Student organizations at GSAPP support our community and enhance the academic experience. Following a call for submissions, the organizations listed below shared their highlights over the 2020-21 academic year. This page will be updated over the coming weeks to include more content.

If you are a member of a GSAPP student organization and would like to feature your organization’s work, please email exhibitions@arch.columbia.edu.

URBAN is a magazine created, edited, and published by students of Columbia University GSAPP’s Urban Planning Program. As a forum for discussion among the students, faculty, and alumni of the program and GSAPP, each semester’s publication opens its pages to all realms of urban planning.

Geon Woo Lee
Zeineb Sellami
Tihana Bulut

Contact email: urban.submissions@gmail.com

Urban China Network (UCN) is an student organization founded in May 2013 by a group of Columbia GSAPP Urban Planning students with a strong interest in China’s urban issues. UCN aims to bring students, scholars as well as practitioners from various disciplines in the Greater New York area into the discussion of China’s urbanization, and ultimately to facilitate the communication between cities in China and the U.S.

President: Xifan Wang
Treasurer: Hui Lu
Secretary: Jiuyu Wang
Liaison Officer: Caili Li
Event Planner: Hanzhang Yang
Media Officer: Angel Yin

contact email: urbanchinanetwork@gmail.com

WeChat: ColumbiaUrbanism

The East Asia Real Estate Club is an inclusive club bridging the gap between East Asia Real Estate and Columbia Students. We will engage speakers discussing current real estate matters in East Asia, provide networking opportunities, tour Asian architecture and development around New York, and create a bond with our other MSRED students who are still in Asia and couldn’t make it here due to visa issues. The club is open to anyone, especially those with a passion for East Asian Culture.

David Holiner
Yeshu Tan
SiQi Zhang

LatinGSAPP is an interdisciplinary student organization dedicated to the promotion, discussion and reflection of contemporary issues and ideas in Latin America. We recognize the importance and timeliness of thoughtful practice and research in the region of Latin America and by Latin Americans across the globe. Our primary objective is to raise awareness of this work and encourage cooperative involvement.

Co-director, Outreach: Luis Miguel Pizano-Andrade
Co-director, Secretary: Alice Fang
Events: Osvaldo Delbrey
Communications: Maria Perez Benavides
Alumni Advising Chair: Ines Yupanqui

contact email: latin.gsapp@gmail.com
Instagram

By creating opportunities for GSAPP students to engage with and learn from mission-driven professionals whose work has a double bottom line—a quantifiable social impact as well as a financial return—the Impact Investing Club seeks to educate those whose immediate and long-term post-GSAPP professional goals are to become investors and developers with a purpose.

Eric Iglesias
Joshua Gonzalez

The Design Driven Development Club aims to bring together individuals passionate about architectural design and real estate to foster a holistic, design-centric approach to real estate development. Considering the creative and analytical processes involved in development are integrally connected, this club meets with design-driven developers to study the correlation between design excellence and ROI while also learning how to navigate developer and architect relationships. While developing an understanding of the value of design in the field of development, this club also explores the architect as developer, design-build and developer as constructor business models.

Co-President: Maxwell Djakasaputra
Co-President: Alex Cutrona
Communication Chair: Kylie Pond
Finance Chair: Jeffrey Adler
Social Media Chair: Mustafa Kamil
Social Chair: Olivia McCaughey
Marketing & Graphics Chair: Yeshu Tan
Alumni & Mentorship Chair: Nash Taylor
Company/Site Visits Lead: Reed Gordon
RE Trek Lead: Agnes Cheung
M.Arch Liaison: Begum Karaoglu

This summer, Masaha hosts a mini-series on climate change in the Arab World as part of the GSAPP Conversations podcast. The Climate Change mini-series consists of conversations with designers, practitioners, and scholars whose work responds to the issue of climate change. Climate Change is affecting populations worldwide, with devastating impacts on the livelihoods and welfare of vulnerable communities.

In kicking off the Climate Change mini-series, MArch student Bisher Tabbaa speaks with Deema Assaf from Tayyun and Nochi Motoharu from the Midorization Project about forest creation to help restore urban ecosystems. Their work extends to protecting the genetic diversity of native plants through seed harvesting and native plant production with different nurseries. (This conversation was recorded remotely in March 2021.)

Masaha is a student association that investigates contemporary issues facing the Arab world. Using the historic Saha as precedent, Masaha creates a platform where diverse perspectives coexist to question and redefine the many Arab identities. The association aims to connect creative students across disciplines to contribute to the improvement and development of scholarship that focuses on the Arab world. In an existential time where we are witnessing cities being flattened to the ground, while others ascend vertically and unsustainably, we offer this platform for people who are interested in learning about our past, present, and future issues that continue to shape our cities and shape us. Masaha is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious professional organization that is open to all GSAPP students.

Founders Bisher Tabbaa Sarah Hejazin

Academic Advisor Ziad Jamaleddine