School Events

LARP Lecture Series: https://www.design.upenn.edu/landscape-architecture/events/activ-ism

ARCH Lecture Series: https://www.design.upenn.edu/events-exhibitions-0/events/weitzman-fall-2020-lecture-series

Meyerson Hall is both closed and open. While students can get in and technically have workspace I know many of us would prefer to stay home. With the majority of classes online and the studio requirements adjusting to reflect that a workspace for model making and collaborating doesn’t seem to be needed.

However the downside to everything being online is the disappearance of spontaneous inspiration. Lectures that used to be good excuses to just change rooms and meet people not typically in your class now are events on a long calendar list of zoom meetings.

Despite the more limited interaction of these events the school has made an effort to create a lecture series that engages this years events directly. The Landscape Architecture series title Activism looks promising. I unfortunately missed the first lecture of the series but look forward to attending the future lectures.

While the lecture series are still in progress much of the typical school events seem to have dissapeared or become another zoom meeting. In their place students are self organizing zoom calls, video game sessions, bubble picnics, book clubs, and group chats of a wildly spontaneous and random nature. These are all nice touches and I am undecided as of yet whether I like them more than studio.

On one hand I can choose when to engage and when not to. On the other hand perhaps this only works because these are all students I already know and don’t have to force the interactions to function. It will certainly be interesting to see how the new class handles this odd disconnect.

On that note, the Student Mentorship Program is officially started. Mentors have been assigned mentees from the incoming class. Students should connect in the next few days so perhaps then I will have a better idea of how the new class is doing!

The semester is still young and I am sure to have plenty more updates as things start to settle! Til then, good luck with studies and work!