Richard Weller is professor and former chair of landscape architecture and urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, where he (together with Fritz Steiner) established the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology. He is co-founder (with Tatum Hands) and former creative director of LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, founding director (with Vladimir Sitta) of Australian design firm Room 4.1.3., and holds adjunct professorships at the University of Western Australia and the University of New South Wales. In 2012 he received an Australian national teaching award for a sustained to commitment to design education, and in 2017 and 2018 he was listed by Design Intelligence as one of the top 25 most respected design educators in America. His work has been frequently awarded in international design competitions and exhibited internationally, including at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Venice and Rotterdam Biennales, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the MAXXI Gallery in Rome, the Canadian Design Museum in Toronto, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His publications include Room 4.1.3: Innovations in Landscape Architecture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), Boomtown 2050: Scenarios for a Rapidly Growing City (University of Western Australia Press, 2009), Made in Australia: The Future of Australian Cities (UWAP, 2013), Transects (ORO Editions, 2014), Design with Nature Now (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2019), Beautiful China: Reflections on Landscape Architecture in Contemporary China (ORO Editions, 2020), The Landscape Project (AR+D Publishing, 2022), and An Art of Instrumentality (ORO Editions, 2023), To The Ends of the Earth: A Grand Tour for the 21st Century (Birkhauser, 2024). Weller’s recent research work on biodiversity and cities, ‘The Atlas for the End of the World,’ has been published in National Geographic and Scientific American.

in 2024 Richard received the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) President’s Award for a lifetime of achievement in landscape architccture.

A selection of his writings, research projects and design work is available here.