 Maybe we'll get started. People are probably going to drop in if Feel free to turn on your cameras if you want or leave them off if you want whatever is best for you I'm Mark Wasuda, and I'm here with Felicity Scott too and my screen is right beside me Welcome. Yeah, I am beside you in my Zoom too. Funny So I we're probably we're just gonna say a few things about the program and give a general introduction and Then hopefully hopefully just open it up to questions because I presume that's why you're here it's because you have questions and possibly some curiosity about the program and Presumably you know something about the program already. I know some of you know about the program already because I've seen you before So so you might have questions about the program you might have questions about GSAP you might have questions about the application process Whatever aspect you want to address. This is a good time to do it And these are all good motivations for being here Probably you know that this is a two-year graduate degree and it Is a relatively small program we aim to have 10 to 12 students per year and It has a fairly open structure And I think it's important to start there to think a little bit about what the structure of the program is and why the Requirements for the program in the first year are the two colloquia one that I teach and one that Felicity teaches and Then you have three other courses that you require to take each semester in the second year You have a year-long thesis and your requirement there is that you Enroll in your thesis and you do your thesis and we'll come back with a thesis in a minute And that you enroll in the thesis workshop You're also required to take it one other course per semester in the second year So you'll see that it's not a lot of courses that are specific to CCCP because that the Conception of the program and and its structure is to allow People to come into the program to develop their own individual mode of research and the and to take courses that help them define and refine the type of work that they want to be doing within the program and when they leave the You probably know that the program is oriented toward Types of practice that are distinct from how we generally identify Architectural professional design practice. It's not a design program. It's a research-based program I'm primarily writing but we also are very interested in exploring different genres of work That our sister to writing people have worked in video people have worked in critical cartography people have worked in Different forms of visualization which all work hand-in-hand with their research and their writing the but beyond that the types of work that Students generally orient toward within the program and after our historical theoretical research Some of our students go on to PhD programs Many of our students are interested in Exhibition work and museum work and curatorial work and so we think about exhibitions and curation Historically and critically within the program and some of our students go on to work in museums at museums and galleries We're interested in publications meaning How one makes publications, but also how one edits and how one contributes and how one writes for publications And we've got lots of students who have worked in that mode after graduation and we also have students who return to Practice albeit in a different mode than the one that they might have been doing before they came in And and just to come back to the museum gallery curation Aspect we also have students who have started their own galleries or their research institutes And that's an incredibly interesting aspect of the program as well So knowing that people come into the program to rethink and reorient their own Relationship to architecture and to their own work the program necessarily is Loosely structured so that students are able to take courses that help them refine and define their own research interests That's not to say you're going to be left on your own. It's a because it's a small program It's an intimate program. We work with you closely You get to know each other incredibly well within the colloquia you work with each other You will get to know the second year students while you're in first year And you will there also be opportunities that we structure within the program for you to meet people who have graduated and who are in New York or Have left New York and we invite back for events within the school Just to say a little bit more about thesis The way it's structured is you will Find an advisor fairly early in the fall semester of your second year And you will meet that advisor and you will work with that person throughout the year but primarily it's Individually driven research and and you will Develop the project yourself in consultation with your advisor and You will also have it's not Entirely lonely work. You have the thesis workshop So you speak to each other in the thesis workshop and you develop a conversation with your peers about your how your thesis work is going and And how to continue to to to refine the work and That idea of the thesis as an ongoing Interactive project is also reflected in how we structure the thesis reviews. Therefore thesis reviews throughout the year Each one of them you will present some aspect of your work and we invite other critics Only advisors for students who are presenting but other faculty school or artists, curators, scholars, architects within New York City who hold a conversation with students about their work and There's something incredibly Rich as we've learned over the years in that process of presenting a work four times throughout the year and continuing to Develop it and refine it not only because your research progresses But also because you get to approach the question of the review Differently and iteratively throughout the year. You can decide what the best way is to approach a review Do you present it piece by piece? Do you return to a key set of themes that you repeat over and over and again as you try to to develop new aspects of your thinking your research? Do you develop different visual modes of presentation and the reason I'm stressing this now is to say that although the program is very research-based, it's a There it's strongly organized around writing and historical research We also question what the format is for any given type of Research project within the program. So For a thesis review, you might question what the best way is to present how to think about what a review structure is how to think about how your own project fits within the convention of the root review structure and In that sense you can think of the review itself as a kind of Genre of format that you work with or you might question or you might develop Different approach to and we try to ask that question across all modes of architectural research and presentation So when we're thinking about exhibitions, we think about what the conventions and the genres of exhibition work are we think about how they Informed historically theoretically Institutionally conventionally and how to think different modes of practice or how to think a critical understanding of those forms of practice So that if your own thesis is or your own work within the program is engaged with something like exhibition work Ideally what you have is Not only an expertise within the particular field of research that you're developing But do you have a strong conceptual orientation toward the format that that research is going to take? And so, you know, maybe maybe I'll just pause there for a second To see if you have any questions and to see if Felicity wants to weigh in But but just to stress that the I guess the key things I want to say is that It's a small intimate program, but it has an open flexible structure and within that program you will be doing research Based work primarily with a strong writing orientation But also that questions the types of formats through which we conventionally understand architectural research Maybe I'll just underscore, you know, two things especially in the Colloquia you could in the first year even you can begin to test formats for the final project For the final project for for those courses. So you might in fact rather than a History theory paper Decided to produce a portfolio of criticism or a project for an exhibition or Rethink an institutional framework. Yeah, so you can already begin to test out the format question in the core CCCP classes even before the the thesis allows you to do that and Might be the case that other seminars allow you to do that too, but But that's typically not the the sort of ambition of a of a history theory class Maybe I'll also just add to to mark some Outline that you know students largely take courses from the Architecture faculty the history theory faculty Laura Kerger and they were Willis and I'm with Martin There's lots of people that at the corner koala that have been really key to the to the program But students also have taken classes in what's historically being called visual studies And also outside of the school whether it be an anthropology or history and Many of the area studies parts of the university Might be anthropology tends to be quite a popular place for students to Look for the sorts of classes that will You know build a sort of framework of expertise and interest that will You know help them think towards Thesis not that the entire coursework is directed towards thesis But sometimes you might need to learn a new language for instance and and so you can you know use part of your coursework in the first year to To be developing that particular particular skill that maybe also just to say underscore you know marks formulation of the of the of the Of the thesis presentations and in fact we can add the colloquia presentations to some degree to that which is that they are You know one of many formats through which you're Taking your research into a sort of public domain So it's almost like we conceive of that as one among many Vehicles of publication of rendering public like engaging a type of public audience for For your work and this is why so critical to think of that not let's say as The main body of the thesis work or even of the research work in a class But as one genre of its mode of appearance the way in which it Translate into into a in this case a spoken format or performed format and and so I think that bit is Yeah, I think that's a particularly sort of unique aspect of the of the program and maybe just one other small thing part of the reason the Coursework is you know conceived as a sort of flexible system to accommodate many different people's interests is not only that people are Are Coming through the program to forge a particular career path sort of Remaining within but also moving beyond conventional modes of architectural practice But also because people come with very different backgrounds, you know, some people come straight from a professional undergraduate degree other people might come from a theater background or they might have been a filmmaker or they might have a Undergraduate degree in architectural history or urban history and and so there's also like an enormous range of people that come into the program that that might need, you know very different types of training to to get where they want to get with their own work and and so the other flexible Manor I think works it works for some sort of both ends of of the of the structure Maybe a couple of other we should maybe talk briefly about So in addition to the coursework and the thesis, you know a lot of our students act in assistantship positions with Mark and myself or sometimes with other In the MR program as a teaching assistant. There's lots of lots of other ways in which students work with Exhibitions with the Publications office. So there's also ways of touch down in those Call them professional interests or just building other forms of expertise while while you're a student at the school. A lot of our students also are teaching assistants for The undergraduate architecture program which is housed at Barnard College. It's actually a Barnard Columbia sort of collaboration And so they're very fond of CCCP students as teaching assistants students also have often Pursued internships at the Avery library and the rare books and special collections, which is a sort of training. They often have our students Processing archival collections that are coming in as part of a like a summer internship. So that's again something that you would be paid for Students also pursue internships in other parts of the city Museums and the architecture newspaper. Yeah, I mean so there's also lots of things in New York that that are The program is connected to and that can be a really, I think important vehicle to test out other aspects of your interest in professional development Let's see what else and I mean I mentioned Avery library and special collections. I'm sure you all know that it's one of the Premier if not the premier architectural research library, not only in the country but internationally so it's an incredible resource also for the program Both in coursework and for other for other other parts of the program That's you mark Let's just see if anybody has questions. We can talk more about other aspects of the program but Let's just see if anybody wants to jump in first And you have a question just unmute and launch right in I don't Need to see digital hands or anything like that All right. Well, you're thinking about questions that when when we met with students in person. We also spoke about other aspects of the program like For example one feature of the program that it's been pretty consistent over the years is that our students have proposed group research projects to the school and this is something that the school has generally been fairly well Receptive toward and students have gone to Venice to study, for example, last year the students went to Venice to study the motif and the trope of the laboratory and how that played out within the Venice architecture biennial and they Met with Curie and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I and I And I went to Venice to study the motif and the trope of the laboratory and how that played out within the Venice architecture biennial and they met with curators and participants and developed a reading the kind of counter Catalog to the laboratory of the of the architecture laboratory of Venice, and then students have gone to Venice a few times in the history of the program they have also related via similar mechanisms in the Sharjah architecture triennial. They have traveled to South America. And so there's beyond coursework and beyond colloquia, there are different features of the program that allow students to work together and to develop not only interesting group research projects, but also forms of expertise in that work that they do together. So another example of this is the interpretations, the conference or symposia that our students have put on almost every year since the launching of the degree program. And similarly, this is student directed, students generally in their second year, even though initially it was students in the first year, but now it's students in the second year conceive of a theme or a problem or a set of questions around which they structure the symposium. They invite guest speakers. They organize the space for the event. They coordinate to the meal after. And they do all of the communication. And so it's an incredibly, and these are these really rich discussions and conversations, but also really useful mechanisms for our students to learn some of the basic skills of how one operates within an academic context. And so they're not exactly the type of work that you would do in courses. It's not exactly personal research. But the program has many of these opportunities to perform in a kind of para-academic mode and develop your work in multiple directions alongside your coursework. Just to add to that, Mark and I, of course, meet with the group, whether it's an entire year or cohort or sometimes it's like four people in a year that decide to launch a symposium or publication related to the interpretation series. And so we work with people to, I mean, of course, students come with the idea, but we brainstorm. And you don't help think through how to navigate the different aspects of what needs to be done, like how to develop a precise way of communicating with different people that need to be approached. So these, I think, are also an important thing. She also may be mentioned that we have another ritual for one of a better word, which is that we have the first year students curate the end of year show, the thesis exhibition for the second year students. And it's a way not only of collaborating with your peers in the second year, but thinking about how to present the program within the larger framework of the school. And this has also been sort of fantastically productive, collaborative occasion to get people working together and thinking together and testing strategies of exhibition making. Often on short notice, we should add. It's an end of year show. It's a longer project. Yeah, great to see such a good turnout. Yeah, and I'm sorry I missed those of you who came personally the other day, but nice to get to perspective students. Yeah, despite our many, many years of familiarity with Zoom, it's always an awkward format. So if any of you feel like you have questions that you want to ask that you didn't raise here, email us. And we can respond to you by email or if there are questions more about the application structure, you can talk to Stefan or his team in the admissions office. Yeah, so feel free to be in touch if other questions come up. Great. Perfect one time. Thanks, everyone.