 Hello good afternoon or good morning wherever you are in the world. My name is Kate Orff. I'm the director of the urban design program here at Columbia University and we've organized this online webinar to sort of answer in real time some of the questions that you may have about the program. We are incredibly excited that you're interested about the program and interested in the program and so we prepared a very brief slide presentation to give you a broad overview of how we work and what we are focusing on and then we also have a question-and-answer session together with a group of current students, former students, and the assistant director David Smiley. So I'll lead you through a couple of slides now. This is just to say that we are extremely welcoming group here at Columbia. We work together in groups on some of the most challenging and pressing and urgent conditions of now. We have an absolutely extraordinary faculty. This is a slide of a mix of the current faculty in our spring semester studio that includes scholars of water and research individuals with very different backgrounds from housing and resilience, disaster recovery, health and public space and urban design to social capital and a whole range of different expertise. So I think a unique aspect of the program and a real strength of the program is simply the people that teach in our program and who are incredibly dedicated. So that's me on the right-hand side. As the director and then the other pink box is David Smiley who will be leading us in a question-and-answer session. And together we run and administer the urban design program at Columbia. This is a snapshot of Avery Hall where we are housed along with the world famous Avery Library that you can see on the ground floor there. And so our classes are both in Avery Hall and also in a large generous studio space in Fairweather. It is on Columbia's Morningside campus, right on 116th Street on the subway. And I will just say that New York obviously is a lab for our study of urban design. And there is no better place to study urban design than in New York City. So I have a few descriptors of the coursework and the student experience. Because really when you come here, you will be immersed in a and enveloped in a student experience that encompasses sort of urbanism, landscape, history, theory, and activism. So we are a post-professional degree program. It is a one calendar year program that consists of three semesters. We start in June for our summer semester and then we have a semester in the fall and a semester in the spring. So it is an intensive one calendar year program and I just wanted to make a special notice that that we have a three-year STEM designation. And so we are STEM and designated program. So now some words on the summer semester, which is when you arrive here in New York City and we kick off the the sort of learning in June. Being a post-professional degree program, many of you, well, you must have essentially a bachelor's degree in architecture or landscape architecture or an accredited degree in planning and what we really aim to do in this first summer semester is to expose you to a very different way of thinking about the city. Importantly, you will come to this program knowing the basics of design. However, we strongly believe in the urban design program at Columbia that becoming an urban designer and understanding the agency of the urban designer requires an incredibly strong stance of activism and engagement and listening and being able to communicate your ideas, develop narratives and develop broad front engagement strategies. So this is just one example of one class in the summer studio which requires and helps teach you how to ask questions, how to engage community members in a broad array of urban topics. It's called sort of a narrative urbanism approach. We also believe in making and the art and craft of design relative to advancing urban design ideas. So this is another quick snapshot of the sort of collaborative nature of the summer studio and how we toggle back and forth between making, doing and interacting with and you can see that map in the background, the sort of physical geography of New York City and of course the politics of New York City and how these two sort of layers of facets have combined to make the sort of New York urbanism that we know today. This is a design, some of your questions have involved the level of research versus design. I would say this is a design driven program. We have work in teams to develop design projects in the studio. However, these projects are driven by a research process and and so this is just one example of the kind of experience you would have over the summer in a pinup. This is Professor Nans Voron who is our coordinator of the summer studio and he has an expertise in architecture, urban design, landscape and in particular video and narrative storytelling. Here's some more examples about how we move from the idea of making models and designs and drawings inside the four walls of the studio at GSAP, but we also very much are an outward-facing program. We go out into the community, out into the landscape in this case, an agricultural field north of the city to begin to develop our design strategies. So you think you're coming here to learn more about drawing and making, but you also need, you know, we strongly feel that to be an effective urban designer you need this ability and this facility with facilitating workshops, with engaging with community members to be able to sort of instigate a transformation process in the urban context, not just to sketch diagrams that will sit on a shelf somewhere. So it's a very exciting and dense semester and in that summer semester you also learn software and the sort of craft of video making and we also have an intensive urban history and urban theory class that all incoming students take to develop kind of a baseline around the sort of theoretical backdrop of urban design and urban form. The second semester in your course of study is in the fall starting back up in September and the fall semester has been characterized as one that explores what the city means at a regional scale. What are the sort of regional systems that comprise a larger kind of urban space or sort of urban territory? This is a group of students moving beyond the classroom and we begin to work up in the Hudson River Valley, which is a cluster of smaller towns and cities in the New York environs that really has a strong relationship, of course, to New York City that has its own set of issues. So this is our real strong regional studio and it involves incredible amount of travel as well as interaction with communities. This is an image of a Hudson Valley barge meet in Kingston, New York where students, local community activists, regional scholars, etc., all convened around a set of questions revolving housing, landscape and equity at the Hudson River's edge. And in many cases, you will get your feet wet in this program. We also advocate for really strong place-based and site-driven explorations. So this is a, and those explorations then get translated into very powerful and compelling design projects and design narratives. This is just one example of two former students that you see here whose actual project for Newburgh developed in the fall urban design studio context was then picked up and carried forward by the city itself as an initiative. So it's this sort of reciprocity between acting and as designers and obviously as as educators and as students within the space of Columbia GSAP, but having our work have a greater impact beyond the four walls of the the university that I think we are particularly proud of. We have very active critique sessions with local practitioners. Another extraordinary opportunity of studying in New York is that you will have access to not only Columbia's global network of alumni, but there is obviously a very robust, a robust network of practitioners here on the ground in New York City. Many of our graduates of our programs are senior positions in very large firms or in the City of New York City Planning Department or the Office of Resilience, etc., etc. So these are just some snapshots into some of these very interactive open house types of crits that we have design critic sessions that we have in the fall semester. And then finally in the spring semester, this is the sort of culmination of the three semesters of work where we shift our attention to the scale of the globe. And our curriculum in all three semesters directly addresses the fundamental challenges of the Anthropocene and of climate change at a variety of scales and sites and situations. However, the spring semester is where we really focus on really the kind of the global scale and the challenge of cities and landscapes needing to adapt and thrive in an era of climate change and an era of increasing inequity and and so in an era where we need to think profoundly differently about what infrastructure is. And so within the course of this semester in the past years, we have gone to many cities around the world and these are organized workshops with local partners, local universities, mayors of cities, etc., and where we really aim to investigate the ecological infrastructure and programmatic challenges on the ground of these cities and spaces. And so this year, for example, we're going to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Beira, Mozambique, and Tel Aviv, Israel. But that represents a huge range of geographies. The spring semester also has been focused around the topic of water and, you know, has been titled Water Urbanism. So the idea behind this string of studios that has been developed in collaboration with the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes is that, you know, essentially in this era of climate uncertainty and climate change, that water will be a defining characteristic of the urban territory and of global climate change and equity moving forward. And we see it both as a sort of an indicator of the threat, but also as a generative and connective force in urban design. And so in this particular semester, whether it's through looking at the lens of drought or scarcity or abundance, flooding, sea level rise, etc., we begin to study cities and systems through the lens of water in order to foreground site, context, people, ecosystems, and territory. This is, again, the three sites that we'll be visiting starting in January and February and just a snapshot of two of some former sites that we have visited. For example, in Calcutta in India, in the Sundarbans, in Amman, Jordan, being a particularly rich travel experience. And just to say that during the course of our travels, we meet with individuals, NGOs, nonprofits, universities, etc. We experience the countryside. We interview, in this case, farmers and local residents. We explore geographies. This gentleman in the center here is one of the foremost geologists of the Middle East. And we study this sort of water infrastructure context over time. And now I'm just gonna flash through a couple of slides of student work to give you a sense of of how that student work is expressed and how the study and the sort of very rigorous sort of on-site travel then manifests in a series of students projects. In this case, students in Amman, Jordan, were looking to sort of capture rainwater on-site, although Amman is experiencing drought and I think the fourth city in the fourth kind of greatest moment of crisis relative to water globally. They're also experiencing extreme flooding during rainfall events. So this was a kind of reinterpretation of an ancient system of water holding and capture. Our students are among the best in the world in visualizing three-dimensional complex problems, whether it's a topographic map or an urban grid or an urban substance. And then again, translating not only the systemic thinking, but sort of grounding that in the sites and places where people live. And so now I'll hopefully that has given you just a basic overview of our course of study. I think that it is clear that the program is a design-driven program is informed by research and we are deeply focused on cities and regions as agents of resilient change and on the role of design in redefining 21st century urban landscapes. And our graduates are equipped to engage in the challenges of the future, which I see very much to be, as you see on this slide, limiting global warming to even one and a half degrees Celsius and the incredible transformation in land, energy, industry, transport, and cities that that will require. So through this rigorous three-semester curriculum, through the immersive experience of being a student here and having access to the incredible range of seminars and lectures throughout the Columbia campus, through participating in studios like the Water Urbanism Studio, through this design-driven process of testing and iterating and the reciprocity between our research into policy and issues and our focus on projects and places and through our amazing faculty as represented here by Gita Mehta, you will be truly equipped and I think to begin to engage in the very real and pressing urban questions of now. So I'm going to kick it over to our associate director, David Smiley, to help introduce and introduce our participating students and we'll get on with the Q&A session. Thank you. We're happy to have you here, so to speak, and we hope we can answer all your questions today. And don't forget, you could send us email anytime if you have other questions, because I'm sure you'll come up with more after we finish speaking. I just want to reiterate a couple of points that Kate made. The first is that, yes, it's three semesters, one calendar year, and be ready for incredibly hard work, but also an incredibly collaborative community that generates incredible friendships and work relationships, and it's something that everybody comes away from this program, kind of fondly realizing how good it is to work with other people who are interested in similar issues. Sometimes you argue, but that's also part of the world of making things in complex places. Secondly, I'd like to note that ours is a post-professional degree. You're all, if you're applying and you have some kind of professional degree already, and so we want you to know that we expect you to ramp it up, challenge yourself, grow, and create something beyond your previous experience, and we will challenge you to do so. And also know that that's not just working here at GSAP, but also taking courses and engaging with people at the university. Some of the questions that I received had to do with that. It's very much about you creating a path for yourself through the resources of the School of the Arts, or international affairs or public policy all over the university, and we provide you with space meaning time to do that. But it's up to you to kind of take it that extra mile. So we really want you to understand this as beyond your first degree and entering a very challenging applied research realm and an intellectual realm about cities and urbanization. Finally, we should say, or I feel it's always something we say that it's called urban design, and we spend a lot of time talking about cities, but it's perhaps better for us to talk about urbanity, which is the way in which we live together collectively, and that's in a city, in a suburb, in a desert, on the ocean, near a river, that cosmopolitanism, or living among others, and dealing with the complexities of ourselves and nature and the kind of historic interaction is what we mean by urbanization and thus urban design. So it's not just about cities, I think it's indicated as well. So I'll have some more points to make for you after we get some of the students to talk and I'll answer some questions specifically. So I'm going to let the students introduce themselves. We have three current students and one alum, and so I'm going to start immediately to my right and take it away, Nina. Introduce yourself and take it away. Perfect. So thank you for the presentation. I am Nina Lisch and I completed my undergrad this past year in Philadelphia and directly moved to New York City to start this program and really, like Kate mentioned, hit the ground running in June, but I think the really intense part of the program is meeting with all these people from different places and different backgrounds and forming teams and doing research together that kind of enriches your project from maybe the experiences you had formerly. So I had worked in offices in Philadelphia and done research around cities and around development there, but being able to come to New York City has been a really great experience and collaborating with new people. Hello. My name is Sophie Lee and like Nina, I just completed my Bachelor of Architecture in Pittsburgh and graduated in May and also directly moved to New York City after that. Just briefly about why I chose Columbia UD. The MSAUD at Columbia initiates projects in New York and New York deals with challenging urban issues and that's what was really intriguing for me and interesting for me. And also we all work in groups for all three semesters and that is also an important part when you're studying urban design and learning to communicate better with your classmates and your workers in the future. And yes. Hi, my name is Lolo Bea. I'm from Caracas, Venezuela. I majored in architecture back there and I graduated in 2018 and then I started working for an NGO developing tactical urbanism projects across the city of Caracas for about a year. So back in undergrad, I developed a strong interest in the urban realm and to me the blend between Columbia University and New York City, which in my opinion is in self-school laid out the perfect scenario for me to come here and pursue the idea of becoming an urban designer. I know that some of you asked about how the daily life in the studio is and I gotta tell you that it's challenging and in a positive way. Every day we're reflecting on real issues and how we as urban designers should develop a set of tools and a way of thinking to address these issues and the program definitely challenges us and pushes us to dig deeper to go beyond, to come up with bold ideas but at the same time grounded ideas. And I think that one of the things that I enjoy the most is as you heard Kate mentioned, we are in this constant process of going out. During the summer we went to the five borders of New York City, this semester we've been working in the Hudson Valley, interacting with not only the places but also the communities there and next semester we'll be going to the Great Reef Valley in the Middle East. So to have the opportunity of exchanging or having that everyday exchange with the urban realm and with the people is actually a great environment and a great setup if you want to become an urban designer. So that is one of the things that I enjoy the most about the program. Hello, my name is Alex Burkhart. I just graduated this past spring. My background is in architecture. I got my B Arc in California and after that I worked for three years as an architectural and urban designer before coming to Columbia. During that time I was working kind of at a very regional and kind of community-based scale and I was really interested in kind of scaling up and therefore was really interested in Columbia's program. I was very drawn to its approach, its multi-scaler pedagogy, really kind of looking at urban design at various scales and how that influences design and form. And so that was really what drew me to the program. Additionally with climate change right now I was really kind of wanting to study urban design through that lens of kind of our constantly changing climate and environment and how we as designers can kind of take on role as agents and so that was really what drew me here. And now I am working in New York City as an urban designer and it's been great to really apply the skill sets that I learned at Columbia professionally here. Okay, thank you all. I'm sure you'll have some more thoughts after I go through a few questions. And so we have received your questions and I've tried to organize them a little bit to catch some issues that I think are really important. Several people asked about the structure of the studios and I think that is pretty clear. The three studio sequence, Summer, Fall and Spring, New York, Hudson Valley Region International. Maybe we could add to that there are usually depending on the number of students but six to seven full-time faculty who are also teaching together. I showed you the very first slide which is our spring studio teaching team but in each semester you have a unique special team that sort of put together specifically to help advance the issues and the geographies that are kind of embedded within that studio. Yes, the word collaborative is something you'll hear a lot and part of that has to do with the fact that beyond the academy urban design involves so many professionals, so many governmental entities, so many stakeholders that everything needs to be understood collaboratively. So a desk quit will consist not unlike of us around the table, three or four students, two or three faculty and it will be more like a workshop at the desk rather than a crit with one on one. So it's very much a back and forth discussion and so our pedagogy tries to mirror the world that an urban designer will be entering into. Another question had several questions had to do with work in the global south or in Asia and African sites and in the spring semester, number one as you saw from Kate's presentation, we travel the world often in the global south and in addition there are courses outside of urban design, well some of our own seminars but also architecture school seminars or as I mentioned earlier classes in other programs at the university which deal with human rights, they deal with public policy both in the north and the south globally or hemispherically. So there is a considerable effort to understand the world, the developing problems and how they have affected different communities in different places. A few other people asked about the role of sustainability and I think in particular we take sustainability as a kind of larger frame. We don't teach how much you need to change the heat of water per some building or system but we teach sustainability as a kind of process of engaging different ecologies, different technologies, different stakeholders and different actors and it's important that it's part of our daily life, it's not any one particular thing. A few other people asked about the difference or the role between landscape architecture and urban design and I'm sure others will have much to say about it but quite simply we want to bridge all of those disciplines. We are not trying to pigeonhole any kind of professional activity because the world is not pigeonholed, the problems that we face are not narrow. So in many ways our whole goal is to overcome some of the definitions, the traditional definitions of these professions. I'd like to just expand on that a little bit and that is part of the faculty mix in each semester. We really try to do exactly as David has described. So typically there is at least one if not two landscape architects on the teaching team, an architect more focused at the building scale and more sort of individuals at the urban design scale that are all kind of working together. So just as an example on our spring teaching team, I'm a registered landscape architect but working as an urban designer for 20 years. We have Dilip Takuna who is an architect and a planner but who is focused on water in cities. We have Gita Mata who is an architect by training but has really advanced an understanding of social networks and social capital. And then the list of Thaddeus Polowski who is an architect and a planner but whose expertise is in resilience and disaster recovery. So there's truly a mix and it is, I don't want to say post-disciplinary, I feel like it's sort of pre-disciplinary in the sense that if you're teaching in this program you have a very different mindset and as David has explained, you don't approach your problems relative to like well I think these five things because this is my training. You're looking at issues and sites and spaces very holistically and working together. In addition for instance I'm an architect and a historian and I teach a history seminar but I also teach in the studio. So there is a really great mix of people and it's really exciting for the faculty as well I might add. Another bunch of questions have to do with portfolio and admissions and I'll go quickly through that but feel free to email me or the admissions team about it. One of the key things is basically someone asks what should we show? Well quite simply show your best work. Do the students want to weigh in on that? The students should definitely weigh in on that. How do you put maybe you go about your portfolio or anything around that? Well I think that one of the important things to keep in mind when you're putting together your portfolio to send it to Columbia is first just collect your best work and show that but at the same time think of what you're going to do here, what you want to do here and how your work can actually reflect that vision that you have for the program. I think that could be an amazing way to show what you want to do and the potential you have so yes that's what I would do if I would apply. That's great and then also just maybe Nina you can mention too but I would just say our expectation is not that you have a lot of urban design in your portfolio exclusively. I mean we recognize that you're coming with a bachelor's in architecture, a bachelor's in landscape architecture. Nevertheless you might want to have a statement that is clear about why you're interested in urban design at this moment so don't be alarmed. We're looking for potential in the portfolios. We're looking for systematic thinking and organized thinking but we are very mindful that the reason you are applying to an urban design program is not because you have already completed urban design so just a note on that. Anything else to add? I think Hugo kind of covered it. I mean your best work but also showing your vision of what you think design could kind of be or should be. It doesn't have to just be an urban design project. It could be any kind of project. Again if you have specific questions about certain kinds of projects please feel free to get in touch with me or the admissions folks. It's really important that you let us know who you are as a designer, as a thinker. We know you don't know urban design. That's why you're coming here. Just one other couple of points about working and jobs. As Kate mentioned we are STEM approved so you have permission to apply to stay in the U.S. for three years after you graduate from the program. That took us a long time to make happen and it's very successful. We're very pleased with it. Some people asked about working during the program and that's an individual decision. Although we expect that you'll be spending most of your time working here. But some people are really good at managing the time so again please talk to us if you have questions about that when you get here. I'd like to just add a tiny bit in the maybe Alex you can weigh in. I will say that this is a one calendar year program and you are at Columbia University. One of the finest universities in the world and you have access to every concert, every play, every lecture. So although students sometimes say oh I would like to continue working or I'm going to do a competition for free for this office. I would just recommend although that you focus on being a Columbia student and getting the most out of your experience here while you are here. And that could just be as simple as taking a hike in the Hudson Valley because the work will be there. The urban design graduates of this program are in very high demand across the United States and in firms around the world. So I would just recommend that you think about seeing this year as something very special and as something very apart from finally working in an office. There are other ways maybe Alex was a TA you can talk about that but there are other ways that Columbia has scholarships and work study that is less intensive that can help you if you need financial support during the program. Any thoughts there? Yeah I would definitely if you're interested recommend and applying to the teaching TA positions. I did that in the fall which is a great opportunity to a work but also be I mean it's a great experience. You know as a student you're getting some professional experience in academia. You're working with professors who as Kate mentioned are practitioners and it's really it's an interesting networking opportunity. I really I think that because you have so many studio professors each semester you're just constantly meeting new practitioners in New York maybe even regionally. And it's really an amazing opportunity to kind of think about what you want to do with your career. One of the things that Kate had said to me when I was applying to Columbia was you know use this year to really explore what interests you and that kind of falls in line with using your year year wisely. But it's your time to really identify what it is that excites you in urban design and you want to do and you know there's definitely ways in which the program allows you to do that. Another set of questions had to do with the career assistance and there's a very helpful career center here at GSAP that helps all of the students. And there are events that start even in the summer where you're meeting professionals some of them alumni. And we it's really something we try to assist all the students with. And there'll be some things coming up that they're going to be interested in after the holiday break. And so I think the other thing about professionals and careers is that our review process with outside reviewers and juries and workshops you will be meeting dozens and dozens of professionals here in the city and also regionally. It's not like you can go up to them and give them your card while you're presenting your project but you learn about the landscape of different kinds of firms different kinds of practices right here in New York as well as the region. So you will encounter a lot of the people who are leading the profession in urban design and so you will you will understand something of that landscape during your time in the program. Yeah and the career services office can help you prepare your CV and do a portfolio review and and assist with obviously connecting you to our network of alumni. We also have mentors programs etc. But as David mentioned there is that level and then there's really just this notion of the Columbia kind of network of of of alums that I think is you know spans United States and cities around the world and our alums are so diverse. They're leading schools of architecture and design. They're deans of schools. They're directing city planning departments around the world. They're working in offices etc. So there's truly a sort of a networked approach that I think you'll find to be very useful. The last thing the last question that comes up has to do with software and the kind of learning of the various kinds of softwares that we use professionally from GIS to After Effects the works. Both in our program and at GSAP as a whole there's there's an array of courses that deal with that. So there'll be lots of choices as well as if you're specifically interested in one type or another. Our idea our our larger goal is that you're exposed to these tools as part of the design process. It's really important to us that these are not merely tools but that there are methods of accomplishing your goals as designers. But there are many many options here and they're increasing all the time. So with that I'm just wondering if the students have any last thought any last mornings or last. The other thing about software and then maybe you guys can speak specifically to that is. You know we we have software instruction in the summer and then obviously incredibly intensive GIS courses etc. in the fall. But again we like to nest that within a discovery process. So we do have tutorials and teaching assistance and one on one instruction. Nevertheless there there are a range of softwares that it would be useful for you to have some working knowledge of when you matriculate such as the Adobe Suite Illustrator Photoshop etc. Obviously AutoCAD and and you will be taught GIS here as well. But students always come with a wide range of skills. Some people are complete rhino wizards right and can model anything in five minutes and rhinos and others have not yet been exposed that software. So we try to essentially level the playing field during your summer semester here. But nevertheless we do ask you as students to sort of take initiative work with the tutorials that all of our faculty have set up and and get yourself to a real level of strength with software so it can just be a tool for you rather than a kind of a burden. So I would add to that as well because you're always working in teams and studio you also have the ability to work with your colleagues and really learn programs and tools and skill sets from them. So it's a really great opportunity to not only learn it in the classroom but use your colleagues as a resource and really kind of form the best projects that you can using all of your different skill sets and strengths. Yeah I think working in studio has been a really great way to both engage with different people maybe across projects. So you might be focusing on one topic and learning about one thing and then participating in other desk rights you start to learn what others are doing. And those electives and those seminars and other classes you take allow you to kind of enrich your studio experience and the way you approach your project or the way you kind of design so that's been really helpful. But yeah I agree with what Kate said about there's so many lecture series things to participate in and committees or TA positions. So I found that I'm busy enough with the full schedule and you know looking towards the spring of looking at courses and what do I want to be my final electives it becomes even a challenge to kind of narrow in. So it's actually a really good thing that you're so engaged in all of the classes and that they're beneficial to spend all your time on. Okay I think we're done or we're glad you're watching and we hope that we've answered all of your questions. I'm sure that's not true but you can please continue to send us questions about any big thing or little thing. We want to make sure that you have the best possible sense of what Columbia UD is about and we hope that it's right for you. So great and hopefully if you've made it this far and you are on this webinar such as it is I would just say you know just emphasize that I believe our application deadline is January 15th. And we wish you all the best in preparing your materials and we really look forward to reviewing your hard work and welcoming you here to New York and becoming part of this program and get ready to hit the ground running when you get here. We'll be waiting with open arms so thank you for joining.