With storms, floods, heat waves, and cold snaps growing more intense by the season, climate change is no longer just a future concern, but a daily reality. The work of planning resilient spaces and cities, therefore, increasingly requires urgent interventions alongside long-range visions. In the fall of 2021, students in landscape architecture and city and regional planning studios at the Weitzman School grappled with the varied challenges of planning for climate change. Their work took place at multiple spatial scales, across decades, and in diverse communities, from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the nation’s capital. Below is a sample of the work they produced.
Between August of 2020 and July of 2021, more than 180 design studios at 93 universities in 39 states and 10 countries responded to the Green New Deal Superstudio, a nationwide call, developed in part by Weitzman’s Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, for designs that spatially apply the principles and policy ideas of the Green New Deal to regions and localities. In total, the Superstudio generated 670 proposals aimed at “translating the core goals of decarbonization, justice, and jobs into place-specific design and planning projects.” The idea for the Superstudio was born during The McHarg Center’s Designing a Green New Deal conference in 2019.
Work by Mingyang Sun (MLA‘21), Siying Xu (MLA‘21), and Shiqi Ming (MLA‘21)
Three teams from the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Architecture have been recognized by The American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) with 2021 student honor awards. Their design proposals address water scarcity at a major port city in China, the relationship between rural locales and bird habitat in Canada, and social inequity in the capital of Ecuador.
The Department of Landscape Architecture welcomes applications for an Assistant Professor to offer graduate-level instruction in landscape architecture design studios and other courses. Candidates should demonstrate a high level of design skill, professional or pedagogical experience, and a clear and compelling research trajectory related to contemporary design discourse and practice in Landscape Architecture.
For his contribution to this year’s 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Weitzman’s Richard Weller and his team designed the World Park, a global network of ecologically restored lands to support the migration of numerous species responding to climate change. Contiguous hiking trails linking the tracts also enable people to “walk the world.” A second project reveals the dire threat to endangered species and their habitats posed by the largest and fastest growing cities (so-called “hotspots”). Starting today, you don’t have to visit the Biennale to experience the proposals, as both have their own websites: theworldpark.com and hotspotcitiesproject.com.
Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms.
The McHarg Fellowship is a new $75,000 award given to an emerging voice in landscape architecture and its related fields. The Fellowship will be awarded competitively on an annual basis and the fellow is expected to be in residence at the Weitzman School in Philadelphia full-time for one academic year from the beginning of the Fall semester (August) through to the end of the Spring semester (May) in the following year.
Photo: Healthy Port Futures
At the Illinois State Park and other sites on the Great Lakes, Sean Burkholder, Andrew Gordon Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, has been working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to manage sediment in ways that would protect economic assets like ports while also promoting water quality and wildlife habitat. “If you work with the natural systems that exist in a place, most likely it’s those things that actually help make that place special in the first place,” he says.
Image: Dana Tomlin
Ahead of a virtual event celebration his impact on generations of students, Tomlin speaks about the evolution of mapping technology and its growing importance in daily life, using geospatial data to guide decision making, his split interests in the art and science of map making, and teaching at Harvard, Yale, Penn, and the Ohio State University.
Pietrusko is expected to join the Department of Landscape Architecture as an associate professor on the tenure track beginning January 1, 2022, and Green the Department of City and Regional Planning as an assistant professor on the tenure track beginning on July 1, 2022. Green joined Weitzman as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020 and will continue in that role through the upcoming academic year.
The 2021 World Landscape Architecture Awards were recently announced and a project by PEG office o
Last week, the Chicago Architecture Biennial announced the contributors selected for its 2021 edition, The Available City.