The University of Pennsylvania's newly-inaugurated Stuart Weitzman School of Design was officially renamed last week in honor or Penn graduate and global footwear designer Stuart Weitzman. 

The school, which houses undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and historic preservation, among other subjects, originally announced the name change in February of this year. According to a university statement, "The new name, the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, reflects Weitzman’s enduring influence in the world of design and his extraordinary support of the School."

The renaming will be accompanied by the redesign of a plaza fronting the school's main building. The new Stuart Weitzman Plaza will be redesigned by landscape architecture firm OLIN, whose principal, Laurie Olin, is practice professor emeritus of landscape architecture of the Weitzman School. The initiative also includes additional scholarships for Weitzman School students. 

Weitzman is a graduate of Penn's Wharton School of Business and has led a multi-million dollar footwear design company that originally started as a family business since the 1960s. 

Remarking on the new chapter, Weitzman School dean Frederick Steiner said, “Our mission is to prepare [our students] to address complex sociocultural and environmental issues through thoughtful inquiry, creative expression, and innovation,” adding, “We are training our students to lead the way to a more sustainable, healthier, and more inclusive future.” 

The school is home to the McHarg Center, one of the leading institutions working to develop a design response for the Green New Deal framework and other ecological urbanism-focused initiatives. 

Last week, the rebrand was made official at a ceremony at the university that included a conversation between Penn president Amy Gutmann and architecture critic Paul Goldberger. According to a university website, at the event, Goldberger said, "It’s really important that architecture, city planning, preservation, landscape, fine arts, and design are all seen as interconnected and having things to say to each other rather than separate isolated disciplines,” to which Gutmann replied: “We both believe that.”