Bestselling author and longtime New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman has accepted an invitation from the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design to speak at its May 13, 2023, Commencement Ceremony.
“Michael Kimmelman is a wonderful guide to the built environment and the ways it reflects our collective aspirations and failures,” says Weitzman Dean and Paley Professor Fritz Steiner. “He is also a time traveler, taking us back in history and projecting into the future to help us understand how policy and design decisions affect people’s lives. I’m thrilled he’s agreed to share his experience with us.”
A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Michael Kimmelman has been the architecture critic at The New York Times since 2011. He was previously the paper’s chief art critic and, while based in Berlin, wrote a column on European and Middle Eastern affairs called Abroad. He is also the founder and editor-at-large of the nonprofit-supported initiative based at The Times called Headway, which addresses global challenges and paths toward progress. Much of his work focuses on public space, subsidized housing and homelessness, social and environmental justice, and community development.
Kimmelman’s most recent book is The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin, 2022), a collection of conversations with architects, planners, historians, and others on walks around New York City at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book adds three walks to the 17 originally published by The Times in 2020, along with complementary photographs of the neighborhoods Kimmelman and his companions visited.
Kimmelman teaches in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Born and raised in New York City, he holds degrees from Yale and Harvard, and in his other life he is a pianist.
Weitzman’s Commencement Ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, May 13. Attendance for the in-person event is limited to graduates and ticketed guests, but the event will be streamed to YouTube.
One of 12 schools at the University of Pennsylvania, the Weitzman School of Design prepares students to address complex sociocultural and environmental issues through thoughtful inquiry, creative expression, and innovation. As a diverse community of scholars and practitioners, Weitzman is committed to advancing the public good—locally, nationally, and globally—through art, design, planning, and preservation.
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