Alum in Action: Nathaniel Dansie Honored for Innovative Regional Design
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Nathaniel Dansie (BSArch '23)
MArch and MLA candidate, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
Recent graduate Nathaniel (Nate) Dansie (BSArch '23) was selected to receive the 2026 Jeff Harnar Award for Innovative Regional Design for his undergraduate thesis project titled Spirit of Water, Empire of Sun: Designing for Desert Living. The prestigious Jeff Harnar Awards are presented by The University of New Mexico School of Architecture + Planning and the Thornburg Foundation, and were created by Garrett Thornburg in 2007, honoring the legacy of the late local architect Jeff Harnar and his groundbreaking work in contemporary design.
The $3000 prize recognizes one exceptional project that demonstrates an innovative response to the challenges of the Southwest's arid climate. The competition jury noted that Nate's project was "very believable and convincing," represented in an "exemplary" way with "a robust and beautiful set of drawings." The jury also described the site planning as "magical" in how it used the way water flows through [the arid] landscape.
The jury commended that the award was able to recognize a student project, particularly one that addressed such a large and varied scale, from housing typologies to regional planning. "The scale [of the design] was really incredible...taking on [the] relationship between architecture, landscape, and larger environmental systems was very impressive."
We asked Nate, who is currently a graduate student studying architecture and landscape architecture at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania to reflect on this recognition and how his undergraduate architecture background and his time at the A-School have shaped his current academic pursuits.
What inspired you to pursue the topic of future housing typologies in the desert for your undergraduate thesis project?
Growing up I’d often travel to St. George, Utah to visit relatives.
The incredible ecology and sculptural landscape of the Southwest always blew me away.
Between hiking amongst the red rocks and days spent at the reservoir to escape the heat, I remember constantly seeing new houses and neighborhoods being built all around.
In more recent years, an increasing number of media sources reported on St. George as a hotspot of rampant population growth simultaneously dealing with increasingly severe heat and drought events. The combination of a place I grew up visiting also dealing with a very real and very scary crisis made me want to explore this further in thesis.
Environmental tensions have only increased since 2023 when I did this project. I hope there can be continued conversations with stakeholders in St. George to find collaborative and sustainable ways of mitigating this crisis.
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As you now pursue your graduate degrees in architecture and landscape architecture at UPenn, what has stayed with you from your experiences at UVA as an undergraduate student?
I really value the opportunities that arose outside of the set curriculum in my time at UVA: Studying abroad in Barcelona, participating in electives outside of the A-School, and conducting sound-based research with Karen Van Lengen, for a few.
These experiences all became foundational perspectives that influenced my future career goals and taught me to approach situations with a collaborative mindset. This in part led me to apply for a dual degree at UPenn.
My thesis semester really stuck with me because of this approach as well — It was an opportunity to synthesize these varied perspectives with my design education in a real place close to heart.
Working and learning with Mona El Khafif made this possible, who always brought her own energy and passion to studio, even on the days that sometimes we didn’t! I appreciate her mentorship and the discussions we have had over the years that remind me of the value of perspective and collaboration in our world. Thank you, Mona!
Nate Dansie, BSArch '23
Spirit of Water, Empire of Sun: Designing for Desert Living
Thesis Faculty Advisor: Mona El-Khafif
Winner: Jeff Harnar Award for Innovative Regional Design
Project Narrative
Historically, the Southwest [of the] United States has been defined as a place of rampant westward expansion by American citizens in one of the most iconic landscapes on this planet. Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Southwest has gone through a renewal of rapid growth, where the landscape of mountains and sand has transformed from monuments of nature to backdrops for newly planned communities.
Through a society driven by individual and economic success, these large development projects in growing towns are made as cheaply and quickly as possible. This becomes a plastic city in a landscape that is losing its identity as it continues to fill with more and more people. In hand with this increasing population, the Southwest is facing some of the most prominent climate change effects in the world. From rising temperatures, spreading desertification, and uncontrollable wildfire, to the most severe drought in the last 1,200 years, the future of desert living will be defined by how we adapt to climate change’s outcomes. This unsustainable growth of capital-driven small-town populations in juxtaposition to the increasing effects of climate change provides a dangerous future that we are heading towards. The city of St. George, Utah typifies these conditions and serves as the site for this thesis proposal. Known as one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the United States, it is dealing with one of the most severe water crises- with the demand for water expected to pass the supply by the year 2030.
The story of this town needs to shift from a one-directional water system into a cyclical and sustainable metabolism that addresses all scales of design. The proposed solution comes through a duality of increasing the water supply through a new master-planned housing typology at the community scale, and a sociological shift in our relationship with water through the architectural and individual scale to conserve what we have. We must reinvent how we live in a place to accommodate sustainable urban growth and amplify the original identity and ecology of the desert landscape.
Acknowledgments
In addition to being awarded the 2026 Jeff Harnar Award for Innovative Regional Design, this project was recognized as the Best Project of the 2023 UVA Thesis Cohort, was featured in Archisource Drawing of the Year IDEAS book (2023), and was part of the ACSA Study Architecture Showcase 2024.
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All images © Nate Dansie |
