record of the events and lectures the department has hosted during the past year, as well as news pertaining to faculty achievements and student awards. Sections are also devoted to the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, PennPraxis, the department’s flagship publication LA+ Journal, and the annual American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) Pennsylvania-Delaware Chapter student awards, for which a select group of students curate a presentation of their work completed during their time at the school.
The core studios for the 2023–2024 academic year included sites in Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. Fall option studios traveled to Long Island, New York; the Netherlands; Switzerland and France; Barcelona and Madrid; Iceland, Greenland, and Denmark; Kisumu, Kenya; and Kingston, Jamaica. Spring option studios traveled to Panama City, Panama; Brussels, Belgium; Lake Okeechobee, Florida; and the New Jersey shore. The geographic reach, variety of scales, and complexity of issues that students and faculty have engaged in these studios reflects our department’s broad ambitions for the discipline of landscape architecture.
I am delighted to welcome this year’s fantastic entering class of landscape architecture students to our department and the greater Weitzman School of Design. I’d like to express my gratitude to Dean Fritz Steiner, to our department’s faculty, and to our talented students for all that they bring to shaping this extraordinary community. In our department home, our stellar administrative team of Eric Baratta, Rae Zarate, and Erin Obszarny keep things moving smoothly, in partnership with so many other members of Weitzman’s administrative staff.
It is my honor to lead the Department of Landscape Architecture as we move collectively and collaboratively into the future. At Penn, we have the capacity and imagination to lead, to advance our discipline, and to embrace diversity and change. Onward!
Catherine Seavitt
Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism
Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture
December 2024
PROGRAM PHILOSOPHY
The Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design was initially established in 1924 and later revitalized under the leadership of Professor Ian McHarg in the 1960s. Over the last 50 years, McHarg’s legacy has been actively and critically extended in a variety of ways by the department’s subsequent chairs: Anne Whiston Spirn, John Dixon Hunt, James Corner, Richard Weller, and now Catherine Seavitt. The Department is recognized internationally for its innovative ecological approach to the design of landscapes, public works, public spaces, and infrastructures. Ecology addresses the rich and entangled web of everyday environmental relationships between living things— humans, plants, and animals—as well as the mineral world. The Department’s faculty and students continue to advance the landscape discipline through design research at multiple scales, from seeds to systems, from urban to rural, and from a multiplicity of positions. A diversity of ecological approaches to our planet’s many natures and cultures is necessary to address the ongoing climate crisis as we work toward both decarbonization and reparative social and environmental justice. Landscape architecture has the capacity to change the earth; we are world-builders equipped with design imagination.
The Department of Landscape Architecture’s professional curriculum supports exploratory independent research and inventive design while encouraging collaborative learning in both the classroom and the field. The curriculum has four distinct interconnected sequences of coursework: Studio, Workshop, Theory, and Media. The sequence works both horizontally and vertically across the three years, encouraging students to expand their critical thinking and creative imagination while gaining techniques for visualizing and realizing their ideas in the world. Advanced studios in the final year of study allow students to select from a wide array of options that investigate critical topics around the world. In their final year, students may also pursue their own independently conceived research projects.
The Department’s landscape faculty is internationally distinguished and provides expertise in design, urbanism, representation, technology, plant science, and history and theory. In their research and teaching, faculty specialize in subjects such as advanced digital modeling, global biodiversity, environmental justice, decarbonization, green energy policy, nature-based infrastructures, cultural geography, environmental
sensing, the interface of nature and technology, and brownfield regeneration. In addition, leading international practitioners and theorists are regularly invited to lecture, teach research seminars, or lead advanced design studios. Together with strong links to the other departments in the Weitzman School of Design and the wider university, the Department is exceptionally wellserved by talented and committed educators and practitioners.
The Department’s flagship research center is the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology. The McHarg Center is active in the core research areas of climate policy and post-carbon futures; biodiversity and global land use planning; public realm equity and reparative justice; and environmental modeling, sensing, and visualization. The Department is represented in the broader public and academic arenas by a prolific array of significant books by faculty and the award-winning biannual journal LA+, devoted to advancing interdisciplinary ideas and expanding critical inquiry through the lens of landscape architecture. Additionally, students may be employed on a wide range of not-for-profit design and planning projects through PennPraxis, the applied research, engagement, and practice arm at the Weitzman School of Design, which champions community engagement and design justice.
The Department offers two primary courses of study leading to a professionally accredited Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA). The first professional degree program is three years in length and is designed for students with an undergraduate degree in a field other than landscape architecture or architecture. The second professional degree is two years in length and is designed for those who already hold an accredited bachelors degree in either landscape architecture or architecture. Students may be admitted with advanced standing into the first professional program depending upon their respective backgrounds. Dual degree programs with architecture (MLA/ MARCH), city planning (MLA/MCP), historic preservation (MLA/MSHP), urban spatial analytics (MLA/MUSA), fine arts (MLA/MFA), and environmental science (MLA/MES) are also available. The Master of Landscape Architecture degree may be combined with many of the school’s certificate programs, three of which—Urban Risk and Resilience, Urban Design, and Landscape Studies—are hosted by the department. The department also offers an undergraduate Minor in Landscape Studies.
HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT PENN
The School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania was started in 1890 with programs in architecture and fine arts (including music and art history). Landscape architecture was first introduced as a subject in 1914 through a series of lectures by George Bernap, landscape architect for the United States Capitol. In 1924, a new department of landscape architecture was founded, with Robert Wheelwright as chair, and authorized to award the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree. Wheelwright was co-founder and co-editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine and a practicing landscape architect. He outlined his definition of the profession in a letter to the New York Times in 1924:
There is but one profession whose main objective has been to co-ordinate the works of man with preexistent nature and that is landscape architecture. The complexity of the problems which the landscape architect is called upon to solve, involving a knowledge of engineering, architecture, soils, plant materials, ecology, etc., combined with aesthetic appreciation can hardly be expected of a person who is not highly trained and who does not possess a degree of culture.
This first phase of the department’s history was brief. The department was suspended for ten years during the 1940s, and from 1941 to 1953 no degrees were awarded in landscape architecture. Though a single course of landscape architecture was offered in 1951, it was incorporated into a Land and City Planning Department founded by the new Dean, Holmes Perkins. Perkins subsequently recruited Ian McHarg to rebuild the program in landscape architecture.
In 1957, landscape architecture was re-established as an independent department offering a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and a one-year Master of Landscape Architecture degree for architects. McHarg obtained scholarships to support eight students and advertised the new program in Architectural Review; the first class of 14 students came from around the world (including eight from McHarg’s homeland, Scotland). In 1962, McHarg, in partnership with David Wallace, founded Wallace McHarg (later Wallace McHarg Roberts and Todd), initiating a close connection between the department and professional practice that persists to this day. With a single exception, tenured faculty in the 1960s were all practicing landscape architects.
The decade from 1965–1975 was one of growth in universities throughout the country, from which Penn’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning also profited. In 1965, a large grant from the Ford Foundation enabled McHarg to establish a new Regional Planning program and to assemble a faculty in natural sciences (meteorology, geology, soils science, ecology, and computer science). In the early 1970s a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health permitted McHarg to add several anthropologists to the faculty and to integrate social sciences into the curriculum. The integration of research and practice in community service has been a long-standing tradition in the department since the 1970s, when faculty and students produced an environmental plan for the town of Medford, New Jersey, and the Landscape Development Plan for the Penn campus.
While enrollment in landscape architecture remained stable during the 1970s, with only a modest increase, enrollment in the regional planning program soared and shaped faculty tenure appointments (all three tenure appointments from the late 1970s to early 1980s were natural and social scientists). By 1985, with changes in governmental policies and reduced funding for environmental programs, the enrollment in regional planning collapsed and many landscape architects on the faculty reduced their teaching commitment and shifted their focus again to practice. Indeed, the department served as a laboratory and launching pad for many new professional practices, with nationally prominent firms such as WMRT (now WRT) and Collins DuTot (now Delta Group) in the 1960s, Hanna/Olin (now OLIN) in the 1970s, Andropogon Associates in the 1970s, and Coe Lee Robinson (now CLRdesign Inc.) in the 1980s.
In 1986, Anne Whiston Spirn was recruited to succeed McHarg as chair with the mandate of extending the department’s legacy and renewing its commitment to landscape design and theory. The task of the next eight years was to reshape the full-time faculty in order to teach landscape architects—now the vast majority of students in the department—and to rebuild the regional planning program in collaboration with the Department of City and Regional Planning. In the 1980s and 1990s the department’s tradition of community service continued with the West Philadelphia Landscape Plan and Greening Project that engaged faculty and students with neighborhood residents in planning and with the design and construction of local landscape improvements.
The 1990s was a period of growing deficits and shrinking financial resources in universities throughout the nation and Penn’s Graduate School of Fine Arts was no exception. Despite these constraints the department has continued to respond to the needs of landscape architecture education and practice. Indeed, since the late 1960s a central idea sustaining the curriculum has been process—process in terms of design, ecology, and social ideas, especially as these relate to the needs of the profession. The addition of humanist and artistic perspectives to natural and social scientific emphases culminated in a major revision of the curriculum during 1993 and 1994.
In 1994, John Dixon Hunt was appointed professor and chair of the department. He continued the department’s strong tradition of chairs as authors and editors and brought an established international reputation as one of the world’s leading theorists and historians of landscape architecture. Between 1994 and 1999, the faculty developed significant advances in the collaboration between design and conceptual or theoretical inquiry, giving landscape architectural design a fresh visibility at the critical edge of practice. Hunt also launched an internationally recognized publication series on landscape topics, the University of Pennsylvania Press Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture.
In May 2000, James Corner, a graduate of the MLA program under Ian McHarg, was named department chair. His commitment to advancing contemporary ideas and innovative design set the ongoing tone of the department, where renewed emphases upon ecology, technology, digital media, theory, and urbanism drive the design studio sequence to this day. His own practice, Field Operations, has produced many well-known works of early twenty-first century landscape architecture including New York City’s High Line. Together with other recognized practices affiliated with the program—including OLIN, WRT Design, Andropogon, PEG, and PORT Urbanism—a strong presence of professional practice greatly enriches the landscape architecture program at Penn.
In July 2003, the Graduate School of Fine Arts changed its name to the School of Design. This change reflected the broader nature of the departments and programs under its domain together with the School’s emphasis upon design. Under the previous Deans, Gary Hack and Marilyn Jordan Taylor, and now with the leadership of Dean Fritz Steiner, the School has enjoyed
a renewed commitment to transdisciplinary work, scholarly and professional leadership, and international visibility—all of which have directly benefited and enriched the landscape architecture program. In 2019, the school was renamed the Weitzman School of Design in honor of a generous endowed gift from the designer and Penn alumnus Stuart Weitzman.
In January 2013, Richard Weller joined the faculty as professor and department chair, succeeding James Corner. During Weller’s chairmanship the department renewed its commitment to social and environmental justice and has increased its international prominence through a series of high-profile events, the establishment of the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, and the production of its award-winning interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture, LA+ Journal.
In July 2023, Catherine Seavitt was appointed as Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, and the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism. She serves as the faculty co-director of the McHarg Center and is the new creative director of LA+ Journal, together with the new faculty editor-inchief, Professor Karen M’Closkey.
A full history of the department can be found in Transects: 100 Years of Landscape Architecture at the School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania (ARDP, 2014).
FACULTY (2023-2024)
Standing Faculty
Catherine Seavitt, Department Chair,
Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism
Frederick Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor
Randall Mason, Professor (HSPV)
Karen M’Closkey, Associate Professor
Christopher Marcinkoski, Associate Professor
Robert Pietrusko, Associate Professor
Sean Burkholder, Assistant Professor
Nicholas Pevzner, Assistant Professor
Azzurra Cox, Assistant Professor
Associated Faculty
Matthijs Bouw, Professor of Practice
David Gouverneur, Associate Professor of Practice
Ellen Neises, Associate Professor of Practice
Lucinda Sanders, Adjunct Professor
William Young, Adjunct Associate Professor
Emeritus Faculty
James Corner
John Dixon Hunt
Laurie Olin
Dan Rose
Dana Tomlin
Richard Weller
Full-Time Lecturers
Misako Murata, Lecturer
Emma Mendel, McHarg Fellow
Keith VanDerSys, Senior Lecturer
Part-Time Lecturers
Javier Arpa
James Billingsley
Tim Block
Carlos Bonilla
Molly Bourne
Greg Burrell
Stephanie Carlisle
Dilip da Cunha
Candace Damon
Anna Darling
Andrew Dobshinsky
Billy Fleming
Oscar Grauer
Vanessa Grossman
Marie Hart
Dorothy Jacobs
Rebecca Klein
Trevor Lee
Yadan Luo
Todd Montgomery
Rebecca Popowsky
Sonia Sobrino Ralston
Demetrios Staurinos
Krista Reimer
Huilai Shi
Jae Yun Shin
Cindy Skema
Alex Stokes
Abdallah Tabet
Brad Thornton
Judy Venonsky
Patty West
Sarai Williams
Sally Willig
Nate Wooten
FACULTY NEWS
Catherine Seavitt was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in June 2024. Fellowship is the AIA’s highest membership honor; this distinction recognizes exceptional work and significant contributions to the profession and society. She also received the John Q. Hejduk Award from the Cooper Union Alumni Association in February 2024. Recent book chapters include “The Miasmist in Cuba: George E. Waring Jr. and the Tropical Landscape,” in Transgressive Practices to Transformative Policies: Landscape Change, Fast and Slow, edited by Maggie Hansen (University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, 2024) and “Essential Documentation: Lúcio Costa and the Modernist Mission,” in Adaptive Reuse in Latin America: Cultural Identity, Values, and Memory, edited by José Bernardi (Routledge Press, 2023). Seavitt’s book review of Environmental Histories of Architecture, edited by Kim Förster, appears in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 83:3 (September 2024). She presented the paper “Plants as Inventors” on the panel entitled Plants as Technological Objects; Plants as Technological Subjects at the April 2024 annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Frederick Steiner was awarded the 2024 Landscape Architecture Foundation Medal in June 2024. The medal is one of the highest awards in the landscape architecture profession and is awarded annually to a landscape architect for “distinguished work over a career in applying the principles of sustainability to landscapes,” exemplifying the values of LAF, and making a significant contribution to the discipline.
Dean Frederick Steiner, recipient of the 2024 Landscape Architecture Foundation Medal
James Corner, professor emeritus, former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, and founder and CEO of Field Operations, was awarded the 2024 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in Landscape Architecture from the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), which represents the worldwide profession of landscape architecture. The award is the preeminent honor for landscape architects and the highest honor IFLA can bestow.
Karen M’Closkey, who serves as editor-in-chief of LA+ Journal, published an essay and three interviews in the Spring 2024 issue of LA+ BOTANIC. M’Closkey also organized the journal’s fifth international design competition, LA+ EXOTIQUE, the results of which will be published in Fall 2024.
Christopher Marcinkoski’s practice, PORT, received seven Honor and Merit awards from state and regional ASLA, AIA, and APA chapters for the following projects: The Park at Expo Idaho, Boise, ID; Fairmount Park Centennial District Vision Planning, Philadelphia, PA; Armourdale Area Master Plan, Kansas City, KS; 8th Street Gateway Park Master Plan, Bentonville, AR; North Franklin Waterside Park Master Plan, Washington, PA; and Invest South/West Public Art Vision Plan (P.A.R.T.Y.), Chicago, IL.
Robert Pietrusko participated in two exhibitions and published four book chapters. “Areal Analog” was exhibited as part of We Are Here: Imagining Space in the 21st Century at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles, January–April 2024. “Invasive Species” was exhibited as part of 20/92 at Icebox Project Space, Philadelphia, January–February 2024. Recent book chapters include “Census and Sensing” in Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, edited by Jeffrey Nesbit and Charles Waldheim (Jovis Verlag, 2023); “The Data of Disasters,” in Pedagogical Experiments in Architecture for a Changing Climate, edited by Tülay Atak, Luis Callejas, Jonathan Scelsa, and Jørgen Johan Tandberg (Routledge, 2024); and “Performing Spaces” in Set Pieces: Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments, edited by Diamond Schmitt Architects (Birkhäuser, 2024). Pietrusko’s essay “Cadence San Vittorino” appears in Scroope 32: The Quotidian and the Enchanted, edited by Fatma Mhmood and Heather Mitcheltree (University of Cambridge, 2023).
Sean Burkholder and Keith VanDerSys of EMLab are participants in a National Infrastructure Innovation Project (NIIP) grant recently awarded an estimated $7 million dollars over the next five years. This project is tasked with the development of innovative coastal resilience projects for the nation’s bays and estuaries along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts; the EMLab will focus on the Atlantic coast from the Delaware Bay north to Maine. Burkholder also contributed the book chapters “Liminal Lakeshores” to Silt Sand Slurry, edited by Rob Holmes, Brett Milligan, and Gena Wirth (ORO Press, 2024), and “The Cottonwood” to 30 Trees and Why Landscape Architects Love Them (Birkhauser Press, 2023). His essay co-authored with Brian Davis and Theresa Ruswick, entitled “The White Ribbon,” appears in the Journal of Landscape Architecture: 18:2-3 (2023). Burkholder’s research project entitled “The Cobble Bell,” developed with his office Proof Projects LLC, received the 2023 ASLA Honor Award in Research.
Nicholas Pevzner presented his ongoing urban silviculture work with US Forest Service collaborators with a paper entitled “Designing Legible Forests for an Urban Silviculture” at the 2024 World Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations. His book chapter “Urban Ecology Lessons for Greening the City” appears in The Green Dip: Covering the City with a Forest, edited by Winy Maas, Javier Arpa Fernández, and Adrien Ravon (nai010 Publishers, 2024). His essay co-authored with Max R. Piana and Richard A. Hallett, “Beyond the axe: Interdisciplinary approaches towards
an urban silviculture” appears in the Journal of Landscape Architecture: Urban Forestry 18:1 (2023). This collaboration between Pevzner and researchers at the US Forest Service explores opportunities for collaboration between foresters and landscape architects on a practice of urban silviculture. Two teams of students in Pevzner’s Spring 2025 Studio VI, The Fire Studio: Wildfire, Forests, Jobs, and Carbon, received 2024 national student awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Oliver Atwood, Caz Gagné, and Elliot Bullen received the ASLA Student Honor Award in Communications, and Andrew Reichenbach and Shuyi Hao received the ASLA Student Honor Award in Analysis and Planning.
Azzurra Cox teamed up with Detroit-based JIMA Studio to design the Legacy at 87 Adams memorial, commissioned by Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tennessee, and supported by Monument Lab. Situated at the site of a former slave auction house adjacent to the present-day church, the project aims to design a space to illuminate and reckon with the many legacies of slavery in Memphis, as well as honor the lives of the people who were sold there. In April 2023, Cox presented the lecture “Narratives of Belonging: Grounding Memory, Sowing Futures” as part of the Baumer Lecture Series of the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University.
Jessica Varner, PhD, was appointed Assistant Professor of History/Theory in the Department of Landscape Architecture, effective Fall 2024. Varner completed her Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art with a public presentation at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in July 2024. Her project “Chemical Desires” analyzes how industrial chemical engineering irrevocably changed modern design and its material practices from 1870 to 1970. Through archival evidence that extends from U.S. corporate records acquired in FOIA requests, architects’ specifications, wallpaper advertisements, and laboratory notebooks, the book explores how BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany), Monsanto (Monsanto, Illinois), DuPont (Wilmington, Delaware), and Dow (Midland, Michigan) moved strategically from selling materia – raw matter – to pushing chemical substances into materials for design and construction with manufactured qualia – qualities in synthetic compounds derived from coal, oil, and gas. From Werkbund-sponsored BASF interior dyes to midcentury plastics lauded by architect and chemical heir Alden B. Dow, the materials scrutinized recast the industrial revolution through the lens of the chemical century. Varner’s research exposes modern design’s chemical modernity as inextricably linked to corporate profits and environmental destruction.
Michelle Delk, a partner with the international firm Snøhetta in New York City, was appointed as the Laurie Olin Professor of Practice in Landscape Architecture, effective Fall 2024. Delk leads the Landscape Architecture practice arm of the firm in the Americas and is a passionate advocate and designer of the public realm, sharing the foundational premise of Snøhetta: to create places that enhance the positive relationships between people and their environments.
Ellen Neises and PennPraxis, in partnership with OLIN, received a 2024 ASLA Honor Award in Analysis and Planning for the framework plan for Sojourner Truth State Park in Kingston, New York. This project began when the 2019 LARP 6010 Studio III changed the course of an approved private development, leading to the purchase of the site by Scenic Hudson, and later the State of New York, for redevelopment as a state park that foregrounded the site’s layered cultural landscape. Through PennPraxis, Neises, Molly Lester of the Urban Heritage Project, and MLA graduates Sergio Viccini, Gi Chul Choe, Rohan Lewis, and Lizzy Servito developed interpretive strategies for the park in partnership with Michaeline Picaro Mann, tribal heritage officer of the Munsee Lenape. The OLIN-led team included Nate Wooten, an instructor in the 2019 Studio III, eDesign Dynamics, Hudsonia, and Matthew Baird Architects.
Matthijs Bouw ’s firm ONE Architecture & Urbanism received a 2023 ASLA New York Chapter Honor Award in the Analysis, Planning, Research, and Communications category for the Financial District – Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, in partnership with Arcadis (prime), SCAPE, Sam Schwartz Engineering, Matrix New World, EY Infrastructure Advisors, BJH Advisors, Karp Strategies, AKRF, and Sive Paget Riesel. Developed with two city agencies and a large, multidisciplinary team, the resilience plan seamlessly integrates flood risk reduction infrastructure into a publicly accessible, multi-level waterfront. The firm’s Sea2City Design Challenge for Vancouver, British Columbia, in partnership with Mithun, received a 2023 WASLA Professional Award of Merit in Analysis and Planning, a 2023 IAP2 Indigenous Engagement Project of the Year Award, and a 2024 CSLA Award of Excellence and National Award in Communications. This nature-based climate adaptation plan for the much-loved False Creek in Vancouver envisions a return to the historic shoreline where Host Nations are active, celebrated partners in the transformation.
Molly Bourne was elevated to the Council of Fellows by the American Society of Landscape Architects in October 2024, one of the highest honors the society bestows upon its members. In its nomination, the New York Chapter of the ASLA noted Bourne’s ability to craft harmonious spaces that blend beauty, functionality, and environmental sensitivity.
ONE Architecture & Urbanism, recipient of an ASLA NY Chapter Honor Award for the Financial District - Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan
THREE-YEAR MLA CURRICULUM REQUIREMENTS
For students with a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree, the total course units required for graduation in the three-year first professional degree program are 28.
Students with adequate prior experience may substitute Landscape Architecture elective courses for required courses with the permission of the instructor and with approval of the department chair. Students who waive required courses must earn at least 22 LARP credits plus the 6 elective credits needed to graduate with the MLA degree.
TWO-YEAR MLA CURRICULUM REQUIREMENTS
For students with a professionally accredited Bachelor of Landscape Architecture or Bachelor of Architecture degree, the total course units for graduation from the two-year second professional degree program are 19.
Students with adequate prior experience may substitute Landscape Architecture elective courses for required courses with the permission of the instructor and with approval of the department chair. Students who waive required courses must earn at least 14 LARP credits plus the 5 elective credits needed to graduate with the MLA degree. Students may register for up to 5 course units per term.
* All 2-year MLA students are required to attend the Natural Systems/Ecology Week of the Summer Institute and to audit LARP 5130: Workshop II – Plants Audit: Landform and Planting Design (the schedule of classes is arranged to allow for these sessions to be offered during the first half of the fall term).
STUDIO I MAPPING, MEASUREMENT, AND PROJECTION IN TIME WISSAHICKON VALLEY PARK, PHILADELPHIA
Critics: Sean Burkholder (coordinator), Azzurra Cox, and Emma Mendel
Teaching assistants: Maura McDaniel, Priyanjali Sinha, and Kelvin Vu
This studio explored the design language of landscape. It introduced students to strategies for seeing, interpreting, representing, and designing within the context of natural and constructed environments. As the first core studio of the landscape architecture curriculum, this studio was particularly focused on seeing and experiencing landscape through various forms of representation as a fundamental driver of design. Based on those previous experiences and their representation, the studio then built to focus on the design of landscape space in time. Studio projects evolved out of the fusion of repeated visits to the site, the representation strategies that documented and explored those visits, lessons learned through precedent studies, and imaginative formal and conceptual explorations. Projects were not understood as complete or final constructs, but instead as negotiations of fixity and change that engaged existing site dynamics, the passage of time, and the design imagination. At the same time, spatial and material specificity was expected in all proposed design interventions. With the straightforward task of designing a garden, students were asked to traverse and record the found landscape, and to then reimagine and project a transformed future that developed their own agenda for the site, drawing out and building upon particular qualities of the landscape.
Rachel Aaronson
Xuliang Ban
Brenton Cai
Hannah Cho
Maeve Fogarty
Thomas Hellman
Madi Howard
Haoyuan Huai
Seoyeon Jeon
Robin Jia
Andrew Kennedy
Qian Li
Lydia Li
Diya Li
Chenyang Liu
Clio Macrakis
Harisa Martinos
Shreya Mehta
Nate Ramsey
Megan Singleton
Ben Stahl
Darren Tindall
Zina Uzor
Liz VanDerwerken
Laura VanKoughnett
Gabe Weber
Zihan Wei
Binyu Yang
Lillian Zhang
Yunzhe Zhang
Yalei Zhu
Zina Uzor, plan (top) and diagram (bottom); Andrew Kennedy, section (opposite)
STUDIO II GROUNDWORK: PROJECTS FOR
THE NORTH PHILADELPHIA RIVERFRONT
Critics: Karen M’Closkey (coordinator), Misako Murata, and Yadan Luo
Teaching assistants: Clarasophia Gust, Mariya Lupandina, and Zicheng Zhao
This core studio concentrated on developing skills and creative sensibilities for transforming a section of the Delaware riverfront in Fishtown, Philadelphia. Through the design of a park, students studied the roles of concept, organization, and form in the formation of new assemblages of public space and the natural world, and in the creation of new relationships among the site, its immediate edges, and the larger region. The theme of “groundwork” provoked thought about the relationship of the existing site and the students’ proposed projects. The studio explored this thematic in three ways: as the foundation and framework for change; as “thick surface” in terms of the cultural and material layers of the site; and as topographic manipulation (this latter aspect of the studio was studied concurrently in Media II and Workshop II courses). The goal of the studio was for students to unite imagination, creative speculation, pragmatic analysis, and technical competency toward full engagement of the broad range of considerations that come into play when making a landscape project.
Rachel Aaronson
Xuliang Ban
Brenton Cai
Hannah Cho
Maeve Fogarty
Thomas Hellman
Madi Howard
Haoyuan Huai
Seoyeon Jeon
Robin Jia
Andrew Kennedy
Diya Li
Lydia Li
Qian Li
Chenyang Liu
Noa Machover
Clio Macrakis
Harisa Martinos
Shreya Mehta
Nate Ramsey
Megan Singleton
Ben Stahl
Darren Tindall
Zina Uzor
Liz VanDerwerken
Laura VanKoughnett
Gabe Weber
Zihan Wei
Binyu Yang
Lillian Zhang
Yunzhe Zhang
Yalei Zhu
Haoyuan Huai, plan (top), model (bottom), and view (opposite page)
STUDIO III PRODUCING REGION
Critics: Ellen Neises (coordinator), Molly Bourne, Todd Montgomery, Huilai Shi, and Nate Wooten
Teaching assistants: Michelle Chan, Jiewen Hu, Jiachen Sun, Kina Voelz, and Zicheng Zhao
The Producing Region studio investigated the interface of industry, movement routes, and ecosystems, including human communities. The studio considered the diverse contributions that environmentally sound industry and healthy, working communities can make to the function, identity, and cultural landscapes of a region. This studio focused on a territory that is roughly 75 miles from both Philadelphia and New York City, encompassed within 5 counties anchored by the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The form, building stock, neighborhood fabric, environmental quality, ethnic diversity, and social structures in this area are direct products of the rise and fall, and now regrowth of industry. The Producing Region studio will explored the addition and excavation of apt and generative layers of a cultural landscape in order to deepen its identities, increase equity and economic access, engage new publics, and energize environmental action. The studio focused on creative means of embodying heritage, including in materiality, livelihoods, innovation, speculation, and social practices – on imagination and new connections between past, present and future.
Kaustabh Banerjee
Sanika Bhide
Fabienne Bick
Joseph Bondi
Deanna Botkin
Devon Bruzzone
Sierra Caley
Hsin-Cheng Chien
Yingzi Cui
Maria Fairchild
Yufei Fan
Yucheng Feng
Youyou Fu
Shubhra Goel
Clarasophia Gust
Harrison Hale
Wenshu Huang
Zuren Kikon
Athena Lee
Chaowu Li
Ruiyang Li
Yingqiao Li
Shangy Liu
Yuqian Liu
Yitian Lu
Peiyao Luo
Mariya Lupandina
Ankita Nagwekar
Saw Yu Nwe
Annie Parker
Nitya Patel
Ravina Puri
Shuying Rong
Lillia Schmidt
Andreina Sojo
Minzhi Tang
Chesa Wang
Qiyu Wang
Zhijie Wang
Xinyun Xie
Fanyin Xu
Yingxuan Yang
Chun-Cheng Yeh
Jiarui Zhang
Shuyuan Zhang
Yi Zhang
Yixuan Zhou
Cassie Zhuang
Maria Fairchild, plan (top), view (bottom), and sections (opposite page)
STUDIO IV CENTRAL PHILADELPHIA FRAMEWORKS
Critics: Christopher Marcinkoski (coordinator), Javier Arpa-Fernandez, Nicholas Pevzner, and Jae Shin
This studio had interrelated focus on equipping students with the capacity to engage in shaping the city and its public realm through the physical design of the urban landscape. The studio utilized Philadelphia as its laboratory, specifically a one-square-mile area east of Broad Street encompassing the Chinatown neighborhood in Center City. Through various research and design exercises, the studio challenged students to become familiar with the communities, issues, actors, and existing realities of the site. Students developed public realm-driven urban design frameworks that incorporated the creation or expansion of discrete areas of public realm; definition of areas of new urban development; and modifications to existing urban infrastructure or the creation of entirely new infrastructures. As the final studio in the core sequence, this studio aspired to impart students with five fundamental capacities essential to the contemporary practice of landscape architecture in an existing urban setting including the ability to read and evaluate the built environment/physical urban form; understand the non-physical systems that structure the built environment; achieve familiarity with the transformative function of the public realm; develop capacity to define and articulate an urban design proposal; and increase familiarity with the built environment of Philadelphia. In addition to these five capacities, the studio integrated a range of ongoing discourse and scholarship related to the shaping of the contemporary city including the 15-Minute City; urban ecology; community development strategies and policies; theories of the urban public realm; and contemporary housing demands and potential solutions.
Xinyun Xie and Chun-Cheng Yeh, axons (above) and model (opposite page)
Kaustabh Banerjee
Sanika Bhide
Fabienne Bick
Joseph Bondi
Deanna Botkin
Devon Bruzzone
Sierra Caley
Hsin-Chien
Yingzi Cui
Maria Fairchild:
Yucheng Feng
Youyou Fu
Shubhra Goel
Clarasophia Gust
Harrison Hale
Wenshu Huang
Zuren Kikon
Athena Lee
Chaowu Li
Ruiyang Li
Yingqiao Li
Shangyi Liu
Yuqian Liu
Yitian Lu
Peiyao Luo
Mariya Lupandina
Ankita Nagwekar
Saw Yu Nwe
Annie Parker
Nitya Patel
Shuying Rong
Lillia Schmidt
Minzhi Tang
Chesa Wang
Qiyu Wang
Zhijie Wang
Xinyun Xie
Fanyin Xu
Yingxuan Yang
Chun-Cheng Yeh
Jiarui Zhang
Shuyuan Zhang
Yi Zhang
Yixuan Zhou
Cassie Zhuang
STUDIO V ISLAND URBANISM: THE KINGSTON JAMAICA STUDIO
Critic: Lucinda Sanders
Assistant critics: Andrew Dobshinsky, Trevor Lee, and Demetrios Staurinos
Teaching assistants: Wing Man Chu and Tian Xuezhu
This studio was designed to be an immersive professional experience embracing research and engagement, including access to government officials, local citizens, and a breadth of consultants as foundations for design. The ambition of the studio was the development of an urban framework linking to a vision for the Waterfront District of Kingston, including the master planning and design of the major waterfront park. Through analysis and research, students formed an understanding of the island of Jamaica and its position in the global context. By shifting scale and utilizing the tools of analysis, research, and local stakeholder engagement, students “read” and interpreted the Metropolitan Area of Kingston and developed an urban framework plan for the core of downtown Kingston intended to connect the major ecological, social, and economic assets of the city. By focusing on the Waterfront District, students defined adjacencies and integrated the framework plan, with an emphasis on the public realm, street and block plans, infrastructure plans, and programmatic uses of the public realm, while phasing proposals suggested implementation strategies. The framework plan formed the basis of a detailed master plan for the new proposed Waterfront Park. A website was built at the beginning of the semester as the repository for student work to be shared with government officials, the Urban Development Corporation, and interested citizenry.
Wing Man Chu
Jiewen Hu
Zitong Huang
Nina Lehrecke
Matthew Limbach
Rachita Saxena
Xuezhu Tian
Zicheng Zhao
Xuezhu Tian, plan (top), view (bottom), and detail plan (opposite page)
STUDIO V SQUARES, OVALS, TRIANGLES AND BARS 2.0: CRITICALLY CONCEPTUALIZING AND CRAFTING URBAN PUBLIC SPACE
Critic: Christopher Marcinkoski
Teaching assistants: Sarah Evantash and Yiding Han
The focus of this studio was the detailed design of a discrete piece of urban public space, in this case Eakins Oval in downtown Philadelphia. The studio engaged critical ideas around the occupation of public space, as well as its making. Students analytically considered the implications of physical design propositions, rather than remaining content with the potentials of abstract design strategies. While the studio was highly structured in terms of its method and rhythm over the first half of the semester, the particular themes and agendas of individual projects that emerged were at the sole discretion of studio participants. The design work undertaken built across five exercises – Immersion: deep and rigorous graphic evaluation/documentation of the Formal, Organizational, Material, and Conceptual strategies employed in an assigned seminal public space project; Hybridization: exploration of potentials to be drawn from the iterative recombination of the essential characteristics of two case studies from the first exercise using AI prompts; Interpretation: construction of both digital and physical models of three selected hybrids models based upon the iterative images produced in the prior exercise using orthographic drawing, digital modeling, and physical modeling; Translation: rapid translation of findings from the Hybridization and Interpretation exercises onto the studio project site as a means of investigating the formal and organizational possibilities of a preferred hybrid logic; and Elaboration: development of individual proposals more fully and synthetically in dialogue with the realities of the assigned studio site. The focus of this elaboration was at the discretion of each project’s authors.
Martha Ashe
Sarah Evantash
Yiding Han
Xinyu Liu
Siyi Lu
Hazel Yimeng Sun
Yuzhuo Wang
Wei Xia
Yiding Han and Hazel Sun, plan (left), views (below), and section (opposite page)
STUDIO V DESIGNING A GREEN NEW DEAL: THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF OUR RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Critic: Billy Fleming
Teaching assistant: Yuanyi Cen
This studio explores climate justice, energy transitions, and the broader policy ecosystem in which programs like the Green New Deal have developed. The studio focused on Greenland’s resource frontier, particularly the region’s uranium mining history. Students developed a set of speculative projects including near-term interventions that focused on monitoring and managing the region’s mining waste crises, food system interventions that sought to bolster or supplement the limited options that come from living in a remote Arctic nation, and longer-term speculations on the ability to both harness glacial rock flour and use the wealth it would create to break Greenlanders out of Danish colonial control. This studio began with a view of Greenland rooted in systems analysis, specifically working with frameworks from the burgeoning field of discard studies and reciprocal landscapes. Both conceptual frameworks helped identify the many sites and non-sites implicated in the mining process. Students were challenged to make the pernicious forces throughout the process legible, to situate work in both the realm of the built environment and the broader public imagination, and to then develop credible, compelling stories about the kinds of social and spatial futures that a just transition might bring to South Greenland.
Yuanyi Cen
Jixuan Guo
Ada Hu
Gunay Mammadova
Maura McDaniel
Keith Scheideler
Jiachen Sun
Shengqian Wang
Ying Zhang
Yining Zhu
Gunay Mammadova, diagrams (top and opposite page) and axon (this page, bottom)
STUDIO V URBAN RESILIENCE STUDIO: LONG ISLAND LONG TERM
Critic: Matthijs Bouw
Teaching assistant: Oliver Atwood
Since Superstorm Sandy made landfall in 2012, New York City has been designing and constructing costly flood defenses in its most populous areas, starting with the various integrated coastal protection systems designed by the studio instructor around Manhattan. Less thought has been given to the suburban areas, such as Long Island, where there is less density. In such areas, the benefits of such systems often do not outweigh costs. Simultaneously, the culture of suburbia can be resistant to integrated, top-down and long-term solutions. This studio explored possibilities for a long-term climate adaptation strategy in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and designed concrete, place-based interventions that rebalance urban and natural systems. This studio considered several factors. First, the New York region is facing a severe housing crisis, with the Long Island suburbs extremely resistant to new housing. Both protective measures and land-use changes require more density. How can we discuss new housing and re-imagine communities that are more sustainable? Second, the current development model of suburbia has serious negative environmental impacts. One significant co-benefit of climate adaptation could be the mitigation of those negative impacts, using natural infrastructure and rewilding, which in turn will increase biodiversity. The third consideration is cultural and political. Long Islanders are in part resistant to “the city” and its “liberal” values, resulting in a Republican political dominance. How can these difficult issues be discussed in such an environment? The aim of the studio was to use design to visualize the challenges and opportunities, to develop strategies, and to innovate and envision the future environments that climate adaptation can bring, in a feedback-process with stakeholders and experts.
Lex Chen
Sophia Chen
Kwan Yu Chung
Yunxiao Fu
Ruth Penberthy
Hassan Saleem
Jenna Selati
Clara Shim
Charlye Stewart
Chen Su
Xinchen Wei
Yuyang Zhang
Leechen Zhu
Ruth Penberthy, sections (top), view (bottom), and diagrams (opposite page)
STUDIO V THE LAKE VICTORIA, KENYA STUDIO
Critics: David Gouverneur, Karli Molter, and Thabo Lenneiye
Teaching assistants: Johanny Bonilla and Derek Deitsch
Most cities in nations of the Global South are growing rapidly, expanding into natural and agricultural landscapes and presenting acute environmental problems, inequalities, and social fragmentation. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of urbanization. Frequently the planning instruments and urban references in these nations are influenced by or copied from other contexts, ignoring local conditions and population needs, and in some cases unintentionally contributing to these problems. This studio focused on sustainable development strategies for five riparian counties along the Lake Victoria Basin in Kenya – Busia, Siaya, Kisumu, Homa Bay, and Migori. The studio offered the opportunity to simultaneously address environmental, social, and urban challenges common to cities of the Global South. Participants were asked to gain knowledge of regional, urban, and site-specific conditions, explore multi-scalar planning and design opportunities, and envision the conditions that make them appropriate, meaningful, and implementable in a city that has not taken full advantage of its unique lakefront location. Findings from this studio developed criteria for planning, design, and managerial strategies that can influence visions for other sites in Kisumu, other lakefront counties in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and the broader region.
Johanny Bonilla
Jingyi Cai
Michelle Chan
Ling Chen
Tao Chen
Stephanie Cheng
Derek Deitsch
Kamya Khandelwal
Mansha Kohli
Shuting Li
Zhida Ma
Sophie Maes
Leah Martins-Krasner
Marcus Owens
Lauren Pawlowski
Caroline Schoeller
Kina Voelz
Leo Wagner
Zhou Wang
Johanny Bonilla and Caroline Schoeller, plan (left) and detail plan (opposite page)
STUDIO V BREATHING ROOM STUDIO+
Critic: Abdallah Tabet
Teaching assistant: Illa Labroo
Studio+ is an initiative of the Weitzman School of Design coordinated by PennPraxis that creates a vehicle for interdisciplinary collaboration on projects that are planned, designed, built, implemented, and programmed in partnership with a community – in this case, a high school community in West Philadelphia. The Breathing Room, the third iteration of Studio+, created an outdoor wellness space at Sayre High School. This design/build studio was tailored to Landscape Architecture students interested in a fast-paced process of problem-solving, material exploration, fabrication and building techniques, and social design through immediate improvements to a small site. The team studied the effect of the Breathing Room space on mental health using a focus group approach led by Penn’s Center for Public Health. The studio engaged teenagers in all aspects of data collection and analysis, strengthening the STEM curriculum and participatory planning processes for future improvements to the school environment. Students’ design efforts and learning experience were supported by students and faculty in Weitzman’s Environmental Building Design program, who provided technical analysis of the existing conditions and proposed design interventions, and the City Planning program, who developed a plan to strengthen Sayre’s relationship to the community and to collaborate with the Philadelphia Healthy Schools Initiative and other advocates to stimulate wider action to increase equity of school facilities city-wide.
Mira Hart
Shuyan He
Sneha Kakkadan
Illa Labroo
Yuming Lu
Lucia Salwen
Alexis Tedori
Mengjie Wang
Shuyan He, photos (left and opposite page); the studio’s collective courtyard rendering (above)
STUDIO VI CONSPIRACY AS METHOD:
DESIGN NARRATIVES OF ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
Critic: Robert Gerard Pietrusko
Teaching assistant: Wing Man Chu
This studio was a thought experiment; it proposed that the intentional design of conspiracy theories can help us imagine new and ambitious configurations of narrative, technology, politics, and institutions that might productively govern the environment in the face of climate uncertainty. It also proposed that landscape architects are uniquely suited to communicate complex political and ecological processes to a broad public through a synthesis of landscape analysis, design representation, and filmic storytelling.
Wing Man Chu
Jixuan Guo
Shuyan He
Ada Hu
Sneha Kakkadan
Jiachen Sun
Kelvin Vu
Mengjie Wang
Yuzhuo Wang
Ada Hu and Yuzhuo
Wang, montages (left and opposite page)
STUDIO VI THE BIG O: DESIGNING SPECULATIVE PASTS, IMAGINING LACUSTRINE FUTURES
Critic: Sean Burkholder
Teaching assistant: Hassan Saleem
Lake Okeechobee is a shallow freshwater lake in the center of southern Florida. At over 700 square miles in area and an average of less than 10 feet of depth, it is a giant sawgrass-filled puddle that over the last century has been transformed from the dynamic center of southern Florida’s hydraulic system to what is today a continuous effort to maintain the lake as a highly managed reservoir. The lake and the region face challenges of social justice, agriculture management, politics, environmental pollution, infrastructure, and so on. This studio used the strategy of counterfactual speculation (sometimes known as recasting) to imagine how alternative historical scenarios could assist in building more contextual and just futures. As a pedagogical exercise, counterfactual thinking requires a solid grasp of the past events of any given place, where other forms of speculative design thinking can, and often do, ignore these events or their interdependency. Speculations are based on how things work (or worked) within a particular context. In the studio, students were asked to develop a strong understanding of local landscape history to craft alternatives that both remained logical and served a particular persuasive purpose. Simply put, students designed different presents, based on creatively reconfigured pasts, to inspire future decision-making.
Jiewen Hu
Nina Lehrecke
Gunay Mammadova
Maura McDaniel
Hassan Saleem
Keith Scheideler
Caroline Schoeller
Xuezhu Tian
Wei Xia
Yining Zhang
Maura McDaniel, context plan (above) and comic illustrations (left and oppostie page)
STUDIO VI A SMALL TOWN ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE (STAR) STUDIO: CLIMATE POLITICS AND DESIGN BEYOND THE GLOBAL CITY
Critics: Billy Fleming and Rebecca Popowsky
This studio, funded in part by Rutgers University’s Megapolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH) National Science Foundation grant, explores strategies for accelerating climate adaptation projects in the small and medium-sized towns of the mid-Atlantic region. At a high-level, the project aims to develop down-scaled climate datasets, computational flood risk models, and build strong relationships with local climate and environmental activists and policy-makers that might allow towns like Atlantic City, Toms River, and Hazlet to compete with cities like New York and Philadelphia for state and federal climate infrastructure funding. Transdisciplinary and cross-institutional work are as crucial as they are challenging in the fog of the climate crisis. The course included seminars and workshops with climate and environmental justice advocates operating in the region; a series of short knowledgebuilding exercises including planning and design charrettes, key informant interviews, and collective fieldwork during the trip; and a final exhibition that served as a menagerie of ideas, tools, and curricular interventions aimed at bolstering support for climate adaptation funding in the small and medium-sized towns of the Mid-Atlantic.
Kwan Yu Chung, Laura Mueller-Soppart, Zhou Wang, Mira Hart, Yiming Yan, map
Johanny Bonilla
Kwan Yu Chung
Yunxiao Fu
Mira Hart
Nissim Lebovits
Laura Mueller-Soppart
Ruth Penberthy
Lucia Salwen
Anushka Samant
Priyanjali Sinha
Delfina Vildosola
Zhou Wang
Xinchen Wei
Yiming Yan
Chenxi Zhu
Yining Zhu
Johanny Bonilla and Priyanjali Sinha, diagrams (above and left)
URBAN DESIGN RESEARCH STUDIO
THE CIUDAD DE PANAMÁ STUDIO: CONNECTING ECOLOGIES
Critics: David Gouverneur and Oscar Grauer
Teaching assistant: Kina Voelz
The United States exercised control of the Panama Canal from its inauguration in 1914 until December 1999. During the extended period in which this interoceanic corridor was under the administration of the US, a 553 square-mile controlled-access area adjacent to Ciudad de Panamá was established known as the Canal Zone. It was perceived as an enclave with very different urban and environmental conditions than many of the urban areas “outside of the gates” with their lack of infrastructure and higher poverty rates. For Panamanians, the Canal Zone represented colonial and military occupation. When the Canal Zone reverted entirely to Panamá, the government carefully analyzed what to do with this former military enclave. To preserve its ecological, urban, architectural, and historic legacy, it was designated as a Protected Natural and Heritage area and renamed “La Ciudad del Saber” or the City of Knowledge. Today, it is a large-scale and campus-like district of both public and private educational, institutional, and cultural facilities.
This studio, which focused on three sites within and near the Canal Zone, offered students the opportunity to explore connections, from regional to site-specific, and aimed to balance environmental with contemporary urban and social demands through an ecological/landscape-driven approach. Students were asked to consider strategies that would protect and enhance the rich tropical habitats and explore how territorial habitat corridors can better integrate with existing urban districts and emergent urban areas. Additionally, students were asked to consider the historic evolution of the site and the adjacent areas, to address issues of cultural identity, social justice, and environmental responsibility.
Xinyu Liu, and Siyi Lu, Hazel Sun, and Ying Zhang, section (above), view (opposite, top), and view (opposite, bottom)
Martha Ashe
Yuanyi Cen
Michelle Chan
Sarah Evantash
Yiding Han
Zitong Huang
Illa Labroo
Xinyu Liu
Siyi Lu
Rachita Saxena
Charlye Stewart
Hazel Sun
Alexis Tedori
Kina Voelz
Shengqian Wang
Ying Zhang
Zicheng Zhao
WORKSHOP I ECOLOGY AND BUILT LANDSCAPES
Instructors: Sarah Willig and Marie Hart
Teaching assistant: Lillia Schmidt
The purpose of Workshop I is to continue the work of the Summer Institute aimed at introducing students to the varied physiographic provinces and associated plant communities of the greater Philadelphia region; characterizing and analyzing plant communities considering the connections between climate, geology, topography, hydrology, soils, vegetation, wildlife, and disturbance, both natural and anthropogenic; learning the local flora including plant species identification, an understanding of preferred growing conditions, and potential for use; and drawing and examining the concepts of ecology and design through representation culminating in a final project that synthesizes field observations.
Over the course of the semester, the class visited natural areas representative of regional physiographic provinces with sites extending from the barrier islands of New Jersey to the first prominent ridge of the Appalachian Mountains. To better understand the diversity of plant communities in a particular location, the class looked at a sequence of sites with varying bedrock, topographic position, and disturbance history. In the field, students used qualitative techniques that involved looking at aerial photography and mapping of topography, geology, and soils. They also conducted onsite investigations of soils, vegetation structure and composition, the presence of wildlife, and evidence of disturbance.
Xuliang Ban, field guide detail
WORKSHOP II LANDFORM AND PLANTING DESIGN
Instructors: Anneliza Kaufer, Dorothy Jacobs, and Judy Venonsky
Teaching assistants: Annie Parker and Zhijie Wang
Workshop II examined two of the primary tools in the practice of landscape architecture: grading and planting design. The course incorporated a combination of lectures, guest speakers, discussions, field trips, hands-on exercises, and student presentations. Students had the opportunity to apply the principles of grading and planting to their concurrent Studio II projects. The first section of the course aimed to provide an appreciation of landform as an evocative component in the design vocabulary as well as a critical tool in solving difficult design problems. Topics included: reading the surface of the earth (contours and signature landforms); grading basics (calculation of slope, interpolation, slope analysis); leveling terrain (creating terraces on slopes); and the flow and management of water, circulation, grade change devices, and road grading. Workshop II also provided a working overview of the principles and processes of planting design, with plants considered both as individual elements and as part of larger dynamic systems. The role of plants as a key element in the structural design of the landscape was explored through a combination of modeling, plan and section drawing, temporal studies, writing, and case studies. Emphasis was placed on process and evolution of planting design, the temporality of planting, and the establishment and maintenance of plantings. The course concluded with a five-day field ecology session taught by Sarah Willig focusing on techniques of urban revitalization, sustainable land use, reclamation, and restoration, with field trips offering insight into a diversity of approaches that use plants to promote positive environmental change.
Maeve Fogarty, Madi Howard, Andrew Kennedy, and Harisa Martinos, grading plan project montage
WORKSHOP III SITE ENGINEERING AND WATER MANAGEMENT
Instructors: Anneliza Kaufer, Anna Darling, and Rebecca Klein
Teaching assistants: Sneha Kakkadan and Xinyu Liu
Building upon the skills and concepts developed in Workshops I and II, this intermediate workshop focused on the technical aspects of site design, with an emphasis on landscape performance. Technical proficiency with basic grading principles and site engineering systems – ranging from general site grading to more complex systems such as stormwater management and roadway alignment – is a critical component of landscape architecture. Functional considerations related to landscapes and their associated systems including circulation, drainage and stormwater management, site stabilization, and remediation were explored as vital and integral components of landscape design, from concept to execution. Lectures, site walks, case studies, and focused design exercises enabled students to develop facility in the tools, processes, and metrics by which landscape systems are designed, evaluated, built, and maintained. In concert with the concurrent design studio, students considered the means by which functional parameters could give rise to the conceptual, formal, and material characteristics of designed landscapes.
Workshop IV focused on the process of communicating design intent with construction documents and how those documents are used to bring the design to fruition. Using their combined professional experience, the instructors used actual projects as a platform to demonstrate the range of elements and processes required. Knowledge was shared using a combination of lectures, discussions, and site visits to Philadelphia landscapes. Lectures focused on construction drawing standards, while site visits focused on details, materiality, and site systems. Topics covered included: preparation of construction documents; industry standards and the role of construction drawings and specifications; evolution of documentation through a project; organizational strategies; review of materials and site systems; coordination with allied disciplines and the development of construction details; and the review of construction precedents and typical sequences that influence design and documentation.
MEDIA I DRAWING AND VISUALIZATION: CO-CREATING WITH MEDIA
Instructors: Yadan Luo and Dorothy Jacobs
Teaching assistants: Mariya Lupandina and Caroline Schoeller
As the first course in the Media sequence, this course aimed to introduce students to multiple forms of media to develop a toolset for experimentation, craft, and the representation of design projects. This course explored the strengths, limitations, and unique characteristics of multiple media operations and tools, both physical and digital. Students were expected to balance craft and precision with experimentation and invention through the production of drawings and models. Along with these technical skills, students learned how to evaluate their work through close and critical examination. The process of co-creating with media began during an initial site visit and continued throughout the semester. Each week introduced specific media and workflow operations that students could employ to complete assignments. Ultimately, students distilled a coherent narrative from previous assignments into a complete set of drawings and a final presentation.
Gabe Weber, mixed-media photomontage
MEDIA II DIGITAL MEDIA: FUNDAMENTALS OF 3D MODELING
Instructor: Keith VanDerSys
Teaching
Assistants: Kwan Yu Chung and Junyi Yang
This second course in the Media sequence provided an intensive hands-on inquiry into the exploration, enhancement, and extrapolation of digital media and the subsequent modes of conceptual, organizational, and formal expression. Through a series of working labs, students were introduced to various software applications and numerically driven techniques as a means to learn rigorous surface construction and control through form processing. Instead of understanding computer modeling simply as an end, this course considered digital media as a compulsory tool in design processes. The course provided students with the necessary digital modeling techniques to explore and examine precision georeferenced landforming strategies. These models provided a basis to speculate on what processes and programs might be engendered or instigated. Through an emphasis on generative analysis, this course addressed the increasing recognition that temporal and relational techniques are explicit components of analysis and formation. This course addressed appropriate strategies for managing and converting data and methods for streamlining workflow through various computer applications. Rhino 7 was the primary modeling platform. Associated Grasshopper plug-ins helped extend the toolset and ArcGIS Pro facilitated the collection and analysis of extent data. The Adobe Creative Cloud was also used for documenting and expressing modeling processes through static and time-based visualizations.
Andrew Kennedy, section
MEDIA III DIGITAL MEDIA: LANDSCAPE AND DIGITAL DYNAMICS
Instructors: Robert Pietrusko and Keith VanDerSys
Teaching assistants: Kwan Yu Chung, Xinyu Liu, and Yuming Lu
Media III continued the curricular emphasis on visual communication and methods of generative analysis for design. As with Media II, students embraced iteration as a process of computational exploration and as a means to understand landscape systems. This course delved deeper into the collection and control of information – from the scale of GIS to site metrics and embedded sensors – and focused on modeling, parsing, and simulating landscape systems/ media as topological, recursive, and spatio-temporal patterns. Students worked with multiple datasets and created parametric tools to draw out significant thresholds and distinguish consequential thresholds and effects. By using parametric attributes, terrain, surface and site were treated as integrated with the larger geophysical, ecological, and environmental exchanges of landscape. Labs incorporated GIS, Rhino, Grasshopper and AfterEffects. Each software package was approached in terms of creating recursive interactions of attributes within a single program/range of scales and in handling attribute data such that it could be accessed, reintegrated, and represented across multiple spatial and temporal scales. In addition, animation software and cinematic collation were explored for their ability to both notate and incorporate dynamic forms of narration.
Instructors: Nicholas Pevzner and Stephanie Carlisle
Teaching assistants: Oliver Atwood, Sneha Kakkadan, Rachita Saxena, and Mengjie Wang
Urban ecology describes the interaction of the built and natural environment. Using the conceptual framework of socio-ecological systems, this course introduced students to the core concepts, processes, and vocabulary of contemporary urban ecology theory, research, and practice. It empowered students to analyze and interpret ecological systems and processes, and to develop more ecologically sound landscape design strategies. A combination of lectures, critical reading, and guest speakers explored the mechanisms underpinning ecological function and performance in urban ecosystems. Through a series of assignments, students applied principles gained in class to diagram and analyze the ecological processes operating on sites. By analyzing the application of ecological concepts in the design and management of urban landscapes, this course prepared students to understand the city as a dynamic, human-influenced system.
THEORY I HISTORIES AND THEORIES OF LANDSCAPE AND ENVIRONMENT
Instructor: Catherine Seavitt
Teaching assistants: Annie Parker, Lucia Salwen, and Chesa Wang
This course introduced students to relevant topics, themes, and sites that help us understand the conception, production, evolution, and reception of designed and found landscapes throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. It aimed at building an understanding of landscapes as both physical spaces and cultural constructions at the nexus of art and science. We also explored how our understanding of landscapes contributes meaning to our relationships with nature and more-than-human species. We examined the deep history and development of the designed landscape in the United States, beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) and foregrounding the entangled roles of the plantation economy, Indigenous knowledge, and settler colonialism. The study of Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted presents an entry point for examining immigration, the landed gentry, and the laboring classes through Olmsted’s nineteenth-century journalist’s perspective in The Cotton Kingdom (1861) as well as the development, displacement, and public health narratives that emerged with the construction of Central Park on the cusp of the Civil War. The early twentieth-century development of national parks and the narrative of the American wilderness are considered as parallel to the ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples; the course also examined contemporary scholarship on traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous worldviews. Literature, poetry, and performance art were included as part of a holistic approach to reading and exploring land practice.
THEORY II CRITICAL THINKING FOR LANDSCAPE DESIGN
Instructors: Ellen Neises and James Billingsley
Teaching assistants: Joe Bondi, Lucia Salwen, and Yining Zhu
Li, drawing
This course explored modes of critical thinking about designed landscapes in order to strengthen students’ critical practices, and to stimulate interest in deeper inquiry into the potentials of landscape. The aim was to equip students with some of the vocabulary, frameworks, tools, and texts to allow them to open landscape projects to wider and more imaginative understanding, appreciation, and critique. Through reading, writing, presentations of projects, and conversation, the course fortified students’ capacity for analysis of design conceptualization, techniques, and built work.
Yingqiao
ELECTIVE COURSES
Topics in Representation (fall)
PLANT FUTURES: SPECULATIVE LANDSCAPES OF THE NOVEL PLANT
Instructor: Misako Murata
In this course, students were asked to reimagine the fundamental material of landscape – plants. The adaptive nature of plant life has allowed civilizations to alter plants to satisfy human desires which include increased crop yield, resistance to disease, resiliency to environmental pressures, and enhancing aesthetic traits. These alterations to plants have considerable impacts on the aggregation, organization, and design of landscapes. Recent advances in the sciences are embedding an entirely new set of properties into plant life that radically modify and expand the performative range of these plants and the potential landscapes they inhabit. Using both analog and digital techniques including AI software, students observed, re-examined, and designed possible novel plants while critically and playfully investigating their future. This course focused on the power of representation to explore these plant futures and use drawings as a projective practice and a form of exploration to reconsider plants and expand their range of expression.
Topics in Representation (spring)
DISEGNO = DRAWING = DESIGN
Instructor: Laurie Olin
Disegno is the Italian word for both drawing and design. It carries a complex meaning in art and architecture involving both the ability to make a drawing and the intellectual capacity to invent a design. These two activities have been considered linked from Renaissance times on, and for good reason. This class emphasized the practice of looking and seeing the world and its visual phenomena more carefully and responding, while examining the record of others’ efforts to do so. Drawing is more about seeing and thinking than it is about wriggling the wrist or dexterity. Sketching and drawing is a way of discovering and knowing, of slowing oneself down long enough to perceive something carefully, to analyze and think about it – literally of being present. It is also a tool for speculation and exploration, for representing new possible physical situations and examining things that don’t exist (yet). It is free, doesn’t require electric power, is portable, flexible, personal, and strangely satisfying. The course consisted of freehand drawing in several media, with some interest in (but not limited to) landscape.
Keith Scheideler, Disegno = Drawing = Design
Topics in Professional Practice (fall)
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP: RESEARCH AND ACTION FOR DESIGNERS
Instructor: Lucinda Sanders
This course was designed specifically to bring forward the voices of emerging landscape architects and designers, thereby enhancing the efficacy and agency of landscape architects as well as other interested and allied designers. The course has grown out of years of personal observation that many landscape architects and other designers have deep and thoughtful voices, but the influence of that thought is far too often shallow. The world of the twenty-first century needs more people who think systemically the way that landscape architects and other conscious designers demonstrate. But this is not simply a matter of producing more landscape architects or designers; it is a matter of simultaneously deepening criticality and exposing emerging landscape architects and designers to the power of their own voices. This process has the potential to inspire more designers to step forward and to lead the significant conversations of the twenty-first century. This course intended to provide a platform from which students could further this journey of positive transformation of the self and of society.
Topics in Professional Practice (spring) UNRULY PRACTICES
Instructors: Rebecca Popowsky and Sarai Williams
The widening gap between the work that urgently needs to get done and the work that can be done in current professional practice is driving a generation of landscape architects, architects, and planners to search out and create new mechanisms for purpose-driven design action. This course followed two parallel tracks – one focused on skillbuilding and one focused on studying practices and practitioners who are redefining what it means to provide design services. The course was intended to set students up to carry research and/or activist agendas into professional practice. Skills introduced included research methods, grant writing, and business and career planning. Students led weekly conversations with change-making practitioners. This course allowed students who had already developed their own lines of inquiry in previous courses to build upon that work. The course had a landscape focus, but bridged into adjacent fields, including architecture, planning, fine arts, and product design.
ENVIRONMENTAL READINGS (spring)
Instructor: Fritz Steiner
This interdisciplinary seminar explored the green thread and analyzed its influence on how we shape our environments through design and planning. The course had three parts. Throughout, the influence of literature on design and planning theory was explored. The first part focused on the three most important theorists in environmental planning and landscape architecture: Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., Charles Eliot, and Ian McHarg. The second part of the course critically explored current theories in environmental planning and landscape architecture. Topics included: frameworks for cultural landscape studies, the future of the vernacular, ecological design and planning, sustainable and regenerative design, the languages of landscapes, and evolving views of landscape aesthetics and ethics. In the third part of the course, students built on the readings to develop their own theory for ecological planning or, alternatively, landscape architecture. While literacy and critical inquiry were addressed throughout the course, critical thinking was especially important for this final section.
Topics in Digital Media (fall)
BAYWATCH
Instructors: Keith VanDerSys and Sean Burkholder
The Delaware estuary is an unparalleled economic and ecological resource to our region. Yet the lives it sustains, human or otherwise, are increasing imperiled by its ever-changing dynamics. While landscape architects may make claims to coastal resilient expertise, they know little of the environmental information and modeling that forms the foundations in which estuarine dynamics are conceived, projected, and managed. As such, this course introduced students to the practical and speculative opportunities afforded through data collection and modeling of hydrological processes, both computationally and physically. Through hands-on field collection exercises and in-class demos, students were introduced to an array of sensing and modeling tools such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV); GPS survey receivers; hydrodynamic simulation modeling (SRH-2d/ ADCIRC/ SLAMM); and physical flume modeling. In addition to on-site collection trips and software demos, the seminar was supplemented with readings and discussions around theories of “media ecology” as a method to conceptually ground the work beyond a simple fascination with landscape metrics. The seminar also partnered with local and federal representatives who are currently working on the coastal wetlands of New Jersey.
Mira Hart, Yining Zhang, and Yining Zhu, Baywatch
Topics in Digital Media (spring) TYPES AND SPECIMENS: REPRESENTING THE SITUATED INFORMATION OF PLANTS THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA
Instructor: Sonia Sobrino Ralston
From dried samples in herbaria to digital models in online servers, the world of plants is significantly more complex than digital and analog databases might initially suggest. As beings living amidst many social, political, and ecological contexts, plants and their variations convey situated information that often our current representational tools neglect to capture. This course explored plants through digital media tools to trouble the type specimen. Focusing on plants adapted to the northeast region, students developed representations that demonstrate how plants vary individually and respond idiosyncratically to their environments. Using 3D scanning and Blender, students developed representations of plants based on herbarium reference material and live plant samples to create drawings, 2D and 3D animations. These representations pointed to, among other themes, the many ways that plants change over the course of their lifecycles, as well as how they are physiologically affected by environmental changes or stressors such as pollution. The final project culminated in the development of a digital garden to be represented through a digital medium of the students’ choosing. Course material was supported by reading on environmental history and theories, lectures, and field trips to local collections, living and dead.
Topics in Construction, Horticulture and Planting Design (spring) BUILD IT!
Instructor: Abdallah Tabet
The detail is the moment of intersection between the conceptual and the practical, born out of the designer’s effort to merge an idealized vision with a set of imposed – and often conflicting – parameters and constraints. For some, the detail may contain the essence of a project, a representation of the idea made manifest. Yet it may also be the reason the whole thing falls apart. Through case studies of exemplary projects, lectures, discussions, and design exercises involving drawing, modeling, and fabrication at a range of scales, this seminar course explored detailing as an idea, as a process, and as a vital component of design practice and construction methodology. This course offered students the opportunity to develop a strong grounding in the logic and language of details, supporting continued inquiry and critical engagement with design.
Hazel Sun, Types and Specimens
Topics in Construction, Horticulture and Planting Design (fall) UNDERSTANDING PLANTS
Instructor: Cindy Skema and Tim Block
This course provided an opportunity to learn about plants from varied perspectives: organismal, applied/practical, aesthetic, environmental, and evolutionary. Utilizing the plant collection of the Morris Arboretum as a living laboratory and the expertise of arboretum staff, this course brought all students – novices and experts alike – to a better understanding of plants. The backbone of this course focused on temperate woody plant identification, including natives and commonly cultivated ornamentals. Intercalated with this plant ID backbone was an introduction to plant form, families, reproduction, propagation, and evolution – all the topics necessary to grow a more sophisticated knowledge of these phenomenal living organisms.
Topics in Ecological Design (fall) RECLAMATION OF LARGE-SCALE SITES
Instructor: William Young
This course provided an in-depth exploration of key concepts in ecology, practical applications, remediation of brownfields, and carbon capture techniques. The course aimed to equip students with a comprehensive understanding of ecological principles and their real-world applications. Through a combination of lectures, discussions, case studies, and hands-on projects, students developed critical thinking, problem-solving, and research skills relevant to the field of ecology. The course also delved into the ecological implications of human activities and explored innovative strategies to mitigate environmental challenges.
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES AND LANDSCAPE PRESERVATION (fall)
Instructor: Randy Mason
This course combined the topics of cultural landscape studies and landscape preservation to explore cultural landscape as an idea, a tradition, a type of place, a research agenda, and a mode of preservation and design practice. The abiding goal was to explore and advocate for cultural landscape ideas, looking at their application and resonance for a range of design, scholarly, and creative situations. The assignments and weekly sessions of the course combined lectures, seminar discussions, exercises, and independent creative work.
Topics in Design and Theory (spring) DESIGN WITH RISK
Instructor: Matthijs Bouw
This research seminar investigated designing with risk, particularly as it relates to the problem of climate adaptation and resilience. The aim of this course was to explore potential roles and tools of design as a means of responding to risk in spatial, infrastructural, and policy projects at a variety of scales. In collaboration with faculty, students and thinkers in other disciplines, students developed a body of knowledge about risk and how it relates to streams of intellectual energy around resilience, and identified design tools and strategies to manage both climate risks and project risks. This research seminar collectively scoped the openings where design can have the greatest agency – in either reducing risk or leveraging the potential for change that risk and instability create. This created opportunities for further research, design projects, studios, investment, and other interventions.
Topics in Design and Theory (fall)
DECOLONIZING LANDSCAPE: DESIGN IN A MILIEU OF OTHERING
Instructor: Dilip da Cunha
Landscape is a language conceived with intention and implemented with purpose. It asserts an earth surface called land, inscribes this surface with a line confining water and puts this water to work for land, supplying and draining it among other labors. Over centuries, this land-served-by-water has been embraced as the ground of habitation, observation, disciplines, and governance. It has also been imposed on people everywhere, most of whom were encountered by the scientific expeditions, voyages of discovery, military campaigns, and settler initiatives that this ground triggers, even encourages. In the process landscape has brought great success to some and much misery to others. Today, however, the surface and line are in trouble from rising seas, increasing storm events, floods, droughts, fires, species extinction, and migrations. Are these problems to solve or are they consequences of a language imposed by design on a planet that resists it? Can we devise another language of place, a place that does not presume an earth surface? Are there languages that we miss because landscape precedes our view? This course – structured around weekly presentations, discussion, readings, and on-going projects – explored ten means by which landscape is imposed on planet and people: land, river, floodplain, city, forest, garden, mountain, colony, nature, and representation. Each is a work of design.
Topics in Design and Theory (fall)
POST-CARBON FUTURES AND THE GREEN NEW DEAL
Instructor: Nicholas Pevzner
This seminar explored the transformational potential of the Green New Deal (GND), a proposed program of rapid decarbonization that simultaneously advances principles of social justice and workers’ demands for good green jobs amid a Just Transition. Looking back at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s original New Deal for inspiration, the seminar critically reappraised that 1930s history in light of contemporary political and economic realities, and applied historical lessons to today’s political moment. Among other questions, the seminar asked, what is the role of design in these political imaginaries, and how do decolonial, environmental justice, and Just Transition discourses open new ways of understanding the roles of technology, land, labor, and movement-building in advancing climate action? Classes investigated the design opportunities for rapid decarbonization across multiple sectors of the economy, as discussed in recent GND discourse – from the energy sector and the transformation of the built environment, to industrial production and changing conceptions of labor, to new visions for agriculture and forests, to the transformation of the near-shore coastal environment. Using techniques of projective futuring, speculative fiction, and spatial imagination, students then developed original visions of successful GND programs and illustrated these narratives with imagined artifacts from within their future worlds.
Deanna Botkin and Kelvin Vu, Decolonizing Landscape
Topics in Design and Theory (spring)
FOREST HISTORIES: THE ARCHITECTURES OF AMAZONIA
Instructor: Vanessa Grossman
This course explored the various agencies and practices that have shaped what anthropologist Neil L. Whitehead has called the world’s “last frontier for the study of history”: Amazônia. Through the analysis of case studies drawn from a transcalar account of architecture, landscape design, and land use planning, from pre-Columbian times to the present, the seminar examined how wilderness has been shaped and how architecture, cities, infrastructure, and agriculture have been implemented, raising important considerations about the relationality of humanity in coexistence with other life forms, cultures, ecologies, and ancestral lifestyles. The course critically examined colonial cycles of resource extraction, governance, and development policies with their plans for urbanization and modernization that have severely triggered the loss of human and non-human species and their habitats — with profound effects on the climate worldwide. The seminar reflected on the ethics of teaching and learning intersectional and decolonial epistemes, cosmoecological thinking, and ancestral care practices through the engagement with local and Indigenous voices and initiatives.
Urban Design (spring) IMPLEMENTATION OF URBAN DESIGN
Instructors: Candace Damon, Alex Stokes, and Carlos Bonilla
This course focused on the various ways in which urban design is affected by opportunities and constraints associated with market conditions, development feasibility, political and community dynamics, and the various incentives and restrictions applied by the public sector to influence development. The course walked students through the process of proposing and refining a redevelopment plan for a parking lot located in the vicinity of the University of Pennsylvania. Students were tasked with demonstrating the feasibility of their redevelopment plan from a market, financial, community, and public policy perspective. Students furthered their understanding of key concepts that drive urban transformation through case studies, group presentations, class debates, and conversations with leading design, real estate, and public sector professionals from the Philadelphia region and beyond.
Urban Design (spring)
CASE STUDIES AND URBAN DESIGN EXPLORATION
Instructor: David Gouverneur
Over half of the world’s population today lives in cities, many of them large metropolitan areas, megacities, and urban regions. This urbanization trend is expected to continue, particularly in the nations of the Global South. Climate change, environmental stress, scarcity of cheap energy, food and water shortages, social inclusion, and conflict resolution are some of the topics that are at the center of the political debate and professional endeavors. This course stressed the importance of addressing the nuances of place and culture with innovative, meaningful, and appropriate morphological/aesthetic design solutions. This course was a dynamic class with each session centered on a particular topic, combining class discussions and the presentation of case studies by the instructor and by teams of students. Interdisciplinary teams collaborated on short design exercises related to the topics analyzed in class, which allowed students to rapidly identify design opportunities and deliver proposals with compelling narratives and graphics/models.
Topics in Design and Theory (spring)
THE HYDROLOGIST’S ALMANAC
Instructor: Emma Mendel
This seminar explored how the complex relationship between Pennsylvania’s river towns, and their ever-changing water edges, is encoded culturally and infrastructurally in the region’s development and in the lives of its citizens. The seminar critically examined how rivers have served both as a resource and as a risk. The course delved into the parallel technical and cultural mechanisms that have kept this duality alive, allowing rivers to continue to serve their populations while also making historic flooding events persistent in the landscape and within the lived experience of river town locals. The seminar unfolded in three thematic units: Almanacs, Watersheds, and River Sites. The course began by discussing the historical significance of almanacs as a tool for environmental forecasting and decisionmaking and used techniques of design representation to investigate their evolution. Students also researched the historical and environmental significance of Pennsylvania’s river systems and watersheds, and how flooding events have shaped local techniques of resilience. Lastly, students applied their knowledge to a specific locale within Pennsylvania. Utilizing selected maps, drawings, and articles, each student was tasked with creating an individualized and highly experimental almanac that encompassed the diverse array of local decision-making tools informed by both local practices and innovative responses to environmental uncertainty.
Topics in History and Theory (spring)
THE IDEA OF A PARK
Instructor: Randy Mason
This seminar course explored a basic question – what is the idea of a park? – and how the myriad answers to this question inform how we design, conserve, plan, use, and maintain parks in practice. The course considered social and design histories of parks, theories of urbanism, models for parks and park systems, environmental philosophies, and changing ideas of public good and infrastructure. Looking across cultures, geographies, and historical periods, students worked with literature, art, and design evidence from several fields and analyzed parks of many kinds across place and time. The seminar built a sense of how the commonplace ideas about park have become so ubiquitous and varied in the contemporary landscape and everyday experience. Students’ work products were individualized, and included research papers, design analyses, and other
Ruth Penberthy, The Hydrologist’s Almanac
Topics in Design and Theory (spring)
AESTHETICS
AND METHODOLOGY
Instructor: Krista Reimer
Today, landscape aesthetics are imagined, promoted, and propagated largely through imaging. Given the world-wide range of images, one might expect this to have produced a broad array of aesthetic approaches; the result however has proven to be, on the contrary, remarkably homogenizing. This seminar explored possibilities for developing a wider range of approaches by scrutinizing how images are used in design methods, and as a counterpoint investigating non-image-based methods. Through a series of analytic and generative techniques students developed design work that took an articulate and considered position on aesthetics. Students deepened their knowledge on the history of landscape aesthetics, developed their individual design skills to advance critical aesthetic ideas, and had the opportunity to test experimental and unconventional approaches to landscape form, material, and expression.
Topics in History and Theory (spring)
LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY:
EMBODIMENT AND PROJECTION
Instructor: Azzurra Cox
Ruth Penberthy, Aesthetics and Methodology
Landscape is eloquent. It speaks by way of constant change, as well as through the imaginations and narratives of all who walk in it, inhabit it, touch it. It’s peculiar in that, as Emerson noted, “its self-registration is incessant.” At the same time, projecting a site’s possible futures entails a process of both reading and uncovering—of digging through the narrative, social, and natural histories of a place to nourish a transformative, yet rooted, vision. This narrative work is a fundamental element of spatial practice: it plays a key role in translating and rendering broadly legible embodied layers of place, community, and history. As such, it is instrumental in expressing the links between landscape and cultural memory — and landscape practice as a means of reclaiming communities’ stories of home. This course explored, tested, and expanded the concept of a landscape of memory — formal and informal, recognized and ephemeral — through a range of case studies, writings (fiction and nonfiction), and visual art. The course particularly elevated marginalized histories, those that often are not represented in formal accounts but that live vividly in the land. The course then focused on our local constellation of landscapes of memory, generating a map of Philadelphia’s layered landscape narratives. Through visual and narrative means, students rendered these sites’ embodied histories and begin to project their futures.
INDEPENDENT STUDY
NOMADIC PASTORALISM IN AZERBAIJAN: A RESILIENT MODEL FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND CLIMATE ADAPTATION
Student: Gunay Mammadova
Faculty supervisors: Karen M’Closkey and Billy Fleming
This research aimed to investigate the practice of nomadic pastoralism in Azerbaijan, focusing on its historical context and contemporary manifestations. The tradition of moving livestock between winter and summer pastures and its influence on various aspects of life was explored, using the Khinalig* köç** road as a case study. This independent study delved into the lifestyle of those using the trail, including analysis of food, language, accommodation (building of temporary structures), social structures (the roles allocated between the family members in maintaining daily life), and the connection with wildlife. Moreover, the study investigated how the community reacts to changing climate patterns and the challenges posed by urbanization. To contextualize the Azerbaijani experience, the research extended its purview to analogous instances of transhumance. Similar precedents in Mongolia (similar to Azerbaijan, a post-soviet country bordering Russia), Canada, and Africa were also investigated to compare the lifestyle and the challenges these communities face in different and similar socio-political and cultural conditions.
SIAYA STADIUM AND ECO-PARK
Students: Johanny Bonilla, Michelle Chan, Caroline Schoeller, and Leechen Zhu
Faculty supervisors: David Gouverneur, Thabo Lenneiye, and Catherine Seavitt
This independent study built upon work the students began in the Fall 2023 Lake Victoria Studio, which focused on sustainable development strategies for five riparian counties along Lake Victoria Basin in Kenya, including the county of Siaya. This independent study used Siaya, the capital of Siaya County, as its site. The city faces serve flooding, poor water quality, unreliable energy, and conservation issues. Despite these challenges, there is strong local interest in ecological urbanism and climate-ready solutions. The new stadium in downtown Siaya is seen as a key driver for the town’s economic futures, offering opportunities beyond recreation, including the development of an eco-park integrated with housing and existing amenities. The students’ design proposal prioritized tree preservation and natural water management to connect the site to nearby schools, hospitals, the bus terminal, and green spaces. Central to their vision was an eco-park promoting environmental stewardship and healthy living, complemented by new assets like recreation spaces, conservation zones, and an amphitheater to enhance Siaya’s regional presence.
CHANGE OF THE WATER
Student: Yining Zhu
Faculty supervisors: Sean Burkholder and Billy Fleming
This independent study was an early-stage research project about the history of water management and its influence on local culture in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It looked at three main water bodies in this region: West Lake (a former lagoon), the Great Canal (a Canal connecting Hangzhou to the Capital city in the north in ancient times), and the Qiantang River (mother river of this region). The resulting work was a collection and documentation of a long history using site photos, museum photos, and diagrams based on desktop research. The goal was to use the perspective of a student in a foreign land to understand and critically think about her homeland.
MINDFULNESS IN LANDSCAPE PRACTICE
Student: Sneha Kakkadan
Faculty supervisor: David Gouverneur
Why is Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) important? Why is a land-based approach crucial? What role does embodied knowledge of place play in landscape practice? Landscape architects are uniquely positioned to observe and understand this interconnectedness. This research focused on embracing and acknowledging alternative ways of knowing. Although we recognize these perspectives, there is much to gain from actively practicing them. As individuals who see this interconnectedness, we must cultivate mindfulness in our daily lives to hone our design and practice skills. The goals of this independent study were to: engage in storytelling, document experiences, and develop a language to articulate these concepts; expand a network to connect with like-minded individuals; emphasize the importance of awareness, intuition, and embodied knowledge, which are not acquired solely through reading but through practicing mindfulness; and explore ways to incorporate these practices into landscape architecture.
CULTURAL COASTS 1.0: TIPASA, ALGERIA
Student: Mira Hart
Faculty supervisor: Sean Burkholder
Tipasa (Tipaza), Algeria, is an ancient city transformed by ecological, political, environmental, social, and urban development. In 2002, the UNESCO World Heritage Center added three archaeological sites on the Tipasa coast to World Heritage in Danger. Tipaza began as a Berber village halfway between Algeria’s second and third capitals (Cherchell and Algiers), then became a Phoenician trading post well before the Roman invasion. In recent years, Tipasa has been a case study for planning a smart city that operates economically by producing renewable energy. This design research asked the question of how landscape aesthetics and conservation can contribute to the sense of place in Tipasa. The aim of the design research was to publish a report on methodologies that designers and predesigners can benefit from to develop appropriate management mechanisms for a World Heritage property. The research topic was guided by the state of conservation report published in November 2023 by the States Parties. Research included the hydrological cycle of the Algerian coastline to deepen understanding of the foggara – a purely Algerian invention from Timmimoune in the Gourara region that serves as a system of both irrigation and drainage.
LANDSCAPE LABORATORIES
Student: Maura McDaniel
Faculty supervisor: Sean Burkholder
This independent study expended on research surrounding landscape laboratories that the student started as a research assistant for Karen Lutsky as part of a project with the Research and Field Studies Center at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus. Landscape Laboratories, or “land labs,” is a general term to describe landscapes that are used to explore questions. It is often closely related to or synonymous with the terms “living laboratory” and “design laboratory.” Generally, what sets a land lab apart from other education and research facilities is that it supports education, research, and experimentation while also being incredibly site specific, allowing it to generate unique questions and research opportunities. This independent study unfolded in three sections: regional and site research; precedent studies and synthesis; and design proposal. Rather than focusing solely on research, this study first identified and diagramed ecological processes and then existing land lab strategies, and culminated in applying these systems to identify an appropriate design strategy. The study was both about the research on land labs and on the process of applying that research to a specific site.
STUDENT AWARDS
Ian L. McHarg Prize
Established in 2001 in memory of Ian L. McHarg, 1920–2001, distinguished professor of landscape architecture, innovative leader in ecological design and planning, and one of the most influential landscape architects of the 20th century, this prize is awarded to a graduating student who has demonstrated excellence in design and best exemplifies ecological ideals in contemporary and culturally pertinent ways. Recipients: Maura McDaniel and Caroline Schoeller
Laurie D. Olin Prize in Landscape Architecture
Established in 2010 by the OLIN studio in honor of Professor of Practice Emeritus Laurie D. Olin who served on Penn’s faculty of landscape architecture since 1974 and is one of the world’s foremost leaders in contemporary landscape architecture, this prize is awarded to a graduating student who has achieved a high academic record and demonstrated design excellence in the making of urban places. Recipient: Zicheng Zhao
John Dixon Hunt Prize in Theory and Criticism
Established in 2004 and renamed in 2010 to honor the distinguished career of Professor Emeritus John Dixon Hunt, this prize is awarded to a graduating student who has shown particular distinction in the theoretical and critical understanding of landscape architecture. Recipient: Sneha Kakkadan
Faculty Medal in Landscape Architecture
Awarded to a graduating student with an excellent academic record and outstanding contribution to the school in leadership. Recipient: Ruth Penberthy
Faculty Medal in Regional Planning
Awarded to a graduating student with a high academic record in landscape architecture and outstanding contribution to the School in leadership. Recipient: Oliver Atwood
Eleanore T. Widenmeyer Prize in Landscape and Urbanism
Established in 2004 through a bequest by Eleanore T. Widenmeyer in memory of her parents, Arthur E. Widenmeyer, Sr. and Lena R. Widenmeyer, this prize is awarded to a graduating student who has achieved a high level of design synthesis between landscape and urbanism. Recipient: Xinyu Liu
Narendra Juneja Medal
Established in memory of former Associate Professor Narendra Juneja who served the department with distinction from 1965 to 1981, this medal is awarded to a graduating student who has demonstrated deep exceptional commitment to ecological and social ideals in landscape architecture. Recipient: Michelle Chan
George Madden Boughton Prize
Established in 1986 by Jestena C. Boughton in memory of her father, George Madden Boughton, this prize is awarded to a graduating student in landscape architecture for design excellence with environmental and social consciousness and evidence of potential for future effective action in the field of landscape architecture. Recipient: Johanny Bonilla
Robert M. Hanna Prize in Design
Established in 2010 by the OLIN studio in memory of Robert M. Hanna (1935–2003), who served on Penn’s faculty of landscape architecture from 1969 to 1998, this prize is awarded to a graduating student who has demonstrated great care for the craft, making, and construction of landscape architecture. Recipient: Kwan Yu Chung
OLIN Partnership Internship and Work Fellowship
Established in 1999, this prize and 12-week internship is awarded to an outstanding Master of Landscape Architecture student entering their final year of study. Recipient: Chun-Cheng Yeh
Wallace Roberts and Todd Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Master of Landscape Architecture Program
Established in 1991, this prize is awarded to an outstanding landscape architecture student who has completed the second year of the three-year program. Recipient: Andreina Sojo
Faculty Acknowledgment Award for Service
Inaugurated in 2013, this prize is awarded to a single student or small group of students who have made an exceptional extracurricular contribution to the program. Recipients: Hassan Saleem and Yining Zhu
Faculty Acknowledgment Award for Design Progress
Inaugurated in 2013, this prize is awarded to a first-year student in the three-year Master of Landscape Architecture program who has demonstrably advanced significantly in their design capability across the course of their first year of study.
Recipient: Rachel Aaronson
Faculty Acknowledgment Award for Design Progress
Inaugurated in 2018 , this prize is awarded to a graduating student in the Master of Landscape Architecture program who has demonstrably advanced significantly in their design capability across their years of study.
Recipients: Martha Ashe and Lucia Salwen
Faculty Acknowledgment Award for Experimentation and Innovation
Inaugurated in 2019, this prize is awarded to graduating students who have applied a particularly high level of innovation and experimentation in their design projects. Recipient: Jiewen Hu
Susan Cromwell Coslett Traveling Fellowship
Established in memory of former Assistant Dean, Susan Coslett, this fellowship is awarded to a Weitzman School of Design student for summer travel to visit gardens and landscapes. Recipient: Noa Machover and Alvin Luong
ASLA Awards, Pennsylvania - Delaware Chapter
Certificates of Honor and Merit are awarded by the local ASLA Chapter to graduating landscape architecture students who have demonstrated outstanding potential for contributions to the profession.
Certificate of Honor recipients: Michelle Chan, Maura McDaniel, and Zicheng Zhao
Certificate of Merit recipients: Johanny Bonilla, Kwan Yu Chung and Caroline Schoeller
Landscape Architecture Foundation Olmsted Scholars Program
Each year, the Weitzman School of Design’s Department of Landscape Architecture nominates one student to the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Olmsted Scholars Program. 2024 Nominee: Quoc-Kha Kelvin Vu
Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Fountain Scholars Award
Each year, the Weitzman School of Design’s Department of Landscape Architecture nominates one student to the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture’s Fountain Scholars Program. 2024 Nominee: Charlye Stewart
ASLA HONOR AND MERIT AWARDS
Michelle Chan, MLA 2024 Honor Award Winner
Studio III plan (right); Studio II view (opposite page, top); Independent Study aerial view with Johanny Bonilla, Caroline Schoeller, and Leechen Zhu (opposite page, bottom)
ASLA HONOR AND MERIT AWARDS
Maura McDaniel, MLA 2024 Honor Award Winner
Studio III plan (right) and material study (opposite page, bottom); Studio I montage (opposite page, top)
ASLA HONOR AND MERIT AWARDS
Zicheng Zhao, MLA 2024 Honor Award Winner
Studio V plan (above); Studio III typology (opposite page, top); Studio II rendering (opposite page, bottom)
ASLA HONOR AND MERIT AWARDS
Johanny Bonilla, MLA 2024
Merit Award Winner
Studio VI diagram with Priyanjali Sinha (above); Studio III view (left) and diagram (opposite page)
ASLA HONOR AND MERIT AWARDS
Kwan Yu Chung, MLA 2024 Merit Award Winner
Studio III detail plan (right) and plan (below);
Studio II views (opposite top);
Studio V plan (opposite bottom)
ASLA HONOR AND MERIT AWARDS
Caroline Schoeller, MLA 2024 Merit Award Winner
Van Alen Travel Fellowship diagrams (top); Studio VI diagrams (bottom); Studio II models (opposige page, top); Types and Specimens rendering (opposite page, bottom)
PENNPRAXIS
Executive Director: Ellen Neises
PennPraxis is the non-profit practice arm of the Weitzman School that supports design action in solidarity with students, community organizers, and Indigenous leaders working for change. PennPraxis creates a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and supports “beyond the market” projects that actively promote justice, inclusion, and social impact in places that design does not usually serve. These projects allow students and faculty to join forces with leaders in communities and in other fields to solve problems imaginatively. Over the past year, landscape architecture students worked on a number of important projects as Design Fellows, including:
Site design and advocacy for a new Lenape community rooted in the culture
Landscape and architecture alumni, faculty and students continued a collaboration with the Ramapough Lenape Turtle Clan on design and advocacy for a new community to be funded by the New Jersey state and federal government as environmental reparations for the contamination of Lenape land and drinking water supply. With the Turtle Clan leadership, PennPraxis created a 2024 framework plan for the development of a sustainable community of 125-150 homes, cultural landscapes, community buildings, and infrastructure. The Turtle Clan’s goal is to attain the highest environmental standards and to strengthen ecosystems and sacred cultural landscapes through stewardship.
Farming for the future
Landscape and planning students continued work with the Center for Stewardship Agriculture and Food Security at Penn’s Veterinary School to close gaps in knowledge about the economic viability for farmers of stream buffers that enhance animal health, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. The project was part of a larger effort to advance regenerative agriculture and increase land and water health on farms in the region. Students from many parts of the Weitzman School and the wider university planted over 4,000 trees in the first step of implementing our Regenerative Agriculture Alliance collaboration with the Vet School, SAS, Stroud Water Center, and the William Penn Foundation to advance biodiversity and climate action in agricultural practice.
Community capacity-building for resilience in Camden
Landscape, planning, and fine arts students, alumni, and faculty launched an effort with the Center for Environmental Transformation, an environmental justice organization in Camden, New Jersey, to develop a community-based coastal resilience master plan for the city. The Water Center at Penn, eDesign Dynamics, and Drexel’s civil engineering faculty and students are collaborating with PennPraxis on this project, aimed at increasing grassroots planning capacity.
Supporting public schools as equity infrastructure
Students, alumni, and faculty in architecture, environmental building design, landscape architecture, and planning worked with youth, teachers, and administrators at Sayre High School in West Philadelphia to design and build the “Breathing Room” in the high school’s courtyard. This Studio+ effort advances planning faculty Akira Rodriguez’ initiative to elevate the role of public schools as community havens and as city-wide equity infrastructure, by making concrete physical improvements to disinvested schools with 90 to 100% Black students. Penn’s Center for Public Health Initiatives is evaluating whether the courtyard improves the learning environment, increases the sense of belonging, and reduces stress for Sayre youth. Weitzman environmental building design students quantified the change in heat and other environmental conditions, as part of the effort to advocate for equity investments at a system-wide scale in the School District of Philadelphia. City Planning students created an accessible online library of resources for youth in West Philadelphia.
Designing and building with youth
Landscape, architecture, and planning students collaborated with youth on a pond restoration and multilevel viewing platform in PennPraxis’ Design to Thrive program, a free career awareness program for teenagers. The pond project – which installed 800 new plants to increase biodiversity, educational value, water quality, and carbon sequestration – is a pilot for an ambitious Design to Thrive program centered on climate action and STEM – ecological survey, tree planting, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, adaptive management, monitoring, and carpentry with storm-harvested trees and sustainable materials. The 2024 summer project offered a deep learning experience for hundreds of youth and Weitzman students, who designed and built a project with support from leading ecologists, furniture makers, and designers.
Images from the Design to Thrive project: Bakari Clark, Madi Howard, Maurcus McDaniel, Lacey Rivera, Priyanjali Sinha, and Kelvin Vu survey the site with ecologists Mike Feller and Amanda Bayley, measure the depth of the pond, place plants with youth, and lounge on “the stoop” after building sessions with teenagers and furniture maker Garry Venable.
THE IAN L. MCHARG CENTER FOR URBANISM AND ECOLOGY
Faculty Co-Directors: Frederick Steiner and Catherine Seavitt
Wilks Family Director: Billy Fleming
The academic year 2023–2024 was rich with events at the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology. The Center hosted the daylong “MEGA-ECO” international symposium on Thursday October 5, 2023, an initiative exploring very large-scale ecological infrastructure projects. The gathering was convened by Professor Emeritus Richard Weller and Professor of Practice Matthijs Bouw, in partnership with MLA alumnus and Department of City Planning PhD candidate Rob Levinthal and student research assistants Clarasophia Gust, Ankita Nagwekar, and Khulan Enkhbold. Thursday’s daylong program included public presentations with representatives from major ecological restoration projects around the globe, including China, Pakistan, Brazil, Africa, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the United States. Featured projects included the Great Green Wall (Africa), Four Major Rivers Restoration (Asia), Yellowstone to Yukon (North America), and the São Paulo Greenbelt (South America). The keynote speaker was Tony Hiss, the award-winning author of the acclaimed book Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth. On Friday October 6, Bouw moderated a roundtable session with the panelists at the Kleinman Energy Forum. MEGAECO was supported by the McHarg Center, Penn’s Environmental Innovations Initiative, Biohabitats, and the Penn Global Engagement Fund.
The Center hosted two moderated book talks. The first, on October 19, 2023, was with the editors and contributors of Technical Lands: A Critical Primer (Jovis, 2023), including co-editors Jeffrey S. Nesbit and Charles Waldheim along with contributors Robert Pietrusko, Shannon Mattern, Billy Fleming, and AJ McCullough. Catherine Seavitt moderated the panel discussion. On February 1, 2024, Daniel Campo presented his new book Postindustrial DIY: Recovering American Rust Belt Icons (Fordham University Press, 2024), followed by a moderated panel discussion with Catherine Seavitt and Fritz Steiner. And on February 29, 2024, the Center celebrated Leap Year with an evening event with the artist Marie Lorenz and environmental activist Willis Elkins, of the Newtown Creek Alliance, who shared their rich collaboration on the creation of Newtown Odyssey, a new modern opera that debuted in September 2023 on the polluted waters of Newtown Creek in Queens, New York.
The McHarg Fellowship program is now in its second year, with Emma Mendel joining the Center for the academic year 2023–2024. Mendel taught in the department’s foundation core Studio I in Fall 2023, coordinated by Assistant Professor Sean Burkholder, and developed a Spring 2024 elective seminar entitled “The Hydrologist’s Almanac,” exploring the complex relationship between Pennsylvania’s river towns and their everchanging water edges, with a focus on the Johnstown flood of 1936. Mendel delivered a schoolwide lecture on her research, “Narratives of the Deluge,” on April 25, 2024, and exhibited the work of her seminar students Ruth Penberthy and Caroline Schoeller at the Fisher Fine Arts Library in the summer of 2024. Mendel is now a Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Architecture and the Built Environment at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.
The McHarg Center looks forward to an exciting year ahead! In September 2024, the Weitzman School of Design will celebrate the centennial of the 1924 establishment of Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. This year, the McHarg Center’s Advisory Board elected its first board chair, Lucinda Sanders, President and CEO of OLIN. With the support of the advisory board, the Center’s faculty co-director and department chair Catherine Seavitt is organizing a two-day symposium entitled “Landscape Futures,” scheduled for September 2024, a symposium reflecting on the significant contributions of the department to the discipline of landscape architecture. Keynote talks will be delivered by former chairs James Corner (MLA’86), founding partner and CEO of Field Operations; Anne Whiston Spirn (MLA’74), the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at MIT; and the investigative journalist Jeff Goodell, author of the New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First, among six additional books on the environment and the climate emergency.
Newtown Odyssey, an opera collaboration between artist Marie Lorenz, musician Kurt Rohde, and librettist Dana Spiotta, developed in partnership with the Newtown Creek Alliance. (Photo: Saeid Janaati)
LA+ JOURNAL
Editor in Chief: Karen M’Closkey
Creative Director: Catherine Seavitt
Production Manager: Colin Curley
LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture is a bi-annual print and digital publication produced by the Department of Landscape Architecture. Launched in 2014 by Dr. Tatum Hands and Professor Emeritus Richard Weller, the journal’s mission is to reveal connections and build collaborative conversations between landscape architecture and other disciplines by exploring each issue’s theme through various perspectives. In addition to the design professions, each issue includes works by a range of disciplinary authors, including historians, artists, geographers, anthropologists, psychologists, planners, scientists, and philosophers. This interdisciplinary approach both enriches landscape architecture and introduces landscape architecture to new audiences in other fields. LA+ Journal is committed to featuring content that promotes a global diversity of cultural perspectives while encouraging an expansive understanding of the discipline of landscape architecture and the contribution of landscape thinking. With 20 issues published to date, LA+ has gained a strong global readership and is distributed internationally via subscription. It is also available for purchase at museums bookstores, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, and the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.
Each semester, LA+ conducts two concurrent graduate seminars where students are integrally involved in the process of designing and producing an issue of the journal. During the 2023–2024 academic year, LA+ published two issues – LA+ BEAUTY, guest-edited by Colin Curley, and LA+ BOTANIC. In production for the 2024–2025 academic year are LA+ EXOTIQUE, which features our latest design ideas competition, and LA+ SENSE. We will begin work on LA+ ENVIRONMENT in Fall 2024.
LA+ Journal is generously supported by the following donors:
Gold Patrons: Field Operations, OLIN, Starr Whitehouse, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Hollander Design, Bionic
Silver Patrons: Stoss, MNLA, Port, One Architecture & Urbanism
Bronze Patrons: Future Green Studio, TCL, Topotek1, WRT, WHY Landscape
LECTURE SERIES
Fall 2023 Lecture Series, coordinated by Sean Burkholder
Entanglements: Jane Mah Hutton
Associate Professor, University of Waterloo
The Abend Family Lecture
“Material Diasporas: Where did this land go?”
September 21, 2023
Entanglements: Ozayr Saloojee
Associate Professor, Carleton University
“Hit and Run: A Fable of Gallows, Gardens and Grief”
September 28, 2023
Entanglements: Ron Henderson
Professor of Landscape Architecture & Urbanism, Illinois Institute of Technology
“Tree Talk”
November 2, 2023
Entanglements: Joyce Hwang
Professor, University of Buffalo
“In Consideration of Neighbors”
November 9, 2023
Spring 2024 Lecture Series, coordinated by Nicholas Pevzner
Energy Futures: Janette Kim
Associate Professor, California College of the Arts
“From Community Engagement to Collective Power”
January 25, 2024
Energy Futures: Jamie Vanucchi
Associate Professor, Cornell University
“Tools for Designers in Changing Climates and Uncertain Futures”
March 14, 2024
Energy Futures: José Juan Terrasa-Soler
Partner, Marvel Architects & Landscape Architects
“Caribbean Infrastructural Landscapes for Climate Change”
March 28, 2024
PUBLIC EVENTS
MEGA-ECO: A Symposium on Very Large-Scale Landscape Projects
Presented by The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology and Penn Global Organizers: Rob Levinthal, PhD candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning, and Richard Weller, Professor Emeritus
Keynote speaker: Tony Hiss, Author, Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth
Panelists: Keith Bowers, Biohabitats; Gary Tabor, Center for Large Landscape Conservation; Emmanuelle Cohen-Shachem, International Union for Conservation of Nature; David Kuhn, World Wildlife Fund; Tyra Northwest, Samson Cree Nation, International Buffalo Relations Institute Jodi Hilty, Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y); Dominique Bikaba, Strong Roots Gorilla Corridor; Ana Maria Gonzalez Velosa, World Bank; Andrea Fernanda Calderón, North East Amazon Environmental and Sustainable Development Corporation; Elvis Paul Nfor Tangem, Great Green Wall Initiative; Faiz Ali Khan, Upscaling Green Pakistan; Ben Valks, Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor; Marshall Plumley, Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program; Yongjun Jo, Landscape Architect; Hexing Chang, Turenscape; Rodrigo Victor, University of São Paulo
Concluding remarks: Matthijs Bouw, Professor of Practice
Public Symposium
October 5, 2023
Invited Roundtable
October 6, 2023
Technical Lands: A Critical Primer Book Talk and Panel Discussion
Presented by The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology
Speakers: Billy Fleming; Shannon Mattern, University of Pennsylvania; Jeffrey Nesbit, Temple University; Robert Gerard Pietrusko; Charles Waldheim, Harvard Graduate School of Design; AL McCullough, Taproot Earth
October 19, 2024
Catherine Seavitt: Where I Stand
Landscape Architecture Chair Vision Statement and Community Happy Hour
January 18, 2024
LA+ BEAUTY Launch
Hosted by Karen M’Closkey, Editor in Chief, and Catherine Seavitt, Creative Director
January 26, 2024
Post Industrial DIY
Book Talk and Panel Discussion
Presented by the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology and the Penn Institute for Urban Research Panelists: Daniel Campo, Author; Eugenie Birch, Professor of Urban Research & Education; Fritz Steiner; Catherine Seavitt
February 1, 2024
Laurie Olin: In Italy: Sketches & Drawings Book Launch
April 16, 2024
Emma Mendel
2023–2024 McHarg Fellow “Narratives of the Deluge” April 18, 2024
Odds & Ends
Exhibition of works by Richard Weller
April 25, 2024
ASLA Awards Jury
Jurors: Sarah Weidner Astheimer, Field Operations; Sean Garrigan, SGA; Patrice Hanulak, Urban Design Associates; Jessica Wolff, Offshoots Moderator: Catherine Seavitt
May 13, 2024
2024 Year End Show
Presented by the Weitzman School of Design
May 18 – June 14, 2024
Design With Nature Now: Nanjing
Exhibition in Nanjing, China
Presented by The Department of Landscape Architecture and The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology
May 31 – July 31, 2024
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EVENTS
What I Did Last Summer
Student Lunch and Summer Employment Discussion
September 20, 2023
Portfolio Speed Reviews for Third-Year Students Reviews with Landscape Architecture Faculty January 22, 2024
2024 Annual Professional Portfolio Review
Hosted by the Penn Weitzman Alumni Association January 30, 2024
Alternate Landscapes: LA Adjacent Alternative Careers Panel
Panelists: Terri Carta, Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC); Maggie Greenfield, Greenfield Collaborative; Andrea Parker, Gowanus Canal Conservancy January 31, 2024
2024 Weitzman School of Design Career Fair
Hosted by Penn Career Services February 8, 2024 (in person) February 13, 2024 (virtual)
Portfolio Seminar
Q&A and Review Session
Krista Reimer, MLA ’19 and Aaron Stone, MLA ’21, MArch ‘21 February 9, 2024
Job Talk
Presentation and Q&A with Ellen Neises and Lucinda Sanders February 12, 2024
Alternate Landscapes: Before the After: Representing Landscapes in the Age of AI Lecture by Zihao Zhang, City College of New York February 28, 2024
Alternate Landscapes: Newtown Odyssey: An Opera on a Creek
Marie Lorenz, Artist, and Willis Elkins, Director, Newtown Creek Alliance
