Danielle S. Willkens
Associate Professor
Contact
Danielle S. Willkens
Associate Professor
Education
Ph.D. in Architectural History & Theory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (2015)
Savannah College of Art & Design, Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation (2011)
M. Arch, University of Virginia (2008)
M. Phil in the History of Art and Architecture, University of Cambridge, St. John’s College (2006)
B.S. in Architecture and Architectural History University of Virginia (2004)
Keywords
Architectural History, 3D Scanning, UAVs (drones), Spatial Visualization
Biography
Danielle S. Willkens, Assoc. AIA, FRSA, LEED AP BD+C is a practicing designer, researcher, and FAA Certified Remote Pilot who is particularly interested in bringing architectural engagement to diverse audiences through interactive projects. Her experiences in practice and research include design/build projects, public installations, and on-site investigations, as well as extensive archival work in several countries.
She is the 2026 Association for Preservation Technology International (APT) American Academy in Rome Fellow and was an inaugural Mellon History Teaching Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, exploring the project “From Plantation to Protest: Visualizing Cultural Landscapes of Conflict in the American South.” She currently has several research, documentation, rehabilitation, and visualization projects in Selma, AL and Atlanta, GA supported by National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Grants. She is also leading efforts on heritage documentation and sustainable tourism, alongside several collaborators, at the Penn Center, SC, Valencia, Spain, Petra, Jordan, and the Dominican Republic.
As an avid photographer and illustrator, her work has been recognized numerous times in the American Institute of Architects’ National Photography Competition and she has contributed graphics to several exhibitions and publications. She was the 2015 recipient of the Society of Architectural Historians' H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship and her research into transatlantic design exchange has been supported by the American Institute of Architects, Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation, the International Center for Jefferson Studies, and an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant. She is a member of the Executive Committee within the Board of Trustees for the Atlanta Preservation Center, as well as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Penn Center and the SouthWay Foundation. She currently serves as the Secretary for the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and the image editor for Buildings & Landscapes, the journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.
Statement of Teaching Interest:
Professor Willkens teaches studio, architectural history survey courses, and seminars at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her courses foreground thematic design connections across time and place, community-engaged research, and the demystification of analog and digital workflows for building documentation, preservation, and rehabilitation. She has an active cohort of MS and PhD students who are primarily investigating topics in preservation technology.
Statement of Research Interest:
Professor Willkens’s research incorporates archival work with heritage studies, high-tech digital documentation, and innovative methodologies for historic interpretation and public engagement. She explores sites as networks and how iterative data captures, robust analysis, and inventive visualizations can enhance historic readings, safety, and sustainability while fostering proactive preservation planning. Current research explores Atlantic world sites from the 16th to the early 19th centuries, sites related to the modern civil rights movement in the Southeast U.S., and AI applications for historic preservation.
“Tools and Frameworks for Community-Based Preservation Technology on Atlanta’s Westside” funded by a 2023 Arnold W. Brunner Grant from the Center for Architecture and New York Chapter American Institute of Architects
“Heritage BIM and Sustainable Tourism” funded by a 2023 Sustainability Next Seed Grant from Georgia Tech’s Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems,
“Sustainable Tourism in Petra, Jordan” funded by a 2022-2023 Call for New Initiatives in Climate and Sustainability from Georgia Tech’s Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
“Digitally Decoding Vernacular Construction: Sellman Tenant House” funded by a 2022 National Center for Preservation Training and Technology (NCPTT) Grant
“Historic Structures Report on Tankersley Rosenwald School” funded by a 2022 National Park Service African American Civil Rights Grant
“Walking in the Footsteps of History” at the 2022 ACCelerate Creativity + Innovation Festival at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History
“Historic Structures Report for the Edmund Pettus Bridge” funded by a 2019 National Park Service African American Civil Rights (AACR) Grant Program, Co-PI with Auburn University Associate Professor Junshan Liu
“Archival Layers and Public Interpretation for Heritage BIM: Two Atlanta Case Studies" funded by a 2021 National Center for Preservation Training and Technology (NCPTT) Grant
(2021-2026) National Park Service CESU Preserving our Historic Structures: NPS Southeast Region (SER) Parks Cultural Resources Research and Inventory
Digital documentation and accessible interpretation for the USS Drum at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park
Willkens, Danielle. The Transatlantic Design Network: Thomas Jefferson, John Soane, and Agents of Architectural Exchange. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2024.*
*runner-up for the 2025 architectural history book of the year from Booklaunch
Willkens, Danielle. Architecture for Teens: A Beginner’s Book for Aspiring Architects. New York, NY: Rockridge Press, 2021.
(forthcoming) Willkens, Danielle. “Domestic Architecture in Diagram: Fiske Kimball as Architect-Historian and the Case for Spatial Analysis.” In Fiske and Marie Kimball: Shaping Our Experience of Buildings and Objects, edited by Marie Frank. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, exp. 2025.
Willkens, Danielle, Junshan Liu, Botao Li. “Modeling and Monitoring the Rosenwald Ideal: Digital Documentation and Preservation at the Tankersley Rosenwald School, AL” in Decoding Cultural Heritage: a Critical Dissection and Taxonomy of Human Creativity Through Digital Tools, edited by F. Moral-Andrés, E. Merino-Gómez, and P. Reviriego, 413-438. New York, NY: Springer, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57675-1_18
Li, Botao, Danielle S. Willkens, Shadi Alathamneh, Sharon C. Park, and Junshan Liu. 2025. "Digitally Decoding Heritage: Analyzing the Sellman Tenant House Through HBIM and Digital Documentation Techniques" Virtual Worlds 4, no. 1 (2025): 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/virtualworlds4010010
Willkens, Danielle S., Junshan Liu, and Shadi Alathamneh. "A Case Study of Integrating Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Heritage Bridge Documentation: The Edmund Pettus Bridge" Buildings 14, no. 7 (2024): 1-33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14071940
Willkens, Danielle, David Yoakley Mitchell, Winston Taylor. "Ruins, Rhetoric, and Renewal: Atlanta’s St. Mark AME." Change Over Time 12, no.2 (Fall 2023): 190-212. https://doi.org/10.1353/cot.2023.a967003
Liu, Junshan, Salman Azhar, Danielle Willkens, and Botao Li. “Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) for Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM): A Systematic Review.” Virtual Worlds: Digital Twins in Cultural Heritage vol. 2, no. 2 (2023): 90-114. DOI: 10.3390/virtualworlds2020006
Willkens, Danielle. “The Craft and Care of Reality Capture” Buildings and Landscapes 29.2: Special Issue on Field Work (Fall 2022): 2-14. DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2022.0009
Willkens, Danielle. “Sir John Soane.” Oxford Bibliographies in "Architecture, Planning, & Preservation." Ed. Kevin D. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, March 23, 2022. DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780190922467-0071
Willkens, Danielle. “The Epistolary Polygraph.” In Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects, edited by Barbara Penner, Adrian Forty, Miranda Critchley, and Olivia Horsfall Turner, 181-184. London: Reaktion, 2021.
Willkens, Danielle. “Design by ‘considerable degree’: Jefferson’s architecture as applied science.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society v.110 p.2 (2021): 167-194.
Willkens, Danielle. “Clouds and Cataracts: atmospheric experiments at Sir John Soane’s Museum.” TAD: Open 3:2 (2019): 211-220. DOI: 10.1080/24751448.2019.1640539
Willkens, Danielle. “Reading Words and Images in the Description(s) of Sir John Soane’s Museum.” Architectural Histories 4 (1): 5, Building-Word-Image Special Collection (2016): 1-22. DOI: 10.5334/ah.204
ARCH 1017 Studio I
ARCH 2111/6105 History of Architecture I
ARCH 3115 Modern Art & Architecture Workshop
ARCH 4823/6160 Race, Space, and Architecture in the United States
ARCH 4016/4017 Architecture Design Studio 6 & 7
ARCH 3009 + ARCH 4921 Architectonics in Greece and Italy, study abroad program
ID2242 History of Art and Architecture in Europe, First Year Semester Abroad Oxford traveling program