Archinect - News

Populous to design Beaver Stadium renovation for Penn State

2023-10-18T17:09:00-04:00

Populous has been named as the lead architect for a major renovation of the historic Beaver Stadium on the flagship campus of The Pennsylvania State University.

Barton Malow, AECOM Hunt, and Alexander Building Construction will join the project as construction managers, expanding on over 20 years of collaboration with Populous. The scope of the renovation entails winterizing the entire stadium for year-round use as an entertainment venue or the potential host of a college football playoff game. The western side of the stadium will also be reconstructed to include new executive suites and loge seating areas. Other renovations will be enacted in order to keep up with code upgrades and accessibility concerns. The reported cost of the project is $700 million.

The school emphasized its funding would be provided for entirely by the Athletics department, circumventing the need for tuition hikes. Construction is expected to begin in January of 2025 and conclude in time for the start of the ...

Chingwen Cheng named new director of Penn State’s Stuckeman School

2023-06-23T13:00:00-04:00

Chingwen Cheng has been appointed as the new director of the Stuckeman School at Penn State’s College of Arts and Architecture. Cheng is currently the program head and associate professor of landscape architecture, urban design, and environmental design at Arizona State University’s Design School.

Announcing the news, Penn State described Cheng as “a climate justice design educator and advocate for climate actions through co-designing nature-based solutions with communities.” Among Cheng’s engagement with sustainable design is her founding and directing of Hydro-GI Lab, which focuses on the evaluation of both the design process and outcomes of nature-based solutions for climate justice design.

“Climate change impacts and systemic injustice are persistent challenges that many communities around the world are facing,” Cheng said in a statement. “Design practices and scholarship must address these challenges as we hold the power to shape the built environment. After nearly three decade...

Penn State to study how fungal biomaterials can help reduce construction waste

2022-12-19T16:24:00-05:00

Researchers at Penn State are undertaking a study into whether fungal materials can replace traditional acoustic insulation funded by the 2022 AIA Upjohn Research Initiative. The team behind the effort, funded in 2021 by both an AIA Upjohn Research Initiative grant and a SOM Foundation Research Prize, is being led by assistant architecture professor Benay Gürsoy from Penn State’s College of Arts and Architecture Stuckeman School - Department of Architecture.

The project is titled Fungal Biomaterials for Sustainable Architectural Acoustics and builds on Gürsoy and her team's work at Penn State’s Form and Matter (ForMat) Lab, whose specialty involves fabricating biodegradable building components using mycelium. The new research path will focus specifically on the acoustic absorption properties of mycelium, with the goal of designing and building acoustic panel prototypes to be tested in the built environment.

“Mycelium-based composites are renewable and biodegradable biomaterials tha...