Topic: Planning for Crisis

Richard Weller

Richard Weller is an Australian landscape architect and academic. He is the Meyerson Chair of Urbanism, professor and chair of landscape architecture, and co-executive director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is former co-director of Room 4.1.3- a design firm acknowledged with a Penn Press monograph (2005) and noted for critical design projects such as the National Museum of Australia. 

In over 30 years of practice he has worked simultaneously as an academic and a consultant specializing in the formative stages of projects ranging from gardens to plazas, memorials, museums, suburbs and waterfronts.

His research projects have involved scenario planning for cities, megaregions and nations. Weller’s work has been exhibited in galleries such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Gardner Museum in Boston, the MAXXI Gallery in Rome and the Canadian Design Museum.

Weller sits on the board of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) in Washington, is a member of the International Federation of Landscape Architect’s (IFLA) Advisory Circle and is the Creative Director of the interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture LA+.

In 2017 and 2018 Richard was voted by the Design Intelligence Survey as one of North America’s “most admired” teachers of design.