Bio
Jessica Varner, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Landscape and Environmental History at the University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School, Department of Landscape Architecture (LARP). She is also a co-curator of “A People’s EPA (APE)” with EDGI (Environmental Data & Governance Initiative) and on the organization’s advisory committee advocating for just chemical futures.
Prior, she was a lecturer at MIT in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture Department, ACLS/Getty Fellow, and USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Environmental Humanities.
Her current book project, Chemical Desires: When the Chemical Industry Met Modern Design, 1870-1970 (under arrangement with the University of Chicago Press for the Synthesis Series, expected publication in 2025). Chemical Desires examines how modern chemical engineering irrevocably changed building practices. Through archival evidence that extends from U.S. corporate records acquired in FOIA requests, architects' plastics specifications, and patented pigment formulas, the book explores how the chemical corporations BASF, Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont moved strategically from selling materia—raw matter—to pushing building substances with manufactured qualia—qualities derived from synthetic chemicals, made from coal, oil, and gas byproducts. The research reveals how modern architects and architectural modernism's chemical and environmental legacies are inextricably linked to corporate profits and chemical desires.
The National Science Foundation, Science History Institute, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Fulbright Germany, Getty Foundation, American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS), Martin Society of Fellows for the Environment, Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Graham Foundation have supported her research. Her work has also been supported by research grants from MISTI India and Germany Programs and an MIT Presidential Fellowship.
She is also co-authoring Climate Changed: Modeling Pasts, Presents, and Futures (forthcoming Columbia University Press), co-editor of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative Toxics project, and curator/designer for the recent exhibition, Room(s),” at Yale University.
Jessica received a B.S. from the University of Nebraska (Lincoln), a Master of Architecture degree, and a Master of Environmental History from Yale University. Her writing has appeared in numerous edited volumes and publications, including Art in America, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Aggregate, Constructs, the Architects Newspaper, and the forthcoming edited volume, Chemical Anthropocene. Jessica is also a founding partner of the Black House Project—a 2-acre work-live, artist-in-residence complex located on the tidal flat wetlands of coastal Connecticut.
Before completing her Ph.D., Jessica’s professional experience included over eight years in architectural publications, exhibitions, and buildings for an international audience at Michael Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles and Yale University. Her projects include No More Play, with Hatje Cantz, voted one of the best books of 2011 by LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne; architectural collaborations, including Star Apartments, an award-winning 102-unit, no-income housing in downtown LA; the LA River Piggyback Yard, Industrial Remediation/ Water Retention Park; and more. Most recently, she was an editorial and curatorial assistant for the Yale School of Architecture and Gallery, working on projects such as Writing on Architecture: Paul Rudolph (Yale University Press), Retrospecta 06-07 (Yale University Press), “George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher (Yale Exhibition)” and “White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes (Yale Exhibition).”
See the email below for direct inquiries.