 Hi everyone, I'm Amala Andraus, Dean of GSAP at Columbia. I'm really excited today to be in conversation with Lola Ben-Alon who just joined us as part of the full-time faculty in so many different ways. She is really a leading figure in architectural technology and thinking about buildings for the future. But she has also many other characters of bringing together art and science, a kind of critical curatorial perspective together with engineering and architecture and questions of preservation and materiality. And Lola is also reshaping our technology sequence in the Master of Architecture program. So lots of different areas of incredible impact. And so I wanted just Lola to engage in a quick conversation with you so that our prospective students can hear from you directly in terms of some of your ideas. And my first question is just very simple is what do you believe is the most important advances, changes, considerations for what we call technology or building technology today and for the future? Yeah, thank you, Amal, for the introduction and for this really great and important starting question. So it's a really big question but I'll try to summarize some of my thoughts. And you know when we think about building technology, we have the basics of structures and systems and how these systems integrate and all the different architectural science and components that need to go into particular design in addition to the design party and concept and aesthetics. Kind of the things that hold the structure of the building together that make the building work, make us thermally comfort and make it also approved in terms of building codes, all these maybe more technicalities. And you know because we're talking about technicalities a lot like in engineering sometimes we lose our way in our technician you know mind. So I think the most important thing that I'm trying to emphasize is how do we use these technological instruments not as instruments solely but also remember the purpose, remember you know global crisis that we're trying to address, remember the occupants perception and comfort and needs, remember why are we using these technical tools and for that reason it's really about having you know the basic questions asked, question about sustainability, about environmental justice and social justice, questions of why are we using building technology. So there's the basics and there's also you know the additional questions we need to ask and answer. I think it's really inspiring to hear you speak because I also register your sort of formation which is very unique. You have a degree in critical curatorial practices, you've had museum shows, you know it's almost like you approach technology both, well not just both in so many different ways as an artist, as an architect, as an engineer but also as a woman, as a person who brings her own experience to thinking about something as abstract and I wonder whether this kind of hybrid, hybrid, hybridity in the way that you have sort of evolved is also one of the reasons why you're appending notions of materiality and kind of pushing materials such as I don't know Babu or Earth or you know rediscovering old technologies that in fact should be completely part of the future. So I wanted to tie your incredible sort of formation with how you're coming at these issues and really pushing the boundaries especially vis-à-vis materials. Yeah, I was the kind of engineer, a student that always you know sneaked into architecture classes before I did my PhD in architecture so it was I was always drawn to you know finding the intersections and the connections between disciplines and really early I joined right artist, a group of architects, theater artists and we did these really interesting curatorial projects and what was really following along the path from engineering to curatorship to my PhD and postdoc and now it's really the hands-on component they're working with the hands and to actualizing my project which I think is an additional important component of building technology. How do we actualize our design? How do we connect A to B to C M architecture engineering to construction management? How do we use methodologies of design build that are really interesting and this again trickles to you know community participation and design build with the people and providing building skills so it's eventually it's not only about building professionals it's about expanding the spectrum when we talk about design build and when we talk about making. So these are additional perspectives for instance we just I just talked with Lila about the Terra Collaborative where we in with the leadership of these genre and additional women builders it's an old woman NGO providing hands-on natural building skills to women in youth and we the aim is really to give the power back to the people to build their structures to maintain their structures and then to provide that knowledge to the community so it is preserved within the community. You just gave a wonderful lecture at the school which is online and everyone can see but I wanted to also to kind of take what you just said about the sense of design build and making and empowering communities and wanted to translate that as you know how are you thinking we can empower our students to engage with the technology sequence and these courses through making through a sense of materiality and I know you have a lot of ideas about that so I'm just I wanted to hear how we bring because in fact it's true at what I think we're trying to do is also break the barrier within the curriculum where studio is where you make things and technology has this kind of abstraction to it and so how we make those bridges and and and kind of undo not undo the abstraction but always grounded in the real and making which is what we do also as architects is kind of bring these these things together. Yeah there are many ways we can introduce actualization and actually construction of our buildings and ideas and they're in different schools do it differently with different type of you know whether it's low-income housing or there are different emphasis and I know what I love natural materials so for me really using clay, cob, straw bale, light straw clay really materials that come from our excavated soils or from biological byproducts are so easy and healthy to handle that you know really empowering communities is you know everyone can participate including elders and kids and the learning curve is so like sure like within a day you know how to build a wall it's that easy and it's fun which is super so I love these kind of materials so this is something that is dear to my heart which I will try to you know introduce more and more but that is only the tip of the spectrum and that goes wider to a range of low-carbon and low-extracted building materials and building practices which are critical given you know our legal environmental conditions and also our social conditions that we need to address. I think that's what's really interesting is that suddenly instead of just comparing you know concrete to steel to glass you know the usual let's say materials of the last you know well since modernism really you're bringing you're bringing back and pushing forward these other materials and now we are really actually expanding our our our palette in a way and question now we can question and evaluate and very excited about experiments with structural timber and I mean there is a kind of real transformation right now in the materials that are considered the kind of materials of the future and kind of connecting the dots and always bringing the social aspect as well I think is really something that I think the sequence is going to do incredibly well. So Lola thank you so much I'm just so thrilled that you're with us and I know that you've already transformed the program in many ways and the school just by being with us for very short time so I have no doubt that we're going to see a kind of acceleration and an incredible exploration in terms of pushing the boundaries of what we think about when we think about architecture and you know building technology today. I look forward to it thank you.