The University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design has announced its appointment of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office co-founder Rossana Hu as the next chair of its Department of Architecture.
Hu, who is currently on the faculty of the College of Architecture & Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai, will take over chair duties effective January 1st of next year. Current associate professor and MArch program director Andrew Saunders will lead in an interim role beginning in the fall.
Hu will become the third woman to serve as the department’s chair and continues a relationship with China that has been long-established at the school since the beginning of the 1920s.
“We see ourselves as mediators: between past and present, individual and collective, public and private, rural and urban,” Hu said of her firm’s approach to design, before adding, “It’s clear that the faculty and students at Penn are equally committed to this vision.”
Hu studied at both Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley before beginning her career at the Architects Collaborative in San Francisco and then working for Michael Graves and Ralph Lerner prior to founding Neri&Hu with Lyndon Neri in 2004.
Since then, Hu has gone on to win several industry awards while building an academic career that’s included stops at Yale, Harvard, the University of Hong Kong, and others.
“Rossana Hu has been an incredible champion for design and designers,” Weitzman Dean and Paley Professor Fritz Steiner offered finally. “Her work springs from a deep understanding of people and materials, and a thoughtful exploration of identity that is more important than ever to the practice of architecture.”
Hu joins Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, who was appointed as chair of the Landscape Architecture department late last month.
No Comments
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.