Associate Professor, Architecture; Co-Director of the Mellon Humanities, Urbanism and Design Initiative Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

Franca Trubiano is Associate Professor in the Architecture Department at PENN Design and a Registered Architect with l’Ordre des Architectes du Quebec. She teaches in theories of building, environmental design, construction technology, emerging materials, integrated design, and high-performance buildings. She is presently completing a manuscript for Routledge which challenges the field of architectural theory to reclaim its origins in the art of building. Building Theories, a new Ethics for Architecture (Routledge), proposes an alternative definition of theory, one that valorizes the as yet untapped potential of ‘thinking through building’. Her edited book Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes: Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice (Routledge Press 2012), was translated into Korean in 2014, by the Korean Research Institute of Environmental Architecture. Franca was a Principal Investigator and inaugural member of the Consortium for Energy Building Energy Innovation (CBEI) – formerly the Energy Efficient Building Hub, a US Department of Energy sponsored project. Her three-year funded research was focused on the development of Integrated Design Roadmaps of use by members of the AEC industry in pursuit of Advanced Energy Retrofits. At Penn DESIGN Franca was awarded Penn Design’s, G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2014.