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Louisa Shepard
News Officer
lshepard@upenn.edu
Design
Student group increases the visibility of women in architecture
The members of PennDesign Women in Architecture have created community that increases the visibility and voices of women in architecture, and brings awareness to the gender disparity in the profession.
Protecting the planet at Penn
Earth Day and every day, the University community is at work to make the world a little better. Here are some highlights from those efforts.
Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, memorials remember the 800,000 who died
Penn historic preservation professor Randall Mason has been working with the country’s government since 2016 to protect and conserve such monuments.
The Green New Deal: What it says, what it doesn’t say, and how close we are to adopting it
Mark Alan Hughes, director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, discusses the basics of this energy-mobilization proposal.
Now showing: The Morris Arboretum’s new spiraling Stickwork sculpture
Now on display at the Morris Arboretum is a new interactive sculpture crafted by artist Patrick Dougherty—made from hundreds of pieces of willow.
Wading into Philly’s vacant land morass
Four students in the Weitzman School’s Department of City and Regional Planning are working to find suitable properties to rehabilitate with the Women’s Community Revitalization Project and the City of Philadelphia Department of Planning and Development.
Public scooters may soon zip through Philadelphia
The School of Design’s Megan Ryerson assisted with the city’s debate over the scooter as a safe and viable transportation alternative, as Pennsylvania assesses a bill to legalize electric scooters on public streets.
PennPraxis launches toolkit for neighborhood preservation
In the past decade, Philadelphia’s building boom has been accompanied by a string of demolitions touching almost every corner of the city, and resulting in the loss of everything from iconic churches to vernacular row houses. But even as a growing number of Philadelphians lament these losses, advocates for historic preservation have sometimes struggled to make a case for keeping Philadelphia’s built fabric intact.
Designing with nature, now
Thanks in large part to the foundation Ian McHarg built, the Stuart Weitzman School of Design Landscape Architecture Department has led the field for decades. Here’s how it’s staying relevant as the importance for the profession—one that is central to solving some of the world’s greatest challenges—grows.
Using stairwells for wellness
StairWELL, a Penn Sustainability Green Fund project, completed a yearlong pilot project last July that aimed to test how effective a stairwell makeover could be in increasing physical activity and reducing energy costs.
Media Contact
In the News
This Tiny Amsterdam Neighborhood Is a Prototype for Grassroots Urban Planning
Matthijs Bouw of the School of Design wrote about his work with The Hackable City, an Amsterdam-based research project exploring new, community-led methods for urban development.
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The Wall Street Journal
‘Saving Central Park’ Review: Brought Back to Life
Witold Rybczynski of the School of Design reviewed a memoir by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, which traces the history of efforts to restore and maintain Central Park.
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