Associate Professor
Landscape Architecture
Rob Kuper, PLA
- Email: rkuper@temple.edu
- Phone: 267-468-8179
- Office: Ambler Campus, Bright Hall 101B
- Website: https://sites.temple.edu/rkuper/
Rob Kuper teaches undergraduate and graduate landscape architecture design studio and engineering courses. Between 2012 and 2020, he co-directed design-build studio course projects that received almost 40 awards. Recently, Rob has taught the sophomore design and 3rd-year graduate capstone restoration design project studios. In landscape engineering, Rob teaches grading, stormwater calculations, layout methods, construction detailing, and building materials and methods.
Rob’s current research focuses on the climate crisis. In particular, he has studied travel-related carbon emissions and intends to broaden his investigations to include embodied emissions in landscape architectural materials and methods. In the past, Rob focused on how time affects the human perception of landscapes. He has proposed moving the Mountain-Central Standard Time Zone Boundary to coincide with the climatic boundary that defines the Great Plains; examined whether seasonally-induced visual changes to plants such as flowering, foliation and senescence affect how much people like a landscape, for whatever reason, and investigated whether the size of trees in a scene affects a landscape’s potential to restore one’s ability to pay attention or focus.
Rob has served on many departmental, school, university and organizational committees, anonymously reviewed manuscripts for numerous publications and conferences and participated in several design review juries.
When not on campus or at his desk, Rob uses breakfast-powered hand tools to manage invasive plants in a reserve and a park near his home.
MLArch, Auburn University, 2001
BS, Environmental Design, Auburn University, 1999
Selected Work
Kuper, Rob. (2023). Travel-Related Emissions from Past and Future CELA Annual Conferences. Landscape Research Record 12: 135-149. https://thecela.org/wp-content/uploads/LRR12-TRAVEL-RELATED-EMISSIONS-FROM-PAST-AND-FUTURE-CELA-ANNUAL-CONFERENCES.pdf
Kay, C., Kuper, R., & Becker, E. A. (2023). Recommendations emerging from carbon emissions estimations of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. eNeuro 10 (10), ENEURO.0476-22.2023; https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0476-22.2023
Kuper, Rob. (2022). Policy brief: Alternatives to in-person American Society of Landscape Architects Conferences on Landscape Architecture. Landscape Journal 41 (1): 77–93.
Kuper, Rob. (2020). Effects of Flowering, Foliation, and Autumn Colors on Preference and Restorative Potential for Designed Digital Landscape Models. Environment & Behavior 52 (5): 544–576.
Kuper, Rob. (2020). Preference and restorative potential for landscape models that depict diverse arrangements of defoliated, foliated, and evergreen plants. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 48: Article 126570.
Kuper, Rob. (2019). Travel-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions from American Society of Landscape Architects’ Annual Meetings. Landscape Journal 38 (1–2):105–125.