 Welcome, everyone. I'm very excited to have you here today. I hope you've had a nice day so far. I'm going to make a relatively short, well, not so short, but kind of short kind of overview of the school and, in particular, architecture programs, and then invite the faculty upfront to answer more broadly questions that you may have. So a few words about the school. I think that every school, a lot of the questions are, how are you different and what makes you unique? And I think a lot of the schools are unique as a result, both of their history, but also where they're going now in this moment. And so ways that I like to think about GSAP in terms of its history is in terms of density and diversity. We are in a neoclassical campus, but at the same time, we're in part of New York City, one of the most global cities in the world. And I think that proximity to this very intense urban context has kind of generated a certain culture here where it's very hard to leave the city and its diversity at bay. And so I think we really embody what Kool has once called, in describing Manhattan, this kind of social condenser. And so I like to think about the school as an urban condenser of ideas that become embodied in architectural form and in other discourses and ways of thinking about the world through architecture. And I think that we really foster a culture of debate, not just thinking about asking students to discover for themselves what they believe architecture is and it can be in the world and what it can do today. And the second point is really this notion of continuity and change. We are very aware of our own history. The architecture program is one of the first program of its kind in the country that really brought together Bazaar tradition with very much more professional, pragmatic American culture. We are sitting underneath the Avery Library, one of the most important and largest architectural libraries in the world. So the sense of the weight of history is quite present. But at the same time, I think we've led and often, or at least continue to try to lead the change of the discipline, expanding them, questioning them, probing them to be able to engage. And this time we are in more actively. And so this is what we may have looked like in 1883. And thankfully, we look very different now, not only because of technology and the fact that a lot of this sort of digital sort of culture started at the school, but also again, because of our think, our student body, our embrace of diverse perspectives and backgrounds in the sense that you come together and you share perspectives and you learn from one another. And so some of these questions today that I think we're bringing to the school and with a sense of urgency is of course the question of climate change and how it's impacting the built environment and how as architects and experts of the built environment we have to think about not only climate change literally physically, but also the climate change as a sort of discourse as a way to recast how we understand ourselves on the planet at this time. And so that is impacting everything from the material scale and the smallest scale of what students are making here to the kind of investigations that students are making sort of tracking and registering changes around the world. Questions of housing, I think we have a long legacy of thinking about housing. The housing studio is really at the core of the MRC program for example. And so this question of housing at really at this intersection of architecture in the city is really both a design problem, but also of course a problem of social equity, a problem of construction. And we have here experts, this is a project by an architect, one of the first modular sort of housing projects in New York. The question of visualization and critically engaging data and questions of representation is also very core to the school and kind of cuts across all of the programs and sort of is producing sort of a new way to engage data in design and sort of to think about it sort of virtually but also its impact on kind of material culture and the connection between the analog and the digital. And so I would say that the question of materiality here also is very critical, but it's really connected to questions of energy. You can think about a brick as a material and the kind of recon way, like the brick, what does the brick want? Or you can think about who made the brick, how long did it travel, what resources it took to extract it, et cetera. And so connecting that sort of micro scale to large scales and territorial understanding is really at the core of I think how we try to engage architecture here at the school. This is a drawing by a former student of ours kind of trying to trace the story of that brick today, a project by David Benjamin who created bricks out of mushrooms and to think about biodegradability and to really think about sustainability in new ways and creative ways and in ways that impact design. And really, again, to think about architecture not in terms of what it's been, but what it could be, how it can bring together the specific, the kind of diversity of cultures, of backgrounds, of context together with a sense of the universal and what we are all seeking, whether it's becoming animals or finding and producing new subjectivities. And so the questions are always up in the air and it is questions that we really invite our students to engage with. So how do we think about the sense of continuity and the sense of change and how does it impact the curriculum across all of the architecture programs in particular, but also across all of the programs in general. I think this often comes up from students, what is special about your curriculum? And so I wanted to take you through some of the kind of highlights. I think if you go through the MR program, for example, from the first exercises you do in core one, there's a sense of questioning what is the ground of architecture today, what are the foundations? Is it water? Is it air? We start with questions of environment and it kind of transpires to the kinds of drawings and representations and projects that students make to think about, zoom out and think very, very largely about the foundations of architecture today. And slowly we kind of bring in the section and kind of inhabitation and structure with core two, thinking about buildings and institutional buildings and we have the opportunity to engage with some of the great, well, I don't know about great, but institutional buildings around the city and we're in New York, so students are constantly visiting projects here and engaging with kind of architecture in the city and then housing is, as I said, very fundamental to the core curriculum here and we think about housing, not just in New York, but housing as a way to think across contexts in cities and often travel across the Americas to what is density here relative to density in Mexico City and how can we rethink the appropriate living kind of environment here when we compare it to other places. And so students bring back that knowledge and sort of think about housing here in the city in relation to housing in other ways, thinking about exteriority, the relationship between the individual and the collective, but also interiority and the everyday experience, thinking also about envelope and the kind of negotiation between inside and outside and connecting to the tech sequence in particular. And then zooming out from the housing scale, which is really that intersection to thinking about scales of environment, which actually was conceived in relation to the urban design program to think about the micro and the macro and bring questions of systems and infrastructure to bear upon architectural thinking. So buildings are never thought of as a kind of autonomous objects, but rather perforated with the life within and the connection to the surrounding. And you get to the third year, the advanced studios, which are led by Juan Herreros and AAD by Enrique Walker. And Juan has been doing these kind of diagrams of what are the words that are emerging out of 18 studios. And here you really encounter the sense of diversity of perspectives. And by the time you get there, you have a sense of what things you want to really explore further. And it's just a lottery is an incredible way to almost curate your own choices. So this is just like across three years, some of the words that three years ago were kind of percolating from the studios. And then last year, there was a lot of anxiety around economy for some reason. I don't know, we still are doing, well, I don't know how or why, rather. And of course, typologies and programs, but also different places and cities. And I think the school's kind of global engagement is really, has a kind of long history with Studio X and the Kinney Travel Fellowship. And that continues. And I don't know if you've been following Instagram or some of the images that are out in the level 200. So from iconic buildings to environments to sort of kind of thinking through architecture in the world very literally. And looking like, you know, you always stand out as architects. You know, we get to never, it's very, you know. And all this thinking comes back to kind of inform projects that are very much engaged with questions of around the city, but also around the planet and think about new forms of living, new forms of working and kind of, you know, the questions that are really sort of important. And today questions of water, you know, and how it makes it through into buildings and reinventing buildings as a result of that environmental thinking or questions of institutions and representation and how those institutions, including Columbia, this was a project looking back at 1968 and the famous gym that was proposed and its consequence on Harlem. And so, you know, again, that history of the school which is so tied in good and bad ways to its surroundings. And kind of sort of informing the kind of advanced studios is the notion of transfer dialogues. We always bring, Juan designed this sense of trying to bring discourse and design together and inviting practices, emerging practices, young practices, almost fresh out of school to think about and describe what they've been doing, you know, in their various practices around the world and often bringing also back alumni to speak about their experience a few years out of school. And this was the result of a great one day symposia on the question of constructing practice in an engaged way today, which is a podcast which you can listen to. And that, you know, is brought back to the sense that, you know, this is not very top down. This is also like in terms of the sort of learning and engaging architecture is the ideas that you share amongst yourself. And so there's a lot of fostering of criticism between you and collegiality and collaboration and the transfer dialogue. This is the one-on-one series which students love where they kind of critique one another very, very fast. And for the AAD, you know, studio and program that transfer dialogue really revolves around the argument series which happens in the summer which sets the foundation and the tone for often the kinds of questions that students sort of develop throughout their three semesters here. And that questioning carries through the history sequence which is now called Questions in Architecture History which both, you know, looks at the canon but also expands it. A lot of that expansion has had to do with collecting sort of references and precedents from around the world and really literally expanding the kind of projects that students learn about here at school. It's sequences led by Reinhold Martin which you'll hear from. And the visual studies sequence is very strong as well. And I think this is alumni Lindsay Wilkstrom who came back to talk about some of her work. And we're starting actually to find intersections between visual studies and technology. This was a kind of symposium called VISTEC, a collaboration between Laura Kergan and Craig Schwitters which kind of looked at this new sort of intersection between visual studies and technology and how architects are finding new territory to practice critically and engage with bringing data and design and visualization and technology together. And if a lot of you often ask, what can I do to prepare? We have open source, this skill tree where you can learn different software and programs. I'm not saying that that's what you should do this summer but if you're so inclined to explore a little bit you can certainly look at our skill tree which is out in the world for students to just learn different kinds of software. We've just expanded the makerspace. I hope some of you have visited it. And I think for us, we really believe that we are part of this network here at the city of kind of fabrication shops and makerspaces and thinking about making in a new way not so much only about fabrication and robots and but rather about creativity and imagination and again bringing these questions of materiality and embodied energy and sort of playfulness to hybridizing the analog and the digital even if that means making a chocolate tower for this was the Seagram building as chocolate but it was all 3D printed. So I mean, I think we need to be more imaginative with technology and making today. A lot of these ideas sort of transfer and cross-fertilize with the other architecture programs and urban design. There's a real, I know you've heard, I'm sure from Kate Orff and David Smiley this morning there's a real sense of engagement, of participation, of community sort of building with the Hudson Valley Initiative in the first semester and then kind of expanding to more globally looking at questions of water from Jordan and systems to, this was a recent studio travel in Aqaba to kind of engaging questions of water in India, et cetera. And so that sense of kind of engagement of especially collaboration amongst the students and systems thinking kind of percolates across all of the other programs. And in the same way, I think a lot of the kind of critical sort of positioning really emerges out of the CCCP program led by Mark Wasuda and Felicity Scott, which is small by its size but incredibly impactful by sort of its sort of thinking scale and CCCP has an incredible set of a network of alumni but also relationships with other curators and institutions around the city. This is Karen Wong who teaches here who is a co-director at the new museum. And so all of that, if you've picked up abstract is sort of trying to sort of mix it in this, is creating a space which we hope is a space for you to articulate your position vis-à-vis architecture. And so because this is a question that always comes up and I don't want to, the question of thesis, while thesis exists in some of the programs such as CCCP, a planning program or the historic preservation program in architecture, we feel like every semester should be our thesis. Every semester you should claim a position and at the end often the students bring out those positions in their portfolios and so if you've seen some of the portfolios online there are a kind of combination of a lot of the questioning and sort of positioning and experimenting that the students have developed over their time here at the school. Another strong point and something that's been developing over the past few years is this sense of interdisciplinarity and cross sort of transfers between the programs. We have so many different programs here at every, get that cut across scale and finding ways to intersect them has been a kind of project. So we have shared joint studios between historic preservation and architecture. We've had now a number of studios between urban planning and architecture. This is a studio that was just in Genoa working with the municipality there. We have kind of carved because everything is a question of schedule and finding time for students to engage carved Friday mornings for cross program seminars and lectures that the school can take as a whole. Events are also a way if you don't have time to take a class in another program, following the events in the lecture series from other programs is a way also to engage Malo Hudson thinking about health and the city and describing his new lab was last Friday and another way to intersect is through the summer workshops which bring together, they are sort of outside of the various curriculums and so they enable faculty to bring together students from different programs, eight to 10 students for two to three weeks and to look at a question in more depth during the summer. And so the school being in New York is really a cultural hub. It's an institution that is in dialogue with other institutions from the very intense and active event and lecture series that we hold which is our all public which bring everything from kind of let's say sort of exciting news practicing architects to people who are sort of working on the frontier or on the edges of architecture to collaborating with other schools. This was a collaboration with the School of the Arts and we invited Ai Weiwei to talk about his work and a lot of these are broadcast and sort of made public also through two kind of conversations that are online. The exhibition, I hope you've dropped by Ross Gallery but ties to the curriculum and to the questions of the school in sort of tangential ways, questions of representation and questions of sort of expanding practice or how architects are today using their skills to do other things such as Liam Young's kind of sci-fi, let's say a work and movies that describe sort of dystopian futures to working with rising stars such as Frida Escobedo and try to give them a platform or diving into archives such as the current work of Arakawa and Ginz if you wanna know how not to die through architecture you should go see the show because they thought that this was possible. And a lot of events and exhibitions are also supported by the very strong sort of publication office and our students often ask can I engage with writing and yes there's always ways that you can engage that we've had some incredible student run publications here that started at the school and are now sort of at the GCEP incubator and it's again another way to kind of claim position and contribute to the discourse and practice of architecture and then collaborating with other institutions maybe for those of you who might have some time in New York the new campus up on 125th Street is quite exciting and for the opening of the LENFES Center for the Arts we had the opportunity to the Beall Center and a number of other institutions including MoMA and Avery Library joined together to sort of have parallel shows on Frank Lloyd Wright and in this case it was on the question of Wright and his intersec, Brodericka City and the intersection with Housing in Harlem which is kind of really fascinating exhibition working with storefront for art and architecture working with design biennales around the world this was in Studio X, Istanbul in Shenzhen Hong Kong Biennale recently where some of the work of Adam Frampton was exhibited or having students also collaborate on projects such as the Tatiana Bilbao's Tower for the Chicago Architecture Biennale and then which also featured a project by Hilary Sample and Moss and our exhibitions also travel this was the exhibition on Shadirji's photographs that traveled to the Graham Foundation in Chicago or working here with the Queens Museum this was called Never Built New York all the projects in the last 10 years that were never built and students working with Josh Jordan made models and so the sense of always being able to collaborate with cultural institutions around the city is quite strong but also around the world this is a workshop led by Mario Gooden and Mabel Wilson for an upcoming exhibition in Munich on African Mobilities we hosted a conference on art and cities in Beirut or again Studio X Rio hosted this sort of study on housing for the United Nations Habitat 3 conference recently. Engagement is at the core of I think where the school is where it wants to go and continue going whether it's through scholarship and research to the centers that are tied and sort of working in parallel to the core of the school from the Buell Center and it's research that has spanned the question of housing this was a show at MoMA and at the Center for Architecture to now the question of power and infrastructure and there's now a Buell Prize for projects that engage with the Paris Accord. The Center for Spatial Research really is really at the cutting edge of data visualization and its connection to the built environment and again if you go to Manhattanville there's a great installation by Laura Kurgan called the Brain Index or the recently launched Center for Resilient Cities and Landscape directed by Kate Orff which we're really excited to kind of have as continuing to find ways to engage these important issues and then smaller initiatives and such as take importers waste initiatives or the GSAP incubator which some of you might have visited this morning where we support up to 30 of our recent alumni and we give them kind of a desk for almost free to sort of experiment with the question of practice and finding new ways to engage in the world and this is our happy class of 2017, 2018 very happy but you can always visit them and I think it's a kind of way to thicken the space between the school and what you do on the outside. And finally I'd like to say that I think the sense of collegiality, of generosity, of openness and the sense of community I think is really important here at the school whether it's collegiality amongst you and in the end you will learn as much if not more from each other than you will learn from us but also the fact that being in New York means you have like this incredible sort of group of people out there that are just within five minutes ride on the, well maybe these days with the subway half an hour ride from, you know they can come that you can engage with in terms of your own work and whether in an informal way whether through career services or whether through events where we kind of invite alumni back to speak about the work that they're doing whether it's here or working with our faculty on research projects that they're currently doing including buildings or you know this was shops kind of 3D printed installation at Design Miami last year so we kind of keep in touch with our alumni and always find ways to sort of hijack our faculty's work to allow for great parties to happen for our current students. This was Andres Hake's installation at PS1 MoMA and inviting alumni back such as Evan Sharp to kind of honor them and also hear from them Evan Long started Pinterest and it's also interesting how he took architectural thinking and kind of moved it in a completely different and direction if you're interested. Next gathering is at ADO designed by Eric Bungie and Mimi Wong in Brooklyn and this is how the end looks like well or the beginning, sorry it's kind of the end for us and the beginning for you where we sort of graduate our students and former Dean Bernard Toomey's building down at the entrance of Broadway and 116th Street and everyone is happy and we're sad and so this is it in a kind of few minutes taking you through what an experience here at the school might feel like so I'd like to invite the faculty to join me, should we maybe introduce yourself? Do you want to just say your name and what you do? Is this around? Yes. Hi, I'm David Benjamin. I'm assistant professor here. I coordinate Studio Four and the MRC program and I'm also director of the GSAP incubator so I met some of you this morning. Hi, I'm Laura Kergan, associate professor of architecture and I'm director of visual studies and the Center for Spatial Research. Hi, I'm Mimi Huang. I'm adjunct assistant professor. I coordinate the second semester of the MRC one sequence and I teach in the AAD program and my practice is called an architect. I'm Felicity Scott. I'm co-director of the CCCP program with Marco Sutter and I'm the director of the PhD program in architecture. Hi, I'm Reinhold Martin. I direct the history and theory sequence in the MRC program and I also direct the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture across the way. Hi, I'm Hilary Sample. I'm director of the MRC core program. I coordinate the housing studio. I'm associate professor here and founder of Moss Architects. Kate Orff and associate professor and director of the urban design program and also of the new Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes. I'm David Smiley, assistant director of the urban design program. I'm Juan Eredos, professor of practice, teaching advanced studio and also director of the advanced studios and running together with Riga Walker the transfer dialogue series. I'm Craig Schwitter. I'm associate professor of practice and I lead the building technology sequence. I'm Adam Frampton, adjunct assistant professor teaching core and advanced studio and workshops in the summer. I'm Agents, professor and I'm teaching advanced studios. I'm Tay Carpenter, adjunct assistant professor and I teach in the core studios and I also run summer workshops and I'm also director of the Waste Initiative. I'm Christoph Koubusch. I'm adjunct associate professor, co-ordinate core one and director extraction laboratory. I'm Enrique Walker. I direct the AD program. All right, launch your way. Or whatever questions you might have for me, for the faculty, this is very informal. As you can see by the line up. Otherwise we're gonna start asking you questions. I saw a hand, yes. I said this could be for any of the faculty but also potentially the dean. We've talked a lot about the current state of GSAP and kind of its history, which is all really exciting but what is your kind of vision for the future trajectory and kind of how you see that playing out within the program? The future is unwritten. I really think that I think I want everybody to weigh in but it's about planting seeds to literally prepare you for the world that is to come. You know, it's not for the world that is today because it's really, and it's very hard to know what is, we can't know what the world is gonna need in 10 years, but we can find kind of lines of inquiry or things that are bubbling up and give you the tools to address them. So for me, I would say that I really believe that today, if you think about all the most important issues that we are going to face in terms of the built environment, in terms of cities, they're completely connected to what architects do and what architecture and the thinking about cities and the environment can do. So how we can give you the knowledge, the curiosity, the sort of the means to find a space where you can bring architecture and architectural thinking to these questions is where I'd like the school to be. And even if we fail, and I talked to a student today and they were like, I said, you know, he asked what is a successful student here? And I said, it's a student who's not afraid of failing, who is taking risks and who is really kind of ready to, and I know it's hard, you're here for a short time and the pressure to succeed is so important. But on the other hand, we want you to open up and see what's possible and enable you to have the freedom to do that when you get out. So, I don't know if anybody wants to. What do you think? What should we do? I think it's an exceptional question with a million different answers, but I think the fact that this dialogue's happening right now, just me back and forth with the panel is a sign that's in the right direction, the open discourse and the ability to have back and forth impact between each other is definitely key. I think we're well suited to carry the practice. I guess this is back to the faculty on that same question. What do you see are upcoming challenges that we will face that we need to start creating answers for? Yeah, no, it's okay, Kate. Well, I think across the programs, I think that Dean was able to kind of synthesize and weave this story that really connects all the programs. So, expertly, across the programs, the themes that were mentioned, I think that bear that have special import are certainly our changing climate and increasing uncertainty and extreme weather, facing cities, buildings, any scale that you wanna touch. There's gonna be a new environment that we can expect. I think that particular challenge overlaid with questions of equity and justice are also paramount. The way that cities and landscapes are in this process of transformation now is literally creating an entirely new way of thinking about, in the case of the urban design program, cities not as these sort of static bounded entities, but literally composed of, frankly, people on the move. And in some cases, I saw from Laura's center, a map that was shown up here from the Center for Spatial Research, an image of the map of the Syrian refugee, this by Juan Saldriaga. Like literally, we have to begin to overlay these profound questions and challenges. So climate overlaid with social justice issues, overlaid with access and equity, overlaid with environment and ecosystem questions. I feel like there's not just like one single challenge, but it's literally how these are nested and impact each other. And so in particular in the urban design studio, we are studying the city through this lens of systems and understanding these infrastructure and systems, but always kind of scaling that down to how these systems express themselves spatially in a place where people live. So I think in our case, it's literally those nested challenges and then understanding what is the agency of the designer in that situation are the kind of questions that we're always trying to ask and to address through this sort of iterative, iterative and creative design process. At a tiny point there, which is that maybe to come back to the Dean's opening remark that we're not futurologists and in a way we train students to understand how to navigate complex problems that are actually not known. So to answer a problem for today is to, in some senses, not prepare the students to answer a problem that emerges tomorrow. So the sort of framework that we really set out is a framework of questioning, of strategizing, certainly of answering specific questions, but not of trying to imagine that we can solve a big question in the future because that's to, in a way, sort of blind students to all of the contingencies and uncertainties to come back to Kate's point that shifts so rapidly in the current context. I mean, I think we can all add other specific concerns, but I think in a way it's a way of training students to certainly know where to look, how to understand, how to think about the complexity of a situation that might not resolve into sort of historical type of answer, like a solution, but a way of addressing a sort of ongoing set of problems that they're going to face that the world will face, that the city will face, et cetera. I would add that precisely that we don't teach you what to think, what to work on, but more how to reframe the question and how to reimagine how architecture is a valuable way in engaging with the pressing issues that we face. And at Columbia, a lot of these issues come from where we sit, which is in a very dense urban metropolis. And so in terms of specific things, density, definitely density in housing, but for every pressure to increase density and to accommodate people, there's the equal and opposite pressure to protect public and civic space. So just thinking about the sequence between core two and core three in core two, we're focused on that civic and public space, the public institution, and then core three is about density and housing for that, but I think every one of us can answer this question in a different way and the Dean's address every year at this time of year is always this kind of drinking from a fire hydrant, even for us as faculty, because I sit there thinking, wow, there is a lot going on in this school that I need to be more aware of. Connecting both questions, I'm from the perspective of the advanced studios, that means the third year for the MR students and second and third semester for the AADs, the plan is to create the most speculative and experimental environment to explore the present with freedom enough to be sure that our task is to be the future. So we are architects, we are designers, and the question is how to translate into architecture all the cultural, technical, theoretical, social, political, et cetera, equations that build depression, we have to transform it into design questions and design decisions. That means that pointing the title of an exhibition that actually Anders Hake has installed is the designer of the installation this last year. The future is not what's going to happen, the future is what we are going to do. So the question is not how the others, what the others are going to do for the future, but what we are ready to do or what our engagement has been pointed here in the construction of that future. I think that all the answers about the different programs are more or less approaching this position. Hi, this is a question about, I guess, the program self-reflectance upon how the structure of it is. I'm curious with such a diverse student body and a very compressed type of time period in which you're doing the program, what are some examples of maybe contentious issues or complaints current or recent students have had about the structure of the program? And I'm curious about how the program has responded or changed to those complaints or contentious issues. Oh, I just mean if you've heard of them, I don't know specific ones because I know them. Oh. As I think the school in general, I'm curious about, but I'm curious about the UD program, yeah. Well, okay, so one of the challenges that is both a, I mean the dean spoke to this issue of we don't have a thesis. So I mean, I feel like that's a challenge but also a tremendous opportunity and that's also something that David and I have been trying to address within the space of the Urban Design Program because the way that the program is structured similar to AAD is that it's a three semester post-professional degree program where you have a very intensive summer in the case of urban design focusing on the five boroughs of New York City and the sort of dynamism of New York. The second studio in the fall, which is more regional in scale and last year focused on the Hudson Valley and is really addressing, you know, as being kind of interfaces strongly with the Hudson Valley Initiative very real challenges and opportunities in the Mid-Hudson Valley and then in the spring we have a kind of global cities and sort of international travel. And I guess how we've and the students have often said, okay, well, I'm graduating, I'm not done thinking about these questions. And so we've done a number of things. One is launch the Hudson Valley Initiative, which is a format in which literally students from the fall semester, which David teaches in, can then re-examine and explore some of the thematics from their fall studio project within a slightly more formalized period with Kaya Kuhl, who you met upstairs. So for example, we have two groups of students who won, we have a prize called the Urban Urge Prize who basically were able to reinvent their sort of fall studio project and understand incrementally, well, how would you do this? What would you do as a very first step now? So they received an award and are spending now the following summer to kind of re-engage and help that project kind of plant a seed towards a sort of transformation of an urban environment, in that case in Poughkeepsie. And similarly with the new center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, the goal is in our spring studio, where we traveled to this year, we were in Akhaba, Jordan, and in Varanasi, India. The goal is that these, and is that these studios sites also then provide very direct opportunities for the student to continue their work in some way, literally either working here in New York at the center or working with our kind of partner cities. And so it's a chance for, I mean, I always think that that's one of the best things about being in an academic environment is experimental. You don't answer the questions of now, you're kind of projecting forward and anticipating and kind of trying to develop a methodology that is robust and can anticipate things that you or environments or conditions that are not expected in the present. But what is exciting is we have provided these avenues for those thought experiments to actually play out in the real world. And that's how we've responded to that critique. Yeah, just for other students, I teach both in urban design and in the architecture program. And I think in the architecture program, there's an incredible array of studios which progress as you move through the advanced sequence. And then you have choice, right? And I think that there's many tracks that you can take through the school based on your interests. So, if you're interested in biology and ecology or if you're interested in, I don't know Mimi, micro housing and fabrication or visual representation and engineering the way Craig and I are starting to do together. So there's all kinds of ways where you can look across the faculty at the kinds of studios that are offered and find a way through the school and there might be three or four different tracks. And I always think that that's incredibly unique about Columbia and it's something that you can start in your first year and end up being very focused by the end of your third year. And we've seen a lot of that and then those students move over into the incubator or start new research or start their own firms or go and work for the, you know, they dream architect. There's so many different ways that you can make your way through the school. I thought I could add a little bit to some of these other questions too from the point of view of the historian. We have a number of historians on our panel but starting with the future part because, you know, the first question is what happened? You know, what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen in order to make any kind of sense of any kind of future? And the question that you're just asking about problems, these things can be very pragmatic and we share some of these. I mean, it's certainly something that I've experienced. Some of these are kind of big, the world's historical questions that are being discussed like climate and so on. But then there are really pragmatic things and they are connected. Like, you know, why do you give us so much reading to do? And, you know, people don't really complain about that. They just come to class and they haven't been able to do the reading and then you can tell they feel a little embarrassed. And, you know, I think it's, I like this drinking from a water fountain problem. I mean, from a fire hydrant. It's like there's too much, you know, really is a lot of work. I mean, this is a serious advanced degree for any of these degrees is a lot of work and each one of the segments of the curricula are very ambitious about what they do and the history element is no less so. But to, you know, in the spirit of this kind of open inquiry, one of the ways we've begun to think a little more systematically about how we do this and there still will be a lot of reading, although we're gonna start asking you to do some things over the summer now. But, so, you know, stay tuned. But anyway, no, is that, you know, you can ask why do I have to even study history in a Masters of Architecture program? I'm studying the future, not the past. And why do I need this? And the answer is not because it's gonna be useful to you in designing the future, actually. I don't think that that's one possible answer. You know, you can draw, of course, on the examples that we offer. But maybe a more relevant answer is that one of the things that the thing that we call history has to do with the development of human beings. And are, you know, as individuals and in our lives together, and architecture is uniquely, is kind of interestingly, kind of in the middle of that, you know, wherever you look. And so you could think about that aspect of what you do here as an extension of maybe the more humanities-oriented aspects of your current or previous education, that reading and the kind of questions you ask and so on, that might kind of very concretely address equity issues, the questions of representation. Dean Andres showed the slide collection that we're, it's not slides anymore, it's scans. But it's very interesting. So this isn't even raised. It's not really a question per se, the problem that's raised. It's something that we have collectively noticed and it's been pointed out in some cases. You know, the history of architecture is very white and very male. And we've tried to, you know, transform this in the teaching in whatever ways we can. One of which is by actually making an effort, and our colleague Mary McLeod has been very active in this as well, in using our wonderful Avery Library to scan the work of women architects and add that to our collection. We have now collections of architecture from all over the world. It's interesting how Sub-Saharan Africa gets left out of that equation. It's also interesting to see how the work of African-American architects is left out of those kinds of, you know, equations, even by the most well-meaning efforts. So we've made specific efforts to address those absences, those exclusions, because they're not just absences, they're exclusions. And so. You had to do a bit of data analysis. You had to do a bit of data analysis on the collection. I know we've got to collaborate on this. The metadata is nuts. But anyway, so the point is, you know, I think you could probably go down the line and you'll hear a kind of self-critique in various ways. This is a concrete example of a form of self-critique that we tried, that affects, and that's why there's a lot of reading. Because to be able to think about these things, you have to actually do that kind of work. And again, it's true for all the other elements. Yeah, just to add on to an observation of this, I think that's a Dean's point about density and experimentation. The density of the programs here are really interesting. The programs evolve and change with your agency. I've been at GSAP now for maybe four years, and even in that short period of time, there is a lot of change that is going on in and amongst all of the people sitting here, which is really quite remarkable. And I think that that density is important. Also the density and adjacency of New York City and practice. Now, I'm a practicing engineer and many of us practice here. And that adjacency is also really forcing change at the school. So I encourage you to think about your education here as part of that process, about taking that agency on to you and to force that change. Because I think this is really one of the key elements and attributes of this school. So take it by the reins, enjoy it. So I've got a question for Professor Quack, Sweeter. So can you give us a little bit introductions about your course relating to your research topic, maybe about building science and technology sequence. And what's your foresight about the technology and how does that influence the architecture design in the future, maybe? Okay, the... It's a lot of crystal ball today. Yeah, okay. I think in general our approach to technology is for incoming students with not a lot of background, basics. We go through basic building science, structures, environments and envelope systems. For more advanced students, we also have required courses in integration because technology is not about its subset anymore in architecture, it's about how it's integrated into practice. If you see virtually any very successful architecture from now, it's very integrated into their practice. So we teach that both at building scale and at urban scale, what I call urban scale systems. So, and I think that also allows integration to your studios and to other programs. So it's really all about not making it a subset of the school but making it more integrated. And in terms of, this is my view on it because this is how I practice. And this is the way that I see the world shaping and changing. So I would just say, one of my goals here at the school and I think the goal for teaching you in terms of the tech sequence is to make sure you do not think of this as something that is just a sideline to your career but something that is integral to what you do and can actually really supercharge you. I was wondering maybe if also, from the other side maybe Hilary and David from the design side wanna describe how that connects to the studio work or? Well, so from the perspective of Studio 4 which is the fourth semester studio required for MR students, our themes are as you've heard and as Kate was discussing things like environment and scale. But we also very much are exploring different ways that technology, including building technologies but also representational technologies can be a part of the design process. So really in a slightly different way than Craig is saying but still with the same keyword of integration, we're interested in how each critic and in turn each student can design a project that is experimenting with technology and at the same time critical of technology and looking at environmental issues but at the same time looking at cultural and social issues and thinking about taking a position within this kind of field of different important topics and issues and opportunities and experimenting with claiming a position, taking a stance and exploring it through design, through moments across scales from the scale of the brick to the scale of the building to the scale of infrastructures. And so it's a real moment for students to take a lot of what they've learned in the core with Hilary and others and apply it to their own ideas in a way where technology is not necessarily taking the lead but is not necessarily left behind. Yeah, I think maybe just to touch on it a little bit for the core, for the EMARC program, the first three semesters, I think we're actively meeting as faculty talking about the assignments and ways in which we're thinking about design in relation to all of these things, technology, history, representation and those things are thought through in all of the problems. So it's not really easy to answer the question specifically only to one thing, let's say, because we're thinking about all of these things that go into the assignments across each program. And so even from some of the slides that were shown, the first assignment where the students were building with Kristoff and faculty, the object that would sink or swim in the pool or gravity being applied to the library studio that Mimi leads where we're thinking a lot about structures and from the weight of books to what kinds of spaces can hold the most amount of people. What does that mean for community, let's say, events? To then housing, which is the course that I teach and lead with other faculty and think through all of those problems of what does it mean to bring together a group of people living and what are those needs for living today in cities and to think about it not as through families, let's say, which has been the kind of traditional lens that we think about housing, but rather think about households and what does that mean? How do you define a household even? And is that through data collection, through census, through community meetings, through prefabrication and technologies and labor and maintenance, I could kind of go down the list about these things, but we really try to think through all those things. And housing as a studio is also a group project, so it's usually in pairs, so you have a partner, so you're also thinking not just about your own views, but you have to work collaboratively in that way and also in that semester, you're taking a lot of technology courses, also that Craig and David, and with Reinhold, also all talking about that idea of what is technology, what is it in relation to living in an urban condition and other things. I mean, it's also thinking about all of your other questions today too, just I wanted to say that one of the things with housing studio is that we spend time going out into the city. The studio is based here in New York, but we do travel, so last year we went to Chicago as a kind of sister city and looked at the condition of housing across, it's not just social or affordable housing, but luxury, it's a full gamut that we consider, but really try to reflect on those issues of what does it mean to create, again, household or community. And so the first day of school for housing studio, we walk from here to our site in the South Bronx. We meet in the Bronx Art Museum, which while it's one of the most well-known art institutions in New York City, it really functions like a local community museum, and that's a very interesting way to be, to get a kind of insertion into that particular neighborhood and understand the problems and the history and think about the future of that community and its relationship to all these things. So, great. Hi, so I guess I'm gonna apologize in advance because this was an open-ended question, but... Can you speak up? Hi, can you hear me? So I think as much as we all try to escape it, we're living in a very charged political moment with the president who proclaims to be a builder. And I think, I guess I'm wondering, I mean it seems to drag in a lot of normally non-political organizations into actually engaging with advocacy and how do we sort of as potential architects and I guess how do you as an institution start to grapple with some of these, the political divides in our country and is that sort of something that influences or is I guess starting to influence how you teach and how we work? I am to probably set in right here in this room with the entire first year of class and discuss what you just asked. And it is very interesting to hear from the students... Oh, sorry. Sorry, yeah, I was saying after the election, you're alluding to the 2016 election, we sat here with the history class, actually, and discussed history, which was what we were witnessing, in other words, and we continue to witness as citizens, but very importantly, not only of this country. And I think that's a very important thing to recognize about a broad political question like that, that this institution is... I say this as a director of the Center for the Study of American Architecture, so this is a very, very international institution. And at that time, it was very interesting to hear the perspectives and questions and concerns of students from all over the world about what it meant to be in this country at this time. And so I hear in your question a kind of echo. It's uncanny, actually, because it's in the same room, in this similar environment at the same time. I don't know, I don't want to speak for others on the particulars of the issue. I suspect, I think if you went again down the line, you'd hear individual interpretations of the situation, and then you hear some combinations of institutional ones. I can give you a very quick answer from the Buell Center point of view, because we're dealing with it maybe a little more kind of directly. This weekend, we're gonna have a conference, not a conference, it's a workshop of a group of architectural historians who've worked on questions of nationalism, of authoritarianism, of fascism, and so on in the past to ask the same question of them now. I like people who have studied this in some detail. And I don't know what's gonna, what the outcome of that, but the idea is that we can do that here, because that's what academics do. We ask questions, and we do that from an informed perspective. From the point of view, I'm suggesting historical context, but it can be many other dimensions as well. From the point of view of, in a way, knowledge that can be derived from many different sources and you're right, that the particular situation that we're in right now has something like building or real estate or architecture somewhere in the middle of it in various ways. Money left, right? I would just ask you to take very, very seriously the fact that when we do the thing that we call architecture, we're participating in the arts of real estate development very often. And it's a bind that I think everybody here has found themselves in one way or the other. And not only under these circumstances. So that's what I'm trying to suggest, that it articulates with other circumstances that may put this current circumstance in perspective a little differently, but maybe others have. Just to add that I started teaching here in 2008 in the last semester, the Kinney semester. And I remember thinking, sitting through 18 presentations that all of them were political in some way. That it has, it is nothing new at Columbia. That the kind of architecture is a political act. Politics is different. So yes, politics has entered in a much more kind of direct way, but I would say, way, way, way, way, way back that all the architecture studios and urban design, et cetera, that we are always thinking about architecture as a political act that reframes how we engage with society. Yes, Andreas should add something. Yes. Well I think the question is very important, very relevant and very timely. And in a way it relates also to other questions that we've here before. And I think this is the right question maybe to do at this point. And I'm very happy that you're doing it and it's relating to other things. And another question is like, for instance, what is the way we deal with insatisfaction of things that we don't like? Or what is the way that we envision future even? But the question about politics I think is great because in a way, when we take the front page of newspapers now, there's no way to say that architecture is not there everywhere. So the question is about borders, architecture is there. When we inquire about technology and secrecy and privacy and public space, architecture is there. But it's there in a way that it's challenging design. It's challenging the way we think architecture. And it's challenging it because somehow, for instance, the notions of public space are not the same at the time that public space is happening in private corporations that are dealing with online spaces. For instance, when we talk of the territory, it's not the same when we think of the amount of people that are traveling and are moving from one place to another. So in all these things, there's challenges for design. There's opportunities for architecture to become relevant. And that is what can happen in a place like this. This is what can happen in universities and this is what is happening now in advanced studios that are dealing with the issues that have to do, for instance, with the mineral rights in places like Susquehana Valley or that are facing the possibility of rethinking citizenship from the point of view of design. I think the question is also, what is the way architecture specifically does politics? What are the specific forms of politics that are embodied in architectural practices and architectural thinking? And I think this is something that requires a space like this to happen. This discussion requires a place like that because it's not that easy for it to happen in offices. It's not that easy for it to happen in magazines. But of course, that's something that can only be produced collectively. So as it's been said before, it's not something that can be taught, but it's something that can be addressed together as a common practice, as a collective environment in which history, critical practices, design can be brought together and produce responses. And that is the kind of environment I think that happens here in the advanced studios, for instance, or in the courses that are dealing with politics. And I think the atmosphere that we want to foster is one of debate and exchange and conversation. And I think all of us wake up in the mornings. I certainly speak for myself and coming here and having the future, you guys, there to think through these things. And it's empowering even at a small scale to be able to exchange and to find a space of exchange and where diverse range of ideas and positions can come into contact and where faculty and students are sort of invited to claim a position and find ways in which architecture and design can participate and intervene in the world that we are in. And so. There is, your question I think is great within the context of the school and building in general. But one of the things we discussed earlier in the BUILD Center is that it's not just what's happening like here through the BUILD environment, but also through music, fashion, exhibitions, and so on and so forth. And we were with some of you speaking about Virgil Abloh who was just speaking here who you all probably followed is doing architecture as an architect through music, through fashion as like the new head of Louis Vuitton who if you read through his announcement that came out what two weeks ago, the fifth line in it says, I lectured at Columbia G. Subb. So they're kind of like discourse about like architecture within relation, yeah, but within relation of like fashion, music, you know, name it. My point is, I don't think it's just about architecture as we understand it at this given point and like one of the questions in there was very much like that as well, right? Like what is the question of practice and one of the symposiums that happened at the school like about like architectural practice that like many on that panel were like part of is very much part of also what's happening in the studios outside of the studios and what comes after the studios. And sometimes the BUILD environment politically or not politically is not just like materialized in a way that we understand architecture at that given point. And you know what, seven years ago it would have been unthinkable to, you actually seven years ago had Gucci Sue virtual on like the use of like Gucci at that case. I could go on about this forever. Now he's like running that whole story and you're gonna run things that you probably can never imagine that you're ever even gonna be part of. And that's just part of reality. At least the way we I think could define it here. Maybe we'll take one last question. Yes. It's good because we might hear a little bit. I was saying that I'd be interested to know how maybe at least some of you came to choose Columbia. Can I start? Yes, please. You know, I taught like many of us here. I taught in many, many different schools. I didn't go here for graduate school. I won't say where I went. But I have to say and I mean it and you have to believe me. I really, for me it's home. It's a place where I've lived all over the world and when I came here I felt that there was room for me, there was room to grow, to ask questions, to expand the canon, to, you know, and I think the sense of generosity, intellectual generosity, the diversity of ideas, the sense of belonging to kind of some form of, you know, collective and I think it's very unique to Columbia and a very different from other schools. And I never thought I would become Dean. I mean, who wants to become Dean, really? But I love the school. I really believe and I mean, you know, the faculty is just, there's a kind of level of, I don't know, engagement, passion and I think, you know, I meet with students all the time. I mean, to the question of like concerns and, you know, they're always, you know, the door is open, you can, and we hear them and it's a feedback loop and we're kind of ready to take risks and so that's my story, but I will let others speak. I mean, I would say very quickly, but I mean, for me especially, I feel like the urban design program is unmatched, literally. There is not another place where I have a background in landscape architecture and somewhat in architecture and also in urbanism. I think there is literally no other place to study the urbanism questions in this way in a way that's jointly sort of research intensive but also design driven and there is not a cookie cutter urban design student. I mean, I'm on reviews all around the world and it's like, well, this is, you know, this is the kind of student that comes out of this program and they're ready to go and whatever. You know, it's an approach that is constantly questioning, that's constantly experimental and that isn't coming from a preset point of beginning and so for me, it's this kind of way to study the complexity that we keep kind of coming back to in a way that's very driven, a way that's very focused and I think you won't find, I mean, I think it's that sort of combination of the condenser combined with this kind of incredible creativity that infiltrates all the programs here. Yeah, you know, in the end, I think schools are self-selecting and I'm going around to a lot of universities nowadays with my daughter and you get these like pitches, you know, undergrad is even more intense than graduate, you can't believe it, but I love Columbia because of the faculty. There's the faculty here are incredibly energetic, they're incredibly, they learn from their students but there's the students actually are why I'm here as well and there's, I don't know, there's some kind of incredible mix over here between the kind of faculty that choose Columbia because they're here in New York, they've chosen New York as a place to practice and that has its own special variety of people that do that and the students that come here, I think come here for that exact same reason and I don't know, it's just, I was a student here, I became a faculty here only 15 years after that and I was incredibly happy that first day I walked onto the campus and I still am, I just, I think that there's a very special mixture over here that you don't find at other schools and just I'll make my own pitch for the Visual Studies program, I don't think that you'll find the range of computation technology classes at any other school. We have, how many are there now? Like 18 visual technology now workshops that go from gaming to fabrication to visualization to all, just the range of things is quite staggering so that's why I like Columbia. It's a great question, by the way. Yeah, it's a really good question. I'd also like to kind of maybe avoid answering your question or say one reason that I've, I enjoy being here, I've kind of stayed teaching here and I think it is, it's the kind of energy from the students and the kind of diversity of perspectives and voices that you get amongst the kind of MRX students who I teach and I think the, I think it's true at any school that there's really kind of like this, the diversity of perspectives and opinions but I think one thing specifically about GSAP and one discussion that has really come from the bottom up has been the question of practice so not only what voice or language do we take on as designers but kind of how do we do it and I think you see the programs, there are these programs and the symposia like the constructing practice but I think it is also kind of very much a discussion that a lot of the students are having amongst themselves and with us about how do we engage with the world when we're done with here and I think for also speaking on behalf of a lot of the kind of core faculty, like it's a question that we're kind of facing as practitioners too, right? Like how do we practice? How do we meaningfully engage? And so that's, I think for me been very helpful and meaningful as a faculty. I was just gonna say that I came here by accident and I'm glad but I cannot confess any intentionality. On the other hand, the thing that I think many of us kind of enjoy, we've been arguing for years and in some of us really, truly for generations at this point but it's like your thing, what's really, I think keeps us, me at least, I kind of more or less alert to these things is that you cannot assume agreement. I mean, it didn't, it's amazing, it's sort of like, it's a little bit under the radar in this type of discussion. I actually came here through juries first. The first experience here, like I think many was being on design juries and like arguing with everybody else on the design jury. And that institution and the way I think it's sustained itself here is a very important kind of informal, it's the place where you suspect, if anybody gives you the party line, then you can immediately challenge it. So the skepticism that I think Laura's alluding to is sort of, yeah, very productive and the kind of golden rule would be don't assume consensus. And the minute that happens, then forget it, it's not interesting. So, yeah. I was just gonna add that I think as a faculty member being here, I think there's also a level at which I feel like a student as well because of the quality discussions, because of the diversity of discussions and the ways in which, I mean, even if you just think about each of the faculty members here and what they represent in terms of their work, I think that you can kind of have a microcosm of things that are happening in architecture all at once. And there's just, I mean, the abundance of discussions can actually be overwhelming, but I think it's that it's going back to that fire hydrant idea, right? And the kind of the absorption and the kind of full immersion in the dialogue at the school I think is possible here. And I think that there's also a level at which the students here are willing to redefine constantly and question, redefine what it would mean to be an architect and what it would mean to sort of act in the world with a design background. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a building, right? It could be, how do you start to design a building? Could be from a material detail, right? It could be from a question of environment. And I think it's just that, for me, it's very exciting to work with students who are like that and with a faculty that support that kind of design thinking. I really appreciate the question because you said that we chose Columbia. In fact, Reinhold is right about saying that there was something particular to us, but by accepting, you choose, in fact. I was, of course, invited to teach, but I accepted and therefore chose. The reason why I would say is, I mean, there's a number, it's actually rather long, autobiographical and complex, but the thing that I think could be valuable for you would be that at the time, and that's 15 years ago, Columbia was probably one of two places in the planet or basically a school that was organized as a, that organized teaching in such a way that it would invite young teachers or at least teachers at an age where you could still question that you were aging that were debated, that invite you to basically teach so that you would use teaching as a way of, let's say, testing a number of questions, raising issues for your work and then take it somewhere else in the form of writing, practice, teaching as well, or different vehicles. In other words, you would use, you would be invited to use teaching as a way of understanding how you were situated in an architectural debate. And I think that was extremely valuable and it's probably one of the things that makes it unique and there are not too many places where that actually happens. New York was of course another reason, but of course, but it goes hand in hand because those institutions, the other one at the time being in London was basically institutions that... Also unnamed, you notice? Yeah, all right, exactly. I'm supposedly here to advertise one school, not two. Juan, do you want to say? Yeah, for the pleasure of answering this question. I'm perhaps the elder in this role, so I'm not in the case. But after teaching in, I don't know, 13 or 14 schools of architecture around the world, I can say that I love this place exactly because what's happening now here? So nobody's living in this room and you are like sending words, not like future and you have 10 reactions, no? Political, no? So this idea that the school is like a multiplication of conversations that is not taking anything for granted and confronting permanently even the most accepted topics of architecture is what has made possible that now the way that in this school is considered the history or is considered the graphic resources or the relation between theory and practice or the relation between the text sequence and the most theoretical part of the discussion is really something very, very important and you, the students, are the part of this. So there are many, many situations, transfer dialogue in our case, but many others in other departments and in other fields of the school where everything is permanently under this conversation and I think that the way the topics of the architectural practice and the architectural theory are being focused in this school are different just because we have taken this freedom of discuss the obvious, no? And we invite you, of course, to be part of these conversations. Just one more thought, sorry. Yes, yes, please. I'm more or less born and raised in this neighborhood. Quite literally. And the thought of not being here is like the thought of disappearing. But New York, more globally speaking, as an urban design person, New York is a driver of urbanization, part of the urbanization process that is not about New York. So being here, though, is a kind of, at Columbia, Columbia is part of New York. It's part of the urbanization process. It's as if you're here but also dissociated globally. And so it's truly exciting because just make sure they don't lock you in the studio because you will miss what makes Columbia so great is, as others have hinted at, seeing the rest of the world at our doorstep for better or worse, for us. So I invite you to join the lecture tonight. Andres Haake, who I think will be incredibly exciting and actually demonstrate through the work some of what we've been talking about. So thank you, everyone. Thank you.