Weitzman Hall, renewed and expanded, celebrated at opening ceremony
The Penn community gathered to celebrate the opening of Weitzman Hall, the Weitzman School of Design’s first new building in nearly 60 years.
3 min. read
The crowd inside the Gordon Gallery at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly reopened and expanded Weitzman Hall.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Feb. 5, the Penn community gathered in the Gordon Gallery of the newly reopened Stuart Weitzman Hall, surrounded by photographs that celebrate the building’s 134-year history through the “Building Stories: Time and Change at Weitzman Hall” exhibition.
Weitzman Hall is a nearly 40,000-square-foot space that serves as an interdisciplinary hub for research and teaching in the Weitzman School, while also serving as the headquarters for the Department of Fine Arts. The adaptive reuse project, which is targeting a LEED Platinum certification and was completed in 17 months, includes flexible spaces on the first and fourth floors, 2,700 square feet of exhibition space, a maker space, fine arts studios, and more.
It follows an evolution of the building that has seen it operate as everything from a children’s orphanage to a physics laboratory.
“Our lives are deeply enriched by the buildings and landscapes created by previous generations; in their variety of sizes, styles, and uses, they add a wonderful texture to our world,” said Steiner, nodding to architects’, landscape architects’, and preservationists’ inherent, optimistic instinct to invest in the future. “They remind us that people who designed and occupied them had their own dreams of a greater future.”
Originally designed by Cope and Stewardson, the building’s latest iteration was designed and executed in collaboration between KieranTimberlake, PORT Urbanism, preservationist Dominique Hawkins, and Penn’s Facilities and Real Estate Services.
(From left) Weitzman School of Design Dean Fritz Steiner, Penn President Emerita Amy Gutmann, Penn donor and fashion designer Stuart Weitzman, and Penn President J. Larry Jameson.
“Weitzman Hall is a microcosm of what design education should be,” said Stephen Kieran, a lead architect on the project alongside James Timberlake, both of whom are Weitzman alumni and faculty members. “What we are celebrating today is a living, breathing, mixing bowl—a neighborhood of artists, landscape architects, urban planners, preservationists, architects, faculty, and most importantly, research centers.
“In an increasingly virtual world, we in this profession believe that space still matters—perhaps now more than ever.”
Kieran described the new space as “in equal measure old and new,” highlighting the two buildings that join together: one (original) entrance inviting guests through the historic building on 34th Street, and another through the new addition along Smith Walk that makes the space more accessible to curious passersby—many of them from the nearby School of Engineering and Applied Science.
(Top) Inside the Gordon Gallery, the exhibit “Building Stories: Time and Change at Weitzman Hall” is on display through Feb. 27 and documents the many lives of the building. (Bottom left) Sharon Hayes, left, is professor and chair of the Department of Fine Arts, which is now housed in Weitzman Hall.
“Together, each entry, one old and one new, welcomes us into the story that continues to be written,” Kieran added. “Thank you for the opportunity to gift this building of enduring value back to the place where we began our architectural journey.”
Penn President J. Larry Jameson remarked that celebrations of new buildings are not only about looking back in the past, but “focusing very much on the future.”
Steve Kieran, of architecture firm KieranTimberlake, speaks at the Weitzman Hall celebration. Kieran, alongside James Timberlake, is an alumnus and faculty member of the Weitzman School and collaborated on designing the newly reimagined Weitzman Hall.
“As I see the campus getting transformed with each of the buildings I mentioned, I can see the kinds of work that goes on in these buildings changing: the entrepreneurship that happens in Tangen Hall, the collaboration that happens in Amy Gutmann Hall and the Vagelos Lab, and that’s also going to happen here,” Jameson said. “I’m so excited about the faculty and students in the School of Design who will undoubtedly work differently than they ever have before, and in ways we can’t even predict now.”
The ceremony closed with remarks from donor and fashion designer Stuart Weitzman, who lit up with excitement about the space’s transformation and acknowledged the “phenomenal job” of all involved.
The legacy of Weitzman Hall’s adaptive reuse lives on this semester with Kieran and Timberlake’s graduate architecture studio, Architecture of Renewal, where they are teaching about the process of adaptive reuse and asking students to identify their own historic structure in Philadelphia to redevelop.
Architects and enthusiasts interested in an in-depth documentation of Weitzman Hall’s adaptive reuse journey, including interviews with those involved in the project, can read more at the Weitzman School of Design website.
Images by Allie Ippolito.
Stuart Weitzman and Weitzman Dean Fritz Steiner with the Weitzman School's board of advisors outside of Weitzman Hall's 34th Street entrance.
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