AIA UK - Designing a Green New Deal
Rare earth mineral deposits marked for the clean energy transition and mines around the world
Event Description
In this session, faculty, students, and alumni of the McHarg Center will discuss their applied policy research, creative scholarship, and studio work completed through the Center's Green New Deal initiative.
CES: 1.25 LU/ HSW for AIA Members
Speakers
Billy Fleming, Wilks Family Director, Ian L. McHarg Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Design
Ian Dillon, Master of Landscape Architecture candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Xan Lillehei, Fellow, US Architects Declare
Rosa Zedek, Designer and Researcher, OJB Landscape Architecture
Sara Harmon, Landscape Designer
Al-Jalil Gault, Graduate student in City Planning, University of Pennsylvania
A.L. McCullough, Master of Landscape Architecture candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Nick Jabs, Associate, PORT, Philadelphia
Palak Agarwal, Master of Landscape Architecture candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Yixin Wei, Master of Landscape Architecture candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Selina Cheah, Master of Landscape Architecture and City Planning candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Billy Fleming is Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and a senior fellow with Data for Progress. His fellowship with Data for Progress has focused on the built environment impacts of climate change, and resulted most prominently in the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019. Billy is co-editor of the forthcoming book An Adaptation Blueprint (Island Press, 2020), co-editor and co-curator of the book and now internationally-traveling exhibit Design With Nature Now (Lincoln, 2019), and author of the forthcoming Drowning America: The Nature and Politics of Adaptation (Penn Press, expected 2021). Billy is also a co-author “The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal” and the Indivisible Guide (2016).
Ian Dillon is a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Iowa State University with a focus in Art History and Digital Media. His interests include questions of representation, non-anthropocentric ways of seeing and being, and volumetric conceptions of landscape.
Xan Lillehei is a fellow with US Architects Declare and a member of the climate and community project (ccp) working on the built environment transition of the Green New Deal. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was awarded an ASLA Merit award, and a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Letters from Wesleyan University.
Rosa Zedek is passionate about research in the field of landscape architecture, designing systems that mimic natural ecological processes, and the creation and protection of equitable urban landscapes. She holds a master's in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania as well as a BA in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the same institution. She is currently a designer and urban air quality researcher at OJB Landscape Architecture.
Sara Harmon is a passionate landscape designer whose practice is rooted in a desire to bring light into the lives of others. A self-proclaimed plant and history nerd, she has always revelled in the small details that bring spaces to life. Her experience ranges from the scale of a small courtyard to a regional vision of the future of Appalachia under the Green New Deal. She has worked on public and private projects through all phases of the design process on both coasts. Sara believes that a designer’s most important contribution to the world is the creation of beautiful, functional spaces that both help to address larger socio-economic issues as well as provide small moments of joy to those who experience them. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Al-Jalil Gault is a Graduate City Planning Student at the Weitzman School of Design, Research Assistant at the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, Member with Climate and Community Project (CCP), and incoming Analyst at Econsult Solutions, Inc in Philadelphia, PA. His wide array of interests include social, environmental, and economic resilience in regional development. Prior to attending the University of Pennsylvania, Al-Jalil earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and has worked as an Architectural Intern with firms of all sizes in Chicago, IL and Seattle, WA, including SmithGroup, Mithun, and Gregory Ramon Design Studio.
A.L. McCullough is a landscape architect and project coordinator at the climate + community project. They hold a BLA from the Pennsylvania State University and are studying toward an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania.
Nick Jabs is a registered architect and Associate at PORT in Philadelphia, PA where he works on the firm’s landscape architecture, architecture, and urban design projects. In 2019, Nick was named a Fellow to the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership. His research explores the past and present condition of Middle American Cities through the evolution and intersection of their working landscapes and public realm. The project positions the Green New Deal within this context and seeks to amplify the influence of the design profession by actively engaging with spatial, political, and economic drivers of their urban condition.
Palak Agarwal holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from RV College of Architecture, India and is completing a master’s degree in Landscape. For her landscape architecture is the bridge between ecology and urbanism, a complex matrix composed of tangible and intangible features. She believes that enactable policies should be developed and employed across the country, reflective of the myriad spatial, social, cultural, political, and morphological agents that constitute place.
Yixin Wei is studying towards a Master of Landscape Architecture degree with an Integrated Product Design Certificate at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor of Engineering in Urban and Rural Planning and studied Biology for two years at Xiamen University in China. Studying landscape architecture at Penn has started to connect dots for her, bringing her interest in life science and the built environment together. She’s devoted to exploring design as an approach to challenge one’s preconceived perspective rather than to find an ultimate solution.
Selina Cheah is currently pursuing a Masters of Landscape Architecture and a Masters of City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and in Urban Design Studies from New York University. She is a research assistant at the McHarg Center working on the Field Notes Towards a Green New Deal project and is interested in the medium of design as a way of collective storytelling. Prior to living in Philadelphia, she moved all along the East Coast but grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
