For dual architecture degree candidate Kelvin Vu, design begins with the body
Master of architecture and master of landscape architecture candidate Kelvin Vu, who was a professional dancer before coming to Weitzman, says “dance and landscape design are about change, flux, and dynamism.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by how different cities sound," says Aki Di Sandro, a student in the Weitzman School’s Master of Urban Spatial Analytics program.
(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)
Listening to the city
In a Spring 2025 City & Regional Planning course at Penn’s Weitzman School, students are exploring the connections between urban sounds and neighborhood identity.
One of the photographs of Weitzman Hall made by historic preservation student Kate Whitney-Schubb and submitted to the Library of Congress for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)
A rare on-campus assignment for preservation students holds ‘small revelations’
Weitzman historical preservation students were able to use a campus building slated to be altered for its class focus, which changed the stakes of the project and the approach students took to documenting the historic building.
Jessica Varner on the long arc of built environment and its materials
Varner, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Weitzman School, explores the intersections between architectural, environmental, and chemical history.
Wupatki Pueblo, north of Flagstaff, Arizona, is among the villages built by Native peoples in the desert Southwest centuries ago. “We look at those sites as still alive, as offering us the opportunity to connect with our ancestors and to continue the work, and legacy of that work, of communing with that place,” says Chas Robles, ALCC’s executive director.
(Image: Colin Cohan)
Protecting Indigenous heritage in an age of climate vulnerability
A preservation plan being developed by researchers in the Weitzman School in consultation with local stewards conserves a millennium of human settlement.
A rendering of the carbon-absorbing and storage system developed by the Penn team and its partners suggests how minimized material use and maximized surface area are expressed in the structure's slabs, columns, and beams.
(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)
Toward carbon-negative architecture
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Weitzman and Penn Engineering are working to develop a new building system that would reduce carbon in all aspects of concrete construction.
Catherine Seavitt (seated, glasses) at a Spring 2024 studio review. “Our department is recognized as a place of collaborative conversation,” says Seavitt, who is also co-executive director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology.
(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)
‘A place of collaborative conversation’
On Sept. 26 and 27, the Weitzman School will host Landscape Futures: Centennial of the Department of Landscape Architecture, a two-day symposium to celebrate the department’s unique ecological foundations, its evolving curriculum, and its ongoing global influence on landscape architectural practice and education.
