PhD / MS in Architecture

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A group of PhD students and faculty posing
Poster for the event
Three-part infographic
Complex architectural model
Vanessa Grossman lecturing in front of an audience
A person talking to a group of students in a work space
PhD Tour of Abraham House and Farm, and Nakashima Studio Houses
Leatherbarrow Festschrift
Leatherbarrow Festschrift
Polyhedral Structures Lab at IASS, Melbourne, Australia July 2023
Franca Trubiano and Ji Yoon Bae at UIA World Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 2023
A collage of many faces with the title of the event over

On March 21st, 2025, the Weitzman School of Design hosted the PENN PhD Architecture SYMPOSIUM: Resources, Resilience, and Resistance. Faculty and students discussed the future of doctoral research and scholarship in architecture with S.E. Eisterer (Princeton), Lydia Kallipoliti (Columbia), John Ochsendorf (MIT), Ana Maria Leon (Harvard), Jonathan Massey (University of Michigan), and Theodora Vardouli (McGill). The daylong, in-person event  featured new scholarship and addressed important topics and future challenges in PhD education including funding, AI, freedom of speech, and the future of the university.

Degree Programs

PHD PhD in Architecture MS Master of Science in Architecture
All degrees and certificates at Weitzman

1964–2024

Penn PhD Architecture Celebrates 60 Years

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News

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Meet the People of PhD Architecture

Trubiano photographed in front of greenery facing camera in daylight Franca Trubiano Associate Professor of Architecture // Chair, Graduate Group of Architecture Headshot of Bill Braham wearing a suit jacket and white shirt William W. Braham Andrew Gordon Professor of Architecture // Director MSD-EBD Program // Director Center for Environmental Building + Design Headshot of Masoud Akbarzadeh wearing a black shirt Masoud Akbarzadeh Associate Professor of Architecture Photo of Rami Kanafani Rami Kanafani PhD Candidate in Architecture Photo of Teng Tent Teng Teng PhD Candidate in Architecture Qiran Shang Photo Qiran Shang PhD Candidate in Architecture Photo of Ji Yoon Bae Ji Yoon Bae PhD Candidate in Architecture Photo of Basak Eren Basak Eren PhD Candidate in Architecture Photo of Yefan Zhi Yefan Zhi PhD Candidate in Architecture
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Dissertations

Dissertations in Preparation

Zherui Wang Dissertation A Geometrically Modulated And Carbon-conscious Thermal Architecture: A Multiscalar Approach Adobe wall collapse at Fort Union National Monument. Credit: National Park Service, Fort Union National Monument. Mud & Memory: A Systems Approach to Preservation of Climate Sensitive Historic Structures Chart of Historic Minimum Ventilation. Source: Rates Nielsen, Peter V., and Yuguo Li. 2019. “Ventilation.” In Encyclopedia of Environmental Health (Second Edition), edited by Jerome Nriagu, 344–55. Oxford: Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.02002-9 Towards an Architecture of Clean Air Exterior view of the Jewel Box Lounge drag bar in Kansas City, Missouri, one of lesbian anthropologist Esther Newton’s two sites of study for Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (1972), the first U.S. ethnography of drag culture and life. Date and photographer unknown. Sex Under Construction: Architecture, Gender, and Sexual Science in the 20th Century American City Construction site of the "Grail Chapel" at the Lindisfarne Association in Crestone, Colorado, c. 1981. Source: William Irwin Thompson Papers, #3793, Box 20. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library Architecture and the New Age Worldview: Wholeness, Spiritual Environmentalism and the Politics of “Conscious Evolution,” 1969-1991 Poster Announcing Dan Graham’s Exhibition at Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1978 “Art Needs to Go Public”. Dan Graham Pavilions and the Evolution of a Critical Idea and Practice, 1964-2022

Dissertations Defended

3D concrete printed post-tensioned 3-meter beam structure. Image credit: Hua Chai, Polyhedral Structures Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Computational Form-Finding of Tension-Integrated Spanning Structures with Polyhedral Graphic Statics Diagram showing the research area in the traditional Hijaz house in Jeddah The Architecture of Natural Conditioning in Hot-Humid Climates: Architectural Ethnography study of Hijazi traditional dwellings in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Yao Lu dissertation image Lightweight, Efficient Sheet-Based Spatial Structures Designed with Polyhedral Graphic Statics Young boys start to create an allotment on a bomb site The Child in the City: Play, Architecture, and Urbanism in Modern Kuwait, 1960-1980 https://kommunalka.colgate.edu/ 2006-2008 Utekhin, Nakhimovsky, Paperno, Ries. All rights reserved. The Soviet Communal Apartment: 1917-2017 Free Housing for the 99% Dissertation Diagram Challenging Orthodoxy: The Idea of Facade of The Philadelphia School Architects

Publications by PhD in Architecture Alums

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Events

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Past Events

Conference Precarity: PhD Conference on Architectural Research (Online) Architecture April 22, 2022 - April 23, 2022 Conference CONSTRUCTIONS AND LOCATIONS: Festschrift in Honor of David Leatherbarrow Architecture Event Architecture May 19, 2022 - May 20, 2022 9:30 am - 6:00 pm Building Theories Cover Lecture Franca Trubiano Booklaunch: Building Theories - Architecture as the Art of Building Architecture March 22, 2023 6:30 pm 60 years symposium Conference Penn PhD Architecture 60 Years Symposium Resources, Resilience, & Resistance PhD Architecture March 21, 2025 9:00 am - 6:45 pm