Tyler Blog

October 3, 2024

Professor's Exhibition Critiques Health Care System Through Real Illness

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

Tyler Professor Pepón Osorio has been celebrated worldwide for his provocative and immersive large-scale, multimedia installations that explore complex, systemic problems in American life through the lived experience of others. But his current exhibition Convalescence, now on view in the heart of Thomas Jefferson University’s medical center, is the first time he has used his personal story – of cancer diagnosis and treatment – to shine a light on inherent health and health care inequities in the United States. Read More

September 16, 2024

Tyler Faculty Co-Teach Course on São Paulo’s Art and Architecture  

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

In the Fall 2024 semester, Tyler faculty members Mariola Alvarez and Pablo Meninato are co-teaching a seminar that explores artistic and architectural developments that have taken place in the largest city in Latin America – São Paulo, Brazil – from the early 20th century through the present day.      Read More

Rachel Hsu poses with her installation, The Weight of Our Living
September 13, 2024

Immersive Installation by Rachel Hsu (MFA ‘21) Wins Public Art Competition

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Philadelphia artist and Tyler Sculpture alum Rachel Hsu (MFA '21) has been selected to install a temporary public art installation in Maja Park along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. The interactive artwork, titled The Weight of Our Living, is currently on view through October 2024. Hsu's installation features a six-foot circle of river stones embedded in a concrete base, surrounded by plantings. Visitors are invited to walk barefoot over the stones, and a small, curved bench nearby offers a space for observation and reflection.   Read More

September 12, 2024

Design & Illustration Department Launches New Speaker Series

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

Tyler’s Design & Illustration Department kicks off the 2024-2025 academic year with not only a new name and new, planned BFA degree offerings, but also the launch of the Design & Illustration Speaker Series featuring designers, illustrators and other makers who are shaping their creative fields. “We hope these speakers will open students’ minds to the many paths their practice can take after they graduate,” said Assistant Professor of Instruction Nathan Young, organizer of the series.  Read More

September 3, 2024

JADE Fellow Beamlak Sahle (BSArch '25) Wants to Build Naturally

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

When international student and Architecture major Beamlak Sahle (BSArch ’25) returns to her home country of Ethiopia after graduation next May, she hopes to revolutionize the way buildings are constructed in the African nation, especially in rural areas.“I would like to solve a lot of design problems when it comes to infrastructure,” said Sahle, adding that she is particularly interested in schools and hospitals. “I would like to introduce a community-oriented design approach and bring back natural building technologies to help improve the living conditions of the people.” Read More

September 3, 2024

Associate Professor Philip Glahn Publishes New Book on Visionary Art Collective

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Philip Glahn, Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Critical Studies at Tyler, has coauthored a new book about Mobile Image, a pioneering new media art collective founded in 1977 by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz. The Future is Present: Art, Technology, and the Work of Mobile Image (The MIT Press, 2024), coauthored with Cary Levine, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, highlights the collective's prescient vision, as well as its continued importance and resonance. Read More

Tyler Architecture students and faculty
August 9, 2024

Architecture Students Design for Southeast Asian Market in FDR Park

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Tyler architecture students designed structures to inspire stalls that will be built at the Southeast Asian Market's permanent site in Philadelphia's FDR Park as part of a two-part elective studio over spring and summer 2024.⁠ These courses featured a mix of students in Tyler’s architecture 4+1 program—an accelerated degree track leading to a bachelor of science in architecture and then a master of architecture—and graduate students enrolled in the two- and three-year track master of architecture programs. Read More

Joni Baumgarten, Sasha Eisenman, Laura Toran, Josh Caplan and Abdullah Al-Amin
July 25, 2024

Temple faculty hope to save PennDOT’s plants from deadly road salt

Author: Jordan Cameron

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Temple and Villanova was commissioned by PennDOT in 2017 to research and monitor bioretention basins—small green spaces filled with a variety of flowering plants, grasses and trees—along I-95 to help improve their design. These basins become filled with deicing salt used to treat roads in the winter, which is detrimental to the health of the plant life. The Temple group includes Josh Caplan, an associate professor of horticulture at Tyler, and Sasha Eisenman, chair of Tyler’s Architecture and Environmental Design Department.  Read More

July 22, 2024

Envisioning a Therapeutic Career Path Through Fieldwork

Author: Wanda Motley Odom

Art therapy major Paloma Collins (BA ’24) had never worked with elderly adults before, so she didn’t know what to expect when she started fieldwork as part of her capstone studies with residents of the older adult community at Wesley Enhanced Living at Stapeley in Philadelphia.“I learned to ask a lot of questions,” reflected Collins, who was instrumental in helping residents design and craft a four-foot by eight-foot sensory mural on the memory care floor in a hallway where residents pass by to get to their apartments or seek out activities. She described the project as “born of conversations,” spending time getting to know about the residents, their lives and capabilities, and what gave them feelings of calm, comfort and security. Read More

Cover of Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex by Jeffrey Nesbit
July 18, 2024

Architecture Professor Publishes Book on NASA's Infrastructure History

Author: Alina Ladyzhensky

Tyler Professor of Architecture Jeffrey S. Nesbit has published a new book that examines the 20th-century American rocket launch complex at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, and aerospace history. Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex (Routledge, 2024) surveys the architectural histories and aesthetic considerations that helped to develop America’s public image of early space exploration. Read More