September 25, 2020
This discussion brings together architects, theorists, and historians whose perspectives on human impairment reimagine the reconstruction and maintenance of the built past. Organized and moderated by David Gissen, in discussion with Georgina Kleege, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rob Thomson, Sun Young Park, and Wanda Katja Liebermann.
September 18, 2020
A symposium to present Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Presentations by book contributors Esra Akcan, Adrienne Brown, Luis E. Carranza, Jiat-Hwee Chang, Mark Crinson, Kenny Cupers, Addison Godel, Dianne Harris, Andrew Herscher, Reinhold Martin, Brian L. McLaren, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Peter Minosh, Adedoyin Teriba, and Lisa Uddin. Moderated by the editors Mabel O. Wilson, Irene Cheng, and Charles L. Davis.
September 11, 2020
The first in a series of discussions acknowledging and exploring the history of Columbia University’s colonialist and discriminatory practices against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Participants includes Erica Avrami; Mark Barksdale; Eric Foner; Mindy Fullilove; and Galia Solomonoff.
February 14, 2020
The book Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel by Andrew Ross focuses largely on the stone and marble industry of the West Bank its relationship to Palestinian labor. It asks: What kinds of rights should accrue from that labor and how do their contributions feed into the debate about civil and political rights in the “one-state” scenario now being debated for the region? This discussion unpacks arguments from the book through a conversation among Andrew Ross, Kadambari Baxi, Jordan Carver, Laura Diamond Dixit, Lindsey Wikstrom, and Mabel O. Wilson. Organized by Who Builds Your Architecture? and co-presented by Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies.
Stonewall 50: Defining LGBTQ Site Preservation
April 6, 2019
This symposium examines the progress and challenges of preserving sites of significance to LGBTQ communities and, by extension, to the heritage of cities and nations around the world. Participants include Andrew Dolkart, Amanda Davis, Cate Fosl, Nick Large, Shayne Watson, Ken Lustbader, Ankit Bhuptani, Matt Cook, Michael Ighodaro, Jay Shockley, Susan Ferentinos, Barbara Lau, and Ken Turino. Co-organized by NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, QSAPP and the Office of the University Chaplain as part of the Stonewall 50 Consortium.
March 23, 2018
This event presents efforts from the global to the local focused on addressing health inequities. Keynote lecture by Jason Corburn followed by a conversation among Nupur Chaudhury, Malo Hutson, and Mandu Sen moderated by Justin Garrett Moore.
Listen to Malo Huston in Podcast episode #33
April 13, 2018
Critically questioning the colonial practices of planning, architecture, and engineering, the presentation by Pierre Bélanger seeks to contribute a basis for undermining the industrial underpinnings and imperialist hegemonies that lie on, above, and below the surface of contemporary settler-state space whose foundations rely and rest on the perpetuation of spatial inequities, environmental injustices, and cultural inhumanities. The event includes an introduction by Reinhold Martin and is followed by a conversation with Kate Orff. Organized by the Buell Center.
November 17, 2017
Organized by Juan Herreros with Enrique Walker, the symposium hosts 15 international firms to discuss their respective contexts, ambitions, and influences relevant to their founding and early years, followed by joint discussions on their experiences and strategies.
October 6, 2017
Architecture participates, centrally, in defining modes of life, whether for the privileged or the dispossessed—designing and building the boundaries between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” This fundamental reality of architectural practice need not inspire either nihilism or defensiveness but should rather be understood, quite simply, as the terrain we navigate. Naming these complicities and the injustices they perpetuate is a first step toward addressing them. Participants include Karen Abrams, Kadambari Baxi, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Caitlin Blanchfield, James Graham, and Jacob Moore. Organized by the Avery Review at Columbia GSAPP.
February 15, 2017
The GSAPP community and invited guests discuss the role of architecture as a tool for grassroots mobilization and critical resistance. How are architects and designers engaging and empowering local communities to have a voice in urban design and policy? Participants include Ifeoma Ebo, Ingrid Haftel, Quardean Lewis-Allen, Betsy MacLean, Quilian Riano, and David Smiley.
April 15, 2016
This event inaugurates the Buell Center’s research project “Power,” which extends the Center’s recent work on housing, inequality, and real estate into another dimension of the planetary commons. Participants include Phillip Wegner, Edward Eigen, Jeanne Haffner, Paige West, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Reinhold Martin. Presented by the Buell Center.
January 22, 2016
Book launch for The Art of Inequality. A discussion among Jesse Keenan, Peter Marcuse, Reinhold Martin, Jacob Moore, Susanne Schindler, and Galia Solomonoff. Organized by the Buell Center and co-sponsored by 6on6.
November 6, 2015
Rather than reject outright a concept of global education, this forum instead asks participants to consider what it would mean to truly make higher education globally accessible and what aims such an education would need to address. What hypothetical curricula, exchanges, funding structures, and institutional relations would respect societies’ and individuals’ rights to intellectual self-determination without, however, positing a priori assumptions of differing educational needs based on cultural or class distinctions? Participants include Davarian Baldwin, Jamyung Choi, Saskia Cornes, Susan Gillespie, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Ruth Hayhoe, Hidetaka Hirota, Laura Kurgan, Jacques Lezra, Lydia Liu, Reinhold Martin, Noëleen Murray, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Bruce Robbins, Noliwe Rooks, Felicity Scott, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Mark C. Taylor, Mark Wigley, Grant Wythoff, and Stephen Zacks. Organized by Ginger Nolan and Jamyung Choi. Co-sponsored by the Heyman Center, Institute of Comparative Literature & Society, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and GSAPP.
April 3, 2015
Grounded in their books Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space and Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Landscape, scholars Keller Easterling and Saskia Sassen, respectively, present recent writings on equity, built and representational space, and the global economy.
Listen to Keller Easterling in Podcast episode #48
February 6, 2015
Organized in response to the failure to indict the murderers of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and countless other innocent and unarmed citizens—and the massive swelling of anger, grief, and public protest that followed—this urgent and interdisciplinary conversation explores race, justice, and urban space today. Participants include Kathy Boudin, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Suzanne Goldberg, Mario Gooden, Kimberley Johnson, Laura Kurgan, Reinhold Martin, V. Mitch McEwen, Dread Scott, Stacey Sutton, Kendall Thomas, and Mabel Wilson. Organized by GSAPP, Columbia’s Center for Justice, CURE, and the Buell Center.
December 11, 2014
Taking the “Arab City” and “Islamic Architecture” as sites of investigation, this symposium critically engages contemporary architectural and urban production in the Middle East in an effort to move beyond reductive notions of identity, myths of authenticity, the fetishizing of tradition, or the resilience of constructed oppositions between tradition and modernity. Participants include Ashraf Abdallah, Senan Abdelqader, Nadia Abu-El-Haj, Mohammad al-Asad, Suad Amiry, George Arbid, Mohamed Elshahed, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Rania Ghosn, Saba Innab, Ziad Jamaleddine, Ahmed Kanna, Bernard Khoury, Laura Kurgan, Adrian Lahoud, Ali Mangera, Reinhold Martin, Magda Mostafa, Nicolai Ouroussoff, Nasser Rabbat, Hashim Sarkis, Felicity Scott, Hala Warde, Enrique Walker, Mark Wasiuta, Eyal Weizman, Mabel Wilson, and Gwendolyn Wright. Co-organized with Studio-X Amman.