Cruz García and Nathalie Frankowski

Cruz García and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Think Tank will deliver the lecture “Not a test lab: Loudreading, Spirals, and Post-Colonial Methods” on their recent work, including the text “Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto.” Oscar Oliver-Didier will provide the introduction and later be joined by Uriel Fogué to provide a response following the presentation and host a Q&A session.

Founded by Puerto Rican architect, artist, curator, educator, author, and theorist Cruz Garcia and French architect, artist, curator, educator, author, and poet Nathalie Frankowski, WAI is one of several collaborative platforms of public engagement that include the alternative trade school LOUDREADERS and the antidisciplinary collective Post-Novis.

Garcia and Frankowski teach at Columbia GSAPP and at Iowa State University where they are Associate Professors and Design of Critical Futures and Activism, and Emancipatory practice respectively. Their work has been part of exhibitions at Centre Pompidou Metz, Neues Museum Nuremberg, Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology Lisbon, Museum of Modern Art New York, the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

They are authors of A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education, Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto, Pure Hardcore Icons: A Manifesto on Pure Form in Architecture, the upcoming book Universal Principles of Architecture: 100 Archetypes, Methods, Conditions, Relationships, and Imaginaries, and co-editors of the Journal of Architectural Education issue on Reparations! and InForma Journal issue on Networks of Solidarity.

Free and open to the public. Organized by the MS in Advanced Architectural Design program as part of its Arguments Lecture Series.