An important center for the development of modern architecture, Penn is an excellent place to study its history. The program is supported by superb library and archival resources, including the internationally important holdings of the university’s Architectural Archives and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and Graduate Group faculty are drawn from both the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Design. The vibrant contemporary architectural culture of Philadelphia energizes the work of students and faculty, whose interests include almost all aspects of the built environment from the eighteenth-century to the present.
Ana Gisele Ozaki's research and teaching approaches modern architectural history through inquiries of race, climate, and the environment, with a particular interest in the afterlives of the colonial plantation.
Members of the Graduate Group who work on modern architecture include Annette Fierro (Department of Architecture: modern and contemporary European architecture, with special interest in British postwar architecture), David Leatherbarrow (Department of Architecture: European modernism, with special interest in early twentieth-century theory), Frank Matero (Department of Architecture and Program in Historic Preservation: modern architecture and issues of materials and conservation), Robert St. George (Department of History: American vernacular architecture); Nancy Steinhardt (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations: twentieth-century architecture in China); Aaron Wunsch (Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning: American architecture and landscape architecture).