Project Bus Stop: A Design Challenge for Philadelphia with Ulysses Sean Vance

Join Temple University Architecture Professors Ulysses Sean Vance, Jeffrey Nesbit and Ryan Thomas Devlin, along with Keely Milbourne (Haverford College) and Peng Du (Jefferson University), and Inga Saffron, architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer as they reveal and discuss design submissions to Project Bus Stop, a public challenge to Philadelphia’s design community to consider the significance of public transportation infrastructure in the city. Prompted by the recent closure and relocation of the Greyhound Bus Terminal, Project Bus Stop solicits ideas from students, faculty, designers, and regional firms on how to create a new urban ecology for bus transportation in Philly’s downtown area.

Submissions from the competition will be on display throughout the evening, and guests will have the opportunity to explore the museum’s galleries, including our latest exhibition, Project Liberty: A Design Challenge, which applies design thinking to resolving everyday challenges. Cash bar and refreshments available.

The event is pay-what-you-wish.

Doors Open: 5:30 pm

Panel Discussion: 6:00-7:30 pm

Doors Close: 8 pm

Register Here

For more information on the competition and how to submit, please visit: https://sites.temple.edu/projectbusstop/

Meet the Speakers

Ryan Thomas Devlin

Ryan Thomas Devlin is an assistant professor of City Planning and Community Development at Temple University. His research focuses on urban informality in cities of the Global North. He is specifically interested in informal placemaking strategies of immigrant groups in U.S. cities, and how planners, urban designers, and public administrators respond to such actions. His current work focuses on street vending and other uses of public space for livelihoods. Ryan is a community-engaged scholar who works closely with a variety of activist groups supporting informal workers such as the Street Vendor Project in New York City, and Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), an international NGO. 

Peng Du, Ph.D., LEED AP, WELL AP

Dr. Du is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor and Director of both Master of Urban Design – Future Cities (MUD) and M.S. in Urban Analytics and Geodesign programs at the College of Architecture and Built Environment in Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He is also a Research Fellow of Jefferson Institute of Smart & Healthy Cities. Dr. Du’s expertise is in net-zero buildings and cities, computational urban design, urban energy modeling, urban data analytics, and mixed reality (VR/AR) technologies, incorporating interdisciplinary approaches. Dr. Du’s research has received broad media coverage by venues such as Curbed, CityLab, and Smart Cities World. Prior to joining Thomas Jefferson University, Dr. Du taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Texas Tech University. He also served in several leadership roles at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), including director & board member of CTBUH Asia, and board member of CTBUH Philadelphia Chapter. Dr. Du is a LEED-Accredited Professional and WELL-Accredited Professional.

Keely Milbourne

Keely Milbourne, pronouns: she, her, is a Disability Civil Rights advocate in the greater Philadelphia and Delaware areas. She currently serves as the Director of Access and Disability Services at Haverford College, as a volunteer accessibility specialist with Philly’s Community Design Collaborative, and on the Governor’s Advisory Council for Delaware’s Division of Parks and Recreation. In her free time, Keely does more of this work but occasionally finds time to kayak and watch birds.

Jeffrey S. Nesbit

Jeffrey S. Nesbit is an architect, urbanist, director of the research group Grounding Design, and assistant professor in history and theory of architecture and urbanism at Temple University. His experience spanning over a decade includes leading design teams for public architecture and large-scale urban projects, along with managing sponsored design research projects for city governments, local institutions, and NGOs. Nesbit has published several journal articles and book chapters, and editor of multiple books, including Nature of Enclosure (Actar, 2022), co-editor of Technical Lands: A Critical Primer (Jovis, 2023), New Geographies 11 Extraterrestrial (Actar, 2019), Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations (Routledge, 2018), and host and producer of three podcasts.

Inga Saffron

Inga Saffron is the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. For more than 20 years, she has been a forceful advocate for meaningful design, accessible public spaces and transit, affordable housing, historic preservation and policies that make our cities more liveable and climate resilient.  Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the 2018 Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum,  a 2012  Loeb Fellowship from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. In June 2020, Rutgers University Press published a selection of her Inquirer columns about Philadelphia’s urban recovery,  Becoming Philadelphia: How an old American city made itself new again.

She started her career as a municipal reporter, covering local planning and zoning meetings,  and went on to become a foreign correspondent, covering wars in Yugoslavia and Russia during the 1990s,  and witnessing the destruction of Sarajevo and Grozny. In addition to her writing about architecture and urbanism, she is an expert on the cultural history of

sturgeon. Her book, Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s

Most Coveted Delicacy, appeared in 2003 to rave reviews. She is currently working on a history of the American newspaper building.

Ulysses Sean Vance

Sean is a Professor of Architecture at Temple University where his research in architecture is directed by accessibility in buildings and involves designing interventions for the health and well-being of underserved communities. It is research founded on inclusive decision-making in the planning and programming of institutional space and has primarily focused on differences in accommodating adolescent and geriatric health services, including medical, hygienic, physically active, respitive, and nutritionally-oriented interventions. His active projects have addressed the complexity of resolving health disparities in urban environments by examining the extent of adversity, material hardships, and the protective factors associated with physical, social, neurologically diverse, and behavioral-based concerns. His current research with the Temple University Urban Workshop addresses the engagement of early adolescents who are physically and neurologically diverse and determining the operational and navigational needs for Variety the Children’s Charity of Delaware Valley as they aspire to provide accessible cabins for their community.