Puerto Rico / Philadelphia

In September 2017 Hurricane Maria, a category five tropical hurricane, struck the island of Puerto Rico leaving it unrecognizable. While Maria ravished the island’s physical infrastructure, it also exposed the extent of Puerto Rico’s existing colonial status: long-standing systematic issues within it’s socio-political infrastructure, a dire economic crisis, an out-dated power grid, and how unprepared the federal government was to respond to the aftermath of Maria.

This body of work showcases efforts made between myself and a team of planners, architects, and landscape architects within three interconnected but desparate studios: a semester-long interdiscplinary studio that took to understand the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and it’s exodus to Philadelphia; a semester-long practicum that worked to address concerns within local Puerto-Rican community development organizations and non-profits in Philadelphia, and an independent year-long research thesis project that analyzed the Puerto Rican Vernacular on the Island and it’s correspondence to the Mainland.

This work was done on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design programs in City and Regional Planning and Historic Preservation.

Liz Volchok

TBILISI, GEORGIA

The University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with The Georgian Institute of Public Affairs

The University of Pennsylvania
in collaboration with
The Georgian Institute of Public Affairs