Architecture and discourse are inseparable, and architecture, and its discourse, are always evolving. This is where e-flux Architecture and GSAPP meet. e-flux Architecture began as an editorial project ten years ago. As a fundamentally collective endeavor, the work e-flux Architecture has published over these past 10 years can be read as a map of how the discipline has transformed, where it is today. Not without its blind spots, it has given insight to and helped shape the direction of the discipline.

This event brings together some of the key contributors to e-flux Architecture of the past decade for a critical reflection and celebration. It is organized by Nick Axel & Nikolaus Hirsch (e-flux architecture); Jean Im , Dean Andrés Jaque , and Bart-Jan Polman (GSAPP); and will bring together: Emanuel Admassu (GSAPP, AD-WO), Lucia Allais (GSAPP), Erin Besler (Princeton), Beatriz Colomina (Princeton), Peggy Deamer (Yale), Keller Easterling (Yale), David Gissen (Yale), Catherine Griffiths (GSAPP), Brooke Holmes (Princeton), Nahyun Hwang (GSAPP, NHDM), Lydia Kallipoliti (GSAPP), Ateya Khorakiwala (GSAPP), Laura Kurgan (GSAPP), Sylvia Lavin (Princeton), Iván López Munuera (Bard), Mae-Ling Lokko (Yale), Reinhold Martin (GSAPP), David Eugin Moon (GSAPP, NHDM), Amelyn Ng (GSAPP), Jorge Otero Pailos (GSAPP), Spyros Papapetros (Princeton), Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Columbia), Enrique Ramirez (Pratt), Hilary Sample (GSAPP), Felicity Scott (GSAPP), Meredith TenHoor (Pratt), Julia Van Den Hout (Art Omi), Mark Wasiuta (GSAPP), Mark Wigley (GSAPP), Mabel Wilson (GSAPP, AAADS)

Lola Ben-Alon discusses her edited book Material Variance, followed by a conversation with Felecia Davis, Mae-Ling Lokko, Jorge Otero-Pailos, and Jonsara Ruth.

Raw building materials are inherently variable. This variability shapes global supply chains, labor relations, infrastructure​, and trade networks. And yet, within the context of building design, materials are often treated as static commodities. Material Variance resists this perception, unfolding instead a framework for designing through and with living matter that is uncertain, messy, and dynamic. The book insists on materials not as passive inputs but as unruly agents, shaped by and shaping the political, ecological, and cultural processes around them.

Convening material researchers, building scientists, architects, and artists, Material Variance aims to collectively expand architecture and design’s material lexicon and unsettle its disciplinary boundaries. The book interrogates the assumptions of refinement, standardization, and technocratic control to advance alternative fabrication practices, alchemical processes, and methods for working with indeterminate matter. From poetic field recordings to scientific analyses, the book opens up a space for thinking across theory and practice, across geological particles and living species, and across various scales, forms, and practices.

This edition of Material Variance features three distinct covers, each one printed with a unique matrix, ink, paper stock, and tip-in, extending the notion of variance to production of the object itself.

The Library is Open is a lunchtime series featuring recently published works and their authors, curated by Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia GSAPP. Hosted in a central location in Avery Hall, the LiO series honors GSAPP’s historical connection to Avery Library, the world’s largest Architecture library.

• Faculty Mireia Luzárraga (TAKK), together with Alejandro Muiño, inaugurate their commissioned installation for The Architectural League’s 2026 Beaux Arts Ball.

• Director of MSAAD Lydia Kallipoliti and Kaushik Prashar ’26 MSAAD publish the article, “The Secret Sounds of Avery Hall,” in Materia Arquitectura 30: Beyond Occupants.

• Faculty Juan Herreros (estudioHerreros) inaugurates the Space for the Alkar Contemporary Art Collection in Bilbao, Spain.

• Faculty Mary McLeod, Andrea Merrett ‘20 Ph.D. Arch, Alexandra Quantrill '17 Ph.D. Arch, and Roberta Washington '71 M.Arch join the panel, “The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020,” at the Center for Architecture.

• Faculty Ziad Jamaleddine’s (L.E.FT Architects) project, Ard al-Sahn, is featured in the Architect’s Newspaper.

• Faculty Amelyn Ng ‘19 MSCCCP, Christine Giorgio '19 M.Arch, and Faculty Gabriel Vergara '19 MSAUD (Friends Making Work) exhibit Re-Grounding the Archive at the Van Alen Institute.

• Faculty Kate Orff and Thaddeus Pawlowski join the conversation, “City Living: Reimagining Urban Ecology in a Changing World,” at Columbia Maison Française.

• Director of Ph.D. in UP Tom Slater is named among the world’s most cited scientists in the 2026 Stanford Elsevier List.

• Faculty Hugo Sarmiento joins the keynote discussion, “Climate Resilience for Whom? Displacement, Activism and Resistance at the Water’s Edge,” in Lima, Peru.

• Director of MSAAD Lydia Kallipoliti delivers a lecture, “The Fecal Imaginary,” for the World Ecologies in Formation Symposium, at the Yale School of Architecture, October 30.