Popowsky Named Wilks Family Director at McHarg Center

We are very excited to share the news that award-winning landscape architect, researcher, and educator Rebecca Popowsky has been named the Wilks Family Director of The McHarg Center, effective January 1.

Rebecca has a long history with Penn, having earned her MLA and MArch degrees here in 2010. She most recently served as a research associate and the OLIN Labs coordinator at the internationally renowned landscape architecture firm OLIN, where she co-led its internal research practice since 2018. Developing innovations in waste-based material design and construction, soils engineering, and practice-based research models, she established partnerships in the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors. In her capacity as landscape designer at OLIN, Rebecca contributed to a wide range of design, planning, and construction projects. She joined the Penn faculty in 2015 and has taught core and advanced design studios and professional practice courses in the Department of Landscape Architecture. Rebecca succeeds Billy Fleming, who was instrumental in conceiving and producing many of the Center’s public programs and contributed to numerous research initiatives, including as co-editor of Design with Nature Now, which was recently published in Chinese and traditional Chinese translations. Billy has been appointed assistant professor of landscape architecture in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, where he joins several other Penn alumni on the faculty there.