 Hi, my name is Jacob Moore. I'm the associate director at the Temple Hohen Buell Center for the study of American architecture at GSAP and Wanted to give you just a quick orientation here for open house To the the Buell Center as we're known and a little bit of the work that we do. I wish we could show you the center in person but The digital realm gives us some opportunities we might not otherwise have so Really quickly. So I'm the associate director. Reinhold Martin is the director who you might encounter in your other sort of tours for open house And Jordan Steingart is the program manager so the three of us are The sort of core of the center and then I'll speak a little bit later, but we always have team of students working at the center as well graduate research assistants who are really essential to the work that we do and Yeah, I want to explain a little bit about some of that. So I'm going to show you my screen and True you around a little bit. So this is our main website That you can see Buell Center dot colombia dot edu Gives us a very zoomed back sense of some of the kinds of things we do is we do different we do conferences. We do Issue prizes we have publications Etc. But what I want to focus on is that we do the bulk of our work our long-term research projects That lasts, you know multiple years to interact with the curriculum and various programs at the architecture school But also we're kind of a bridge between the school and the rest of the university between the university of the profession Sort of a lot of inside-outside activity I should say we're an independently endowed center, which means we sort of operate with a little bit of autonomy Which is important for the kinds of projects that we do that are entirely, you know pegged to Let's say one semester or one program But get to sort of move in and out. So The project we've been working on for A few years now Is this power here of this project here? You can see it's called power Infrastructure in America and it has a dedicated website there power dot bill center dot colombia dot edu That I encourage you all to check out That is about probably speaking infrastructure. You can see here connecting infrastructure politics and life um, and we are There's a lot of moving parts of this project. I thought I would just show you a few One is um You can see the sort of different Formats here. Uh, so we do events. Um, so I thought one recent event that we organized Was in in zoom land. We did a project. It's a workshop Under the umbrella of green reconstruction um about how curricula of the built environment professional schools in the built environment um Might need to change, uh In under current circumstances. Um, so we brought together, you know over 30 Teachers and students, but I mean teachers were leading the workshop, but then Um students joined to talk about The current curricular systems all from all across the country these professors joined To think about how things like climate things like racial justice Are taught should be taught. There was some historical context different themes you can see here were addressed And this relates to sort of in pre pandemic times we would do events like this in person We run conferences, etc. So, um, uh, anyway just to give you a sense of, uh, the kind of Events that We've recently been doing another one Is this, uh Event we pulled together Last year, uh, so a lot of what we do is um In collaboration with Other institutions partners Colleagues from inside and outside the university And this event Called the green new deal public assembly. We did at the queen's museum here in new york. It's out in queens. Um last november, uh, obviously related to the theme of the green new deal, which, uh We have done quite a few projects around And this event brought together over 200, um Uh artists activists community members, um elected officials, uh So the queen's museum is in alzendria casio-cortez's Congressional district and she was one of the co-authors of the green new deal So, uh, we had she sent a video in we had a representative from her office speaking about the green new deal Um, anyway, the point of the event you can see here some of the Material was to talk about, uh, what a green new deal Could mean in the built environment for the built environment and how something like a green new deal might be Collectively democratically Designed, uh, so we had all sorts of people gathering to speak about that Under the rubric of public assembly thinking carefully about Not just product but process For something like a green new deal um, so that was uh A big production for us last year that I think was really well received. We're really excited to keep that conversation going um, uh Not just with events but also with, um Uh editorial projects or you know to keep the conversation around this connected with students with professionals um, uh of, uh You know in different spheres. So I wanted to link that to um Some of the other parts of this power project, which is all these essays that we have published And we're always bringing in new new ones. And so one of these related to the green new deal Was by the science fiction author that you might have heard of and if you haven't I definitely recommend his work Um kim stanley robinson. He wrote an essay for the power site about the the basically kind of reviewing the HR 109 the house resolution that laid out the sort of terms of the green new deal Which if you're not familiar is basically a sort of really broad rubric put forward by certain members of congress and the senate Last year about the sort of scope and Way in which climate change and climate justice um ought to be addressed in the united states and it's been subject to really intense debate and so The buell center among other things through this power project. We're trying to sort of bring critical attention to that conversation From within the discipline and the profession and uh to make sure that we're participating in that in that very public and Intense debate that will have a lot of uh already is having great impact on the On the bills environment. So this is one essay that I would encourage you to read where this You know Author science fiction is speaking about the green new deal. So thinking about these things in cultural terms is something that we also um take very seriously at the buell center thinking about architecture as a as a contributor to Culture thinking about things from the perspective the humanities not just from let's say the engineering side or the science side or the technical side but from the The side of history and theory and culture And so I also wanted to mention so in the realm of essays and the sort of collaborative spirit of a lot of our work we do a lot of editorial work with Other magazines publications and we have a few different open collaborations running right now One is a project with A magazine two magazines in the south one called scallow ag the other one Called southerly southeast united states The initiative is called power lines, but we're basically just publishing essays together We've been doing it for over the last year and a half and this is the most recent Essay published as part of that series about international connections around energy and infrastructure and environment and justice and race And daniel purr foyer is the author and she's collaborated with us on a few other projects whose work. I really encourage you to check out um, so Anyway, I don't want to go into too much detail about the essay, but it's just another Facet let's say of the project and the kinds of conversations that we try to support At the center And so the power lines initiative as I mentioned is one of several sort of collaborative Things we have going with Within the power project, let's say And I wanted to mention that you can see a few others here. This is a prize. We're running with the association of collegiate schools of Architecture There's anyway too many to name But I wanted to maybe End with another one an initiative here that is actually mostly internal to the center Part of the power project that we're calling the a&e system public works in private interest in architectural and engineering services 2000 to 2020 it should be coming out By For the end of october so by the time you're seeing this It might even be out. We're going to release it as a pdf, but also On instagram you can see the the handle here Basically the it's a publication that's trying to think critically about How architecture is Made today And where sort of power lies in our field and architecture broadly construed to include large infrastructure projects like the ones that are increasingly happening In response to to climate change and and other sort of Looking like the crises that we're facing are calling for large-scale responses In the built environment and and so this project is trying to situate How how our fields allied fields of planning architecture engineering our sort of position to respond and where the pedagogical Agendas are and are not Thinking about some of those questions So Anyway, again, there's much more to say and it'll be out soon so you can see but I wanted to come back here because This is one of the parts of the project for which the involvement of the graduate research research assistants at the center has has been so key and we are a tiny little center, but So we couldn't do so many of the things we do without the really intense and leading involvement of students from all across the program So here's just some of the names that have been involved of students at the last like two and a half three years Who've been involved with this particular project? And I can't credit them enough. I mean really it's uh, it's been a Wonderful to work with all of these students and just more generally to be involved in conversations with students from GSAP over the last I've been at the center for seven years and it's um uh really privileged to to develop these really co-develop these projects with students Who are coming from all over the place with different, you know backgrounds and interests and priorities perspectives so to think about Questions like some of the ones here at the top of this Page to really form those questions together and then begin to try and enter them together It's a it's a real like I said a privilege and it's exciting and it's a challenging time to be in our field, but I think also an exciting one for some of the same reasons so Anyway, that's like a really brief Tour of the power project As a way of learning a little bit more about the Beale Center I'm gonna stop my my share here Uh, but we are we do other things that are outside of the power project And are involved in the life of GSAP and all sorts of different ways So I encourage you to send us an email fuelcenter at colombia.edu My name is jaco morgan. You can write to me directly Or to jordan or to rinehold, but we are um Really looking forward to the year that's to come and to continuing to sort of Explore where all these things are going to take us specifically but also the school it's a it's a There's a lot that's happening this year in this country in the world and The built environment plays a big part in that so Anyway, we look forward to hopefully connecting with some of you individually if you if you choose to come and And in the meantime are happy to answer any questions that you that you have So thanks for sticking me out if you've stuck it out this long