Designing for Fire

Designing for Fire: Novel Wildfire and Forest Landscapes is an interdisciplinary symposium exploring the challenge of preparing landscapes for wildfire across Western North America, in the face of high and growing vulnerability. Forests are deeply emotional and culturally important landscapes, and stewarding them successfully through the coming decades in the face of a growing climate threat will involve changes to policy, infrastructure, forest management, development patterns, fire prevention, and cultural perception. What is the role of design within this challenge, which lies at the intersection of all these disparate conversations?

Organized by Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Nicholas Pevzner, and co-hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture and the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, this symposium brings together speakers from the worlds of wildfire science, fire management, forest management, and landscape design to explore the interlinked challenges of designing and managing landscapes for fire resilience in the face of a changing climate. Native American & Indigenous Studies at Penn has generously provided additional support.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.