 Hello everyone. My name is Andreas Hacke, I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation here at Columbia University, but I'm also the director of the Advanced Architecture Design Program. I'm here with C.R.C. Chen who is the assistant director of the AAD program. Maybe C.C. you want to introduce yourself. Hi everyone, welcome and joining this session. My name is C.R.C. and I'm really happy to maybe speak to some of you guys. I'm going to present a little bit what the program basically stands for and how we work and also explain a little bit what is that that you will find here, why we're so excited about this program. I mean, this is a program that is very important for the school is in certain, the stand is a moment of experimentation and criticality and engagement. It allows people from brilliant graduates from around the world to come here to New York of people and also a large number of people from New York to basically work together at Columbia, exploring what architecture, what is the future and what is the most important discussions that are happening in architecture and that are allowing for other forms of practice, other forms of architectural thinking to transform the world. And let me explain it a little bit more. The Advanced Architectural Design Program is a program that is a post professional program. You need to have, as you know, a degree to come here and that means that basically we don't start from the beginnings. We're not basically focusing on the basis of architecture, but we directly go into what is that that is making architecture evolve and innovate and be dissident to what the status quo is and become a place for invention and experimentation. And we do that basically through research, practice and pedagogy, like we very intensively consider what's the way of these three rounds to assemble and to negotiate their collaborations. And in particularly addressing questions that are unavoidable now, climate, equity, data design, basically everything that is making right now or accumulating a big part of the efforts in the world and of course that are unavoidable for all of us. The AD actually is looking at all these realities that are new or not new but basically that we have to deal with and that are sort of challenging, like they really reclaim or kind of request from us to not only fix things or find solutions but actually reconsider the way the world is structured and the way our practices are also contributing to those structures. And I'm talking about all these basic realities that are from the front page of the newspapers to the actual difficult situations that we have to frame and we have to understand and to position ourselves with regards to. When we look more in detail, the AD has eight tracks, eight lines of work that are very important for us and that you will be basically introduced to each semester is an opportunity to engage deeper into these eight lines of work. The first is the forms of environmental engagement. The environment is not something that is easy to engage with, I mean, we're all part of it, but in order for our practices to be relevant in it, we have to develop a specific methodologies and use a specific mode of representation that we will be studying and kind of operating in and experiment with. The second is the accountability of technologies. This is a huge thing. How do we expand the capacity for participation and for decision making and for call evolution through technologies rather than thinking of them as black boxes or of closed systems. The third is the articulation of the societal which is crucial and it's something that it's one of the main roles of architecture to assemble the social. And what is important is what is the way that we can reassemble the society to new paradigms like the ones of climate or the ones of inequality and addressing and confronting inequality or many other big questions that are basically claiming that or making it a society has become something different to what they are now. The third is the material cyclabilities, materiality not as something that is fixed or that is just a product, but rather looking at the entire lifespan of materials, what happens before, what happens after, what are the contexts across where they are happening and what are the labor, the ecosystems, the transportation systems, the legal frames in which materiality is enacted socially. And that is a big part of course of the evolution of architectural practices now. The third thing is interspecies relationships and this is crucial. It's together with the awareness on ecological thinking and the development of cosmopolitical ideas comes idea that the modern notion of the human as the center of the universe is something that is challenged now and that we have to move to a very different paradigm in which the alliances between different species, different forms of life become crucial. And that of course is very important for architecture. Architecture is expanding in those discussions and those new ideas. And the sixth is when we think of the city now or the urban life or urbanity, there's no way to separate what happens in the offline realm to what happens in the online realm. And these two dimensions of the urban is something that requires new architectural practices and ideas and techniques and references and we will be looking at that and from the perspective of the technologies that are already operating but also with the capacity to challenge them to invent new ones to be dissident to them. Number seven is the identity and all the questions of decolonization, the colonial thinking and also to confront racism as a fundamental part of our contemporary cultures and politics and the making of the civic sphere from the bodies to the bodies relating to other bodies to the way bodies relates, human bodies relates to other forms of life, to landscapes, environments, technologies, how to basically address questions of multiculturality, confronting racism, and doing colonialism or decolonizing the context life is an active tool. It's a big part of what we do and you see that this is a very, very needed, fair, but also exciting area to work on. The geopolitics in the making is also very important. Our world is shaped by border conflicts, by territorial conflicts and politics that are negotiating and mediating between different actors in the making of territorial realities, displacement, ecosystems that are shared and that require specific ways of governance like the oceans, for instance, and that is, of course, again, a large space for the rain for architecture to expand and to operate. But again, to be able to operate is not there as an architect and to architecture is not enough with the basic knowledge of architecture. We really need to engage in critical thinking in other forms of architectural design that it's precisely what we will be addressing in the 80s. Overall, what we believe is that when we look at an environment like New York where you will be working and spending time studying the city and how it operates and its architecture and being in it, you see that the notions of criticality, of critical thinking of politics are very much embedded in the built environment. They're embedded in the windows, in the structures, in the materials that are composed of them. They all have a, they come from contexts that are critical, they are part of discussions. They are basically containing forms of politics that we will be unpacking as an opportunity to operate through design and to enhance the capacity of architectural design to be relevant in larger contexts of societies and ecosystems. And we do that through a very intense program, a program that is more than a year, it's a year and a half and that it's three semesters, but that it's compressed so that it can be also something that you can do in one year. And that starts in the summer with this very important first semester where you basically introduce in all these lines of work that I was referring to and that it's composed by three courses. The first is the studio, an advanced studio, where you will basically be working with practitioners that have also a dedication to research and to theory, but that basically connect and understand design as a practice that is critical and that requires, let's say, to for you to position yourself and to understand complex situations and manage them. And that is a big part of the summer and then you have the second course which is quite actually exciting and that it's very lively and it's a moment for the entire class to come together to discuss the way architecture operates across scales. And that is a very important course that then breaks down into a smaller group. So you basically have a moment every Friday where the entire class gets together to discuss architecture, moderated by the by the director of the program and then you break down in groups and have all the discussions with with with experts in research that help you develop your own research and writing. So it's a very important moment also to to learn about kind of high level research and writing. And then we have arguments that is examining the state of this course and an action across disciplines, but all of them addressing questions that are relevant for architecture. And this is again like a moment of intensity within that group together and then breaking down in small groups. So it's it's both a moment to build up your your class as a community that discuss together but then of course catering to each individual and everyone having the opportunity to develop and enhance your research and writing capacities, your critical thinking, your information and your overall culture about both architectural design and architectural theory and criticality. The second semester is very exciting is the moment when when you malt with the rest of the school. And that's a moment of density and you have a large pool of courses in history and theory and visual and technology electives to choose from and also an advanced studio with a pool of more than 20 studios with people that are incredible. And again, like an opportunity to to basically interact with people from other programs as well, which is something that makes it very, very exciting in a final semester, where you have new electives to take across G sub and even your can take courses and other parts of the university. And there's a very exciting pool of faculty ready for for for you to choose and to decide what are the trajectories within the program that you want to have. This is the first going back to the first semester the summer. Basically, we make sure that the three structure in courses advanced studios arguments and class priorities are an opportunity for you to explore in depth, each of these topics environmental engagement, the colonizing design, turning technology accountable materiality, the ones that I was presenting. And this is an opportunity for you to see this as a as a design and D board that you work on developing your own research based design. You're, you're writing your capacity to inquire your discussions with others in arguments and transcolarities your own specific research about architectural presidents and cases. The studios is a moment of huge collegiality I would say, and it's there incredibly by brand it's a great thing to spend time there you will, you will spend a lot of time kind of time there those that are coming of course they complement with many other facilities with the making studio which I totally encourage you to it's a very, there's an amazing, I would say, group of people here, and they spend the entire day there and nights and they socialize they, it's a great place to spend time but it's also giving you the opportunity to prototype to to realize and we have of course, always relationships with people from other fields. Columbia is, it's one of the best supported universities in the world as you very well know we have centers of science like Lamont Doherty, or the, or the, or the Earth Institute. We have the School of Business we have the gender studies department so it's a huge variety of experts that you can find across the campus and we connect with them with the time and you can easily connect with them. The work that you develop is very much at the center of the school so your projects are something that you do in conversation with many, many others and, and very, very directly occupying the space in the school so it's your school you use it in the way you want. And what is important is that you have all the support to produce your project as an experimental as an advanced one. And then once you presented you have a community of people that is permanently discussing seeing new opportunities and working with you to make sure that your project gets to the to the to its best possible version and that becomes a tool for you to to build up a voice as an innovative as a challenging one that can contribute to the evolution of architecture that's our main goal. We have these argument discussions they're great we bring the most important people producing architectural research and discourse from Laura Boyd as for instance a filmmaker that won the Golden Lion a few months a few weeks ago. Saturn, Saturn, Saturn, Forma, Phantasma, Jack Halberstam, all these are people killer distance that have been here. And they come here with this to discuss with you and to have conversations and trans colorities is a moment of huge intensity where the entire class mates in the auditorium and we have long discussions like I think it's three hours for our discussion. I mean we do some breaks are examining a more than 300 cases of architecture of the last decades. So each year each day we may be discussed in detail, maybe 20 or 30 or more architectural cases and we go to the details what the authors are saying what do they do why so one why I thought that the bill could be an architecture why. Our design considered that architecture needs to operate at the planetary scale what is that that. So we basically go case by case and through the semester with some more than 300 and we get to see in detail how that works. And of course then at one point you break down in small groups and you work basically developing your own research. And then the second and the third semester you melt with the entire school and you have these amazing pool of professors from. But nationally or my weekly or maybe Wilson or 911 like all these very well known professionals and scholars and thinkers and that have saved architectural thinking for the gates now and that are the school and the ones that are changing that the future of design and that the school is really mobilizing for you to work with. The kind of work that you will be doing is a work that is the incredibly detailed and very much talking to the the capacity for architects to change things, you will be developing it in a convincing way to the right. Representations that allow you for precision and for collection of data and for making your your case is very, very convincing but also to do to describe possibilities that are now unknown. This is for instance a work that she didn't hear and she didn't want to develop to think the way materiality New York would be redistributed. So without new mining without new extraction without even consumption of of matters and emissions, the overall energy efficient of the city could be enhanced and that's something that of course was an amazing project that they ended up developing professionally or for instance this project Christopher. A spirit was a Frederico Castelo Ramco and Frank Mandel developed together what was removing the notion of waste from a city like New York and I'm thinking of that the what was waste for humans would become the substance of other species and that is a brain that they developed together with people from the law school people from science schools and engineering and they work together with them in order to to make it happen with a high level of detail and they did this amazing representations of it for many of the projects that you will see and that are quite amazing and that are not just replicating the knowledge that we know at this point, but rather transforming it and giving new opportunities for for architecture to operate through relevance that this is operated by Farah. A quarry that did an amazing work on toxicity related to wars in Middle East, and what is the way that architecture could create a facility that could not only make visible the toxicity that warfare produces but also treating it and containing it so that he would not damage those populations of post conflicted populations and sites and this is something that again like meant a lot of research for presentation amazing inventions, but then ended up being incredibly influenced in the way that these realities are dealt with. We travel and we you would see that in the spring all the studios travel to different locations, but traveling for us it's very much doing research at the center and myself in Iceland examining some of the glaciers and the evolution of glaciers caused by climate crisis and we were talking there with scientists and we were working together with members of the Arctic Council in addressing questions of how climate would be basically could be mitigated adaptation to climate crisis and what is the way that it could be confronted without inequality. You of course will be taking courses on visual technology sequences and that's quite amazing we have an amazing team of people and centers with led by Laura Corgan one of the first for you those that are interested in presentation and data and computational design you probably know already Laura Corgan sees much some of the most important and relevant works on critical computational practices. And of course we have the technology sequence that is equally important and exciting and you will have a lot of an alone that you can already see the podcast that sees doing to have a glimpse of what she sees working but she's working with living materials have an amazing lab on natural material research and you will be part of that and even you can end up working with her if you want and and that's all these moments where basically there's tech shops where you can go and see all the different courses and navigate them be part of them. These are amazing work that have been developed there. I mean we could keep keep going and going going through all these amazing work that previous your colleagues from previous years have been doing in visual they have developed these skills trials that help you know what is the right software for you to use in each case and that provide you with tutorials and with the possibility of working with them. And there's a huge amount of amazing courses that I would encourage you to look at and to take when you're here and to take as many as you can. And of course we have the present this course techniques of the ultra real is quite impressive that this is really thinking of the way that the real is produced. You speak it to be now or transfer transition of your graph is all these part of the visual sequences and we also support you to do a through the time that you're here to do your own portfolio and for us the portfolio is really not not like a simple professional portfolio with we talk about that for you to to compose a book and or a piece of a platform of information that enables you to construct already what's the position that you want to have. What is your basically your profile as you finish your career what are the relationships that you you you want to build your your professional career on and that is something that is incredibly exciting and that allows for you to also to design what is what kind of practice and practitioner you or scholar or researcher the big part also of the graduates go to to independent practice and innovative practice all this want to occupy good positions in in in and relevant practices here in New York or elsewhere. Others go into PhD programs of we have a number of members of students and candidates of the PhD program in Princeton or Columbia that are graduates from the program every year and that's something that that I think it's it's also something that some of you might consider or there's many people that go into teaching afterwards combined with their individual practice or independent practice of research and education. The school also promotes books and there's a large very very important book house the Columbia books of architecture and the city that sits here in the building that you can have conversations with them. They have activities all the time and that's and and of course that's the it is full of the school is a vibrant space where you can really connect to whatever important things you want to engage with like writing architecture is a big thing. But many of the things that you can look at and that we are proudly attracting and nurturing from the school. And for those that are interested in having a teaching experience. We offered there's an open call for T positions for the summer. And I said positions that once graduated you can have an experience contributing to the teaching of the of the advanced studios in the summer. And I think that's something very exciting that allowed many people to have first or first or second or third experience on teaching that they they belong in other schools or we have a number of things actually that studied that graduated from the program and are occupying important positions across the world. But what we what is important for us is that all this goes to the question of how to the critical in the build environment. There's ideologies possibilities impossibilities that are enacted and that is really what we want to look at. And that's something that expands also as student run initiatives. There's a kind of a very, very exciting large number of groups that you can be part of. And you can even I mean there's also some of them are people that have shared a common concern or interest and they get together to organize lectures. In other cases is more groups of advocacy in other cases is groups of people with that sort of language or a culture and they get together or people that have a particular affiliation or that want to work together or organize events together. And that's the the Columbia groups that are quite amazing the student organizations. But but there's others for instance that you might find very exciting that one of them and I encourage you to take a look and hear their listen to their podcast is the radio a radio that is produced by by students fully organized by students of the program. And it's you can find their their episodes each year there's a new editorial board so when you come here you can apply to be part of the editorial board and and they produce a number of episodes. The school also supports them so that they can do that professionally with the help of sound is the director and artistic director and with graphic design and with everything that so it's really very exciting I would say and professional actually a radio you can listen to it. But what is important is that it's fully run by by the students so that you can you can use that as a platform of independence and gain an independent voice in the school. And New York of course is a big part of of the program of the AD needs it's really a city that is full of architectural potential histories trajectory conflicts and for us it's really very important that the big part of the program. It's focusing on the city and beyond and their connections there's national connections across the world, but also that the faculty, it's in the school at large is totally implicated in the networks of the city. You will see that the people that are working in the main museums or firms or companies are NGOs or non governmental organizations like basically they they are here at the school and they are you will meet them and you will have the opportunity to discuss with them and and who knows maybe collaborating with them in the future like it's a great opportunity to to become very silly part of New York in a very dense way. And that's something that of course comes together with the possibility of that the stem designation allows for those that don't don't hold the US passport or green card. It allows you to to stay in the US and work once you graduate. And that's something that is very important for for many people that that understand that their babies and intense moment that they can expand by by working in New York or in other cities afterwards. And this is where we are a very home from where I'm speaking you from this actually window here. So I'm so much looking forward to welcome you to to Jesus.