A drone’s-eye view helps Benson Photo capture the exciting new additions to the University of Pennsylvania campus.

The University of Pennsylvania’s campus is located in the heart of Philadelphia, providing gorgeous views of the skyline and useful connections to the rest of the city. Although photographing large campus buildings in such a dense urban area can be difficult without enough surrounding space to adequately capture their impressive facades at a distance, a drone can capture both close-ups of external design details and expansive wider shots that include the surrounding area.

A drone close-up shows the fine-line details on the windows of Gutmann Hall. The same facade, from the side.

The new Amy Gutmann Hall is intended to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration across Penn’s many schools and academic centers. Its design accurately represents this goal: the mass-timber-and-glass exterior combines old and new construction styles, while the circuit board–like designs on the windows evoke feelings of connectivity and network-building.

Photographing from a drone lets us fully capture the combination of mass timber and glass that makes up the Gutmann Hall exterior.

Drone photography provides access to heights and distances not available at street level, which in turn allows us to show a building in the greater context of its surroundings, no matter how tall or dense. The new Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology was placed to “reshape Penn’s architectural profile to the east,” but because the site is hemmed in by other buildings, only a drone’s-eye view could properly capture the building’s figurehead-like prominence.

Photographing from a drone provides enough distance to show off both the finer details and the greater context of Penn’s new buildings.

This street-level view of the Vagelos Laboratory shows off the impressive facade but very little of the surrounding area. From a drone, however, the laboratory’s position as a new gateway to the Penn campus is much clearer.

And those aforementioned views of the Philadelphia skyline aren’t just nice to look at. For the new Ott Center for Track and Field, which was built to host local youth and high school meets—including the famed Penn Relays—in addition to Penn’s own teams, those views provide a thematically relevant backdrop that represents the community-minded purpose behind the new facility’s construction.

You can check out these and other Benson Photo images in The Pennsylvania Gazette, Penn’s alumni magazine.

Center City provides a great backdrop to the new Ott Center. VIEW ALL PROJECTS