Weitzman School of Design

The University of Pennsylvania Stuart 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, we are committed to advancing the public good–both locally and globally–through art, design, planning, and preservation. 

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    After Typology: The Suffering of Diagrams
    (2000-01-11) Braham, William
    Architects produce diagrams, not buildings, but diagrams that are wholly immanent, wholly embedded and coextensive with the materials, configurations, and forms of buildings. Theories of representation and expression have tended to privilege the concept over the building, treating the artifact as a site of interpretation, a mere extension of the process of its production. But if such concepts could be adequately expressed or understood separately from their manifestations, then the buildings themselves would be unnecessary. Architectural concepts only exist fully in their realization, as discoveries through the non-linear process called design. That condition of immanence inspires the recurring attention to method and process in the architectural discourse and equally the frustration with the embedded quality of the theorizing that it reveals.
  • Publication
    Dynamic Indices of Building Thermal Performance
    (1981) Braham, William
    Frequency transform and finite difference techniques are applied to a simple network developed using the equivalent thermal parameter (ETP) methodology. Subsequently a set of normalized parameter groups derived from the systems equations and solutions are discussed as indices of building thermal performance.
  • Publication
    Biotechniques: Form Follows Flow?
    (2003-01-01) Braham, William
    This paper examines the eco-systems model that underlies the LEED Green Building Rating System, comparing it to a number of other contemporary manifestations of the same model. As attendants at Greenbuild know well, the rating system offers credit for a number of well-recognized strategies that improve resource efficiency and indoor quality. Those strategies are based on an ecological model of the building and its occupants, which views them as agents in a dynamically interconnected system of flows and exchanges. between humans, their technological activities, and the biosphere. Or, in Sim van der Ryn's apt motto of ecological design: "form follows flow." (van der Ryn 2003)
  • Publication
    Public Participation Issues in Preservation Planning: Practices of Chinese Historic District
    (2012-01-01) Yi, Li
    Many issues are awaiting to be solved during Chinese urban redevelopment planning process. Among those issues, the lack of participation of stakeholders in urban redevelopment projects in historic district, other than all levels of government, real estate developers, and planning professionals, is one of the main issues that need special attention to be paid and will be addressed in this thesis. Via introducing the preservation planning and the concept of historic district, this article will first summarize five different urban redevelopment approaches in order to represent an overall picture of urban redevelopment projects in the last thirty years. Then, the problem of public participation will be introduced based on five approaches. Before the issue of public participation in Chinese urban redevelopment planning practice is carefully examined, the American experience of public participation in urban planning will be introduced, especially in preservation planning field, in order to clarify the importance of the public participation and the successful stories and lessons in the past. After that, based on the western theoretical base, the article will review five different approaches via analyzing the relationships of the stakeholders in five typical cases, thereby uncovering the reasons behind the lack of the participations in urban redevelopment projects in China and leading to the discussions of examining six opportunities and three threats of applying American public participation experience in Chinese context. Last but not least, a list of suggestions on how to improve public participation in Chinese urban redevelopment projects will be provided. They can be categorized as the policies, the strategies, and the tools, with an emphasis on the appliance of digital media.