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Since its founding in 1964, scholarship in Penn’s Ph.D. Program in Architecture has operated under a double motive: the development of knowledge that is both descriptive and productive. Although dedication to productive knowledge may not be common in other fields, it is entirely relevant to architecture. It is a form of engagement par excellence, aimless if not oriented toward given conditions, intent on their transformation. The particularity of architecture’s productive sort of knowledge, that it gets its hands dirty in the actual transformation of the environment in which we live, has been and remains a central concern of Penn’s architectural scholarship.
Dedication to both descriptive and productive knowledge may be apparent in the titles of some of the books published by Ph.D. graduates. These books clarify developments in a number of periods and investigate a range of subjects related to architecture, landscape architecture, building technology, and urbanism. Concepts are examined—space, style, or surface color, for example—but also particular figures: Gottfried Semper, Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti, A.J. Downing, and Lawrence Halprin. This range indicates the possibility of striking a balance between architecture’s disciplinary identity, ultimately based in practice, and its engagements with several subjects and dimensions of scholarship in the university at large. Yet more than balance is at issue here, for we have learned that neither scholarship nor practice in architecture can be realized fully without reference to the other, that neither drawing nor writing can realize its potential when pursued in isolation. In reciprocity, though, they can help us know the world by productively engaging in its transformation.
–David Leatherbarrow, Professor of Architecture
On the occasion of the program’s 50th birthday we have compiled an online display of books published by its graduates, demonstrating the diversity of approaches to architecture history and theory practiced over the years, and celebrating our community’s achievements. We’ve done our best to include all titles and information as provided by the authors and available online. If we’ve forgotten your book, or if any information is inaccurate, please contact the Office of Communications at news@design.upenn.edu.
–Ariel Genadt (PhD'16)
Alumni: Please join our Facebook group.
50 Years in Books: The List
Industrial Archeology: A New Look at the American Heritage
Theodore Anton Sande
New York: Penguin Books, 1978
Space in Architecture: The Evolution of a New Idea in the Theory and History of the Modern Movements
Cornelis van de Ven
Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978
Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory
Marco Frascari
Savage, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991
Ontology of Construction: On Nihilism of Technology in Theories of Modern Architecture
Gevork Hartoonian
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994
Ensaio sobre a razão compositiva: uma investigação sobre a natureza das relações entre as partes e o todo na composição arquitetônica (in Portuguese)
Edson da Cunha Mahfuz.
Viçosa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa. Belo Horizonte: AP Cultural, 1995.
Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century: A Personal and Intellectual Biography
Harry Francis Mallgrave
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996
To Live in the New World: A.J. Downing and American Landscape Gardening
Judith K. Major
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1997
Plumbing - Sounding Modern Architecture
Nadir Lahiji, and Daniel S. Friedman (Editors)
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997
The Salk Institute
Daniel S. Friedman, [and Ezra Stoller]
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999
Kenchikugai no shikō: kon wajirō ron (in Japanese)
Izumi Kuroishi
Tōkyō: ドメス出版 [Domesushuppan], 2000
Modern Color/Modern Architecture: Amédée Ozenfant and the Genealogy of Color in Modern Architecture
William W. Braham
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002
Tilting House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village
Robert Mellin
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003
New Classicism: The Rebirth of Traditional Architecture
Elizabeth Meredith Dowling
New York: Rizzoli, 2004
De Architectura: Vitruvio ferrarese, la prima versione illustrata (in Italian)
Claudio Sgarbi, and Vitruvius Pollio
Modena: F.C. Panini, 2004
Utopias and Architecture
Nathaniel Coleman
Abingdon, England; New York: Routledge, 2005
The Problem of the House: French Domestic Life and the Rise of Modern Architecture
Alex Thomas Anderson
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006
Aeolian Winds and the Spirit in Renaissance Architecture: Academia Eolia Revisited
Barbara Kenda (Editor)
London: Routledge, 2006
Gio Ponti and Carlo Mollino: Post-War Italian Architects and the Relevance of Their Work Today
Jio ponti to karuro morīno: Domusu eno michinori (Japanese Translation)
Keith Evan Green
New York: Mellen Press, 2006
Medici Gardens: From Making to Design
Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008
Architectural Spatiality: The Dialectic between the Concepts of Raum and Bekleidung
Tonkao Panin
Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009
Figures of Death and Life in the Architecture of Grandjean de Montigny: Resemblances, Homologies and Remembrances as Epistemic Devices in Creative Processes
Milton Vitis Feferman
Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM, 2009
Towards a Draped Architecture: Theatricality, Virtuosity, and Ambiguity in Contemporary Architecture
Açalya Allmer
Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009
Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City
[Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton], and Marina Lathouri (Editors)
New York: Routledge, 2009
Nothingness: Tadao Ando's Christian Sacred Space
Jin Baek
London: Routledge, 2009
When Modern Was Green: Life and Work of Landscape Architect Leberecht Migge
David Henderson Haney
London: Routledge, 2010
Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan
Zhongjie Lin
London; New York: Routledge, 2010
La Villa
[Taegio, Bartolomeo], and Thomas Edward Beck
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry
Anne Griswold Tyng, [Alicia Imperiale, and Ingrid Schaffner]
Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, 2011
The Complete House and Grounds: Learning from Andrew Jackson Downing's Domestic Architecture
Caren Yglesias, [and A. J. Downing]
Chicago, IL: The Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2011
The Political Unconscious of Architecture: Re-Opening Jameson's Narrative
Nadir Lahiji (Editor)
Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2012
Architecture as a Performing Art
Marcia F. Feuerstein, and Gray Read
Farnham: Ashgate, 2013
The Hermit's Hut: Architecture and Asceticism in India
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf
Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 2013
John Nolen and the Metropolitan Landscape
Jody Beck
London; New York: Routledge, 2013
Chicagoisms: The City as Catalyst for Architectural Speculation
Alexander Eisenschmidt, [and Jonathan Mekinda] (Editors)
Zurich: Park Books, 2013
Design and Construction of High Performance Homes: Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice
Franca Trubiano (Editor)
London: Routledge, 2013
Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture
Ann Marie Borys
Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014
A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010
Elie Haddad, David Rifkind (Editors)
Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014
City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America
Alison Bick Hirsch
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014
Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome 1700-1759
Victor Deupi
New York and London: Routledge, 2015
Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent: Designing and Appreciating Architecture as Nature
Rumiko Handa
London & New York: Routledge, 2015
Becoming Jane Jacobs
Peter L. Laurence
Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2016