The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design congratulates Ferda Kolatan and Nicholas Pevzner on joining the standing faculty: Kolatan as associate professor in the Department of Architecture, and Nicholas Pevzner as assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture.
“Ferda and Nick have been exemplary members of the Weitzman community, not least because of their commitment to expanding the wider conversation on design,” says Dean and Paley Professor Fritz Steiner. “Their dedication to students and contributions to their professions are what make our school great.”
Ferda Kolatan has taught in the Department of Architecture since 2004. He is the founding director of SU11 Architecture + Design, an award-winning practice in New York City. SU11’s projects range from art installations to buildings and large-scale urban speculations. Acclaimed for its innovative designs, SU11’s work has been published internationally and exhibited at such renowned venues as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; FRAC Centre; Walker Art Center; Vitra Design Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art; Art Basel; ArchiLab, Orleans, France; Artists Space, New York; and the SCI-Arc Gallery. Kolatan has also participated in the Venice, Beijing and Istanbul Biennales, and the ACADIA and SIGGRAPH conferences. He received his Architectural Diploma from the RWTH Aachen and his Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University with honors. He has taught and lectured widely, most recently as the Jaquelin T. Robertson Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia and visiting critic at SCI-Arc and Pratt Institute. Kolatan has published several texts on architecture and co-authored the book Meander: Variegating Architecture (Bentley Institute Press, 2010). His Weitzman Research Studios in Cairo won the inaugural 2017 ARCHITECT Studio Prize and were exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016. In 2011, Kolatan was awarded the title of “Young Society Leader” by the American Turkish Society in New York for his achievements as an educator and designer.
Nicholas Pevzner has taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture since 2012, and since 2018 has been a Faculty Fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at Penn. His research examines the role of design in decarbonization, including the socio-spatial impacts of energy infrastructure on the landscape, and landscape systems’ role in negative emissions. His teaching has included studios and theory courses focused on landscape infrastructure, urban ecology, energy democracy, the history of energy systems, low-carbon urban districts, negative emissions, and the Green New Deal. His work on Post-Carbon Futures uses scenario-based design to investigate how ecological, social, and technological systems affect one another in the face of climate change and decarbonization, as well as spatial planning for the renewable energy transition. He is a recipient of the Maeder-York Family Landscape Fellowship in 2017 for research on the climate-harming methane leaks in natural gas infrastructure, and a recipient of the 2020 Bradford Williams Medal from the American Society of Landscape Architects. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from The Cooper Union and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Penn, and is the co-editor of Scenario Journal, a digital open-access journal focused on interdisciplinary conversations about ecology, design, and landscape performance.
Academic appointments are subject to approval by the Weitzman School, the University Provost, and Board of Trustees.
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