Christopher Marcinkoski, Fall 2026 Lecture Series: The Resilient Campus

Join us in 175 Warren Hall for a lecture by Christopher Marcinkoski, The Political Economy of Public Space: Building in the American Context. This lecture is part of the Department of Landscape Architecture's fall 2026 lecture series, How Can Landscape Architecture Have Actual Agency?

Christopher's lecture will be a discussion of recent public space design and planning work undertaken across the United States over the last decade by PORT. Projects considered through the lens of their making and administration as conditioned by the particularities of contemporary American political economy. 

Christopher Marcinkoski (AIA, ASLA (Hon.), FAAR) is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design (PENN). He is also founding partner and creative director at PORT, an award-winning Philadelphia and Chicago-based public realm design and planning practice.

The author of The City That Never Was (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016) and the forthcoming The Political Economy of Public Space (Birkhäuser, 2027), his research and writing critically explore the under-considered economic and political complexities shaping contemporary urban built environments. Christopher was editor of LA+ 16 “Speculation” (AR+D Publishing, 2022) and co-editor of Perspecta 38 “Architecture After All.” (MIT Press, 2006). In addition, his writing has been published in a range of academic and professional journals including Domus, Topos, LA+, New Geographies, The Architects Newspaper, NextCity, Constructs, MONU, A+T, Taiwan Architect, and Landscape Architecture Journal (China). In addition to lecturing widely, his research has been exhibited internationally including venues in Delft, Kuala Lumpur, Milan, Munich, and Shenzhen. An architect by education and license, Christopher was awarded the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture from the American Academy in Rome for AY 2015-16. In 2025, he was awarded an honorary lifetime membership from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Christopher’s practice, PORT, was awarded the 2020 Emerging Voices Prize from the Architectural League of New York; the 2022-23 J. Irwin and Xenia S Miller Prize from the Landmark Columbus Foundation; and is one of only twenty practices selected for a commission over the last decade through the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation. In addition, PORT is the recipient of over 45 state, regional, and international professional awards since 2017, including commendations from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute, Landezine, and World Landscape Architect.

Current PORT projects include a new 50-acre urban park under construction along the Boise River in Boise, ID; a new 110-acre central park for Bentonville, AR supported by the Walton Family Foundation Design Excellence Program; multiple projects in and around Knoxville, TN including planning work that led to the securing of a $42.6M Reconnecting Communities implementation grant; planning for an 800-acre regional park along 7-miles of the Jordan River in Salt Lake County, UT; a new All Wheel Sports Park and 4.5-mile long greenway in Greenville, SC; a two-block linear park in Kingston, NY; urban design and planning work for a 96-acre mixed-use district in Columbia, MD; a new 25-acre park along the headwaters of the Arkansas River in Colorado; and planning for the daylighting of urbanized portions of nearly 2-miles of the Bozeman Creek in Bozeman, MT.

Prior to his appointment at PENN and founding PORT, Christopher was a Senior Associate at James Corner Field Operations in New York, where he led transformative urban design and public space projects including the planning of Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, the redesign of Public Square in Cleveland, and planning of the Qian Hai Water City in Shenzhen, China among others.