 Welcome everyone. My name is Andres Hake and I'm the Dean of GSAP. I'm very excited to welcome all of you to Columbia University and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Congratulations for your admissions. It's a very important achievement and we're very honored to have you here and hopefully soon as our students. The admissions process is something that we do very carefully. We look at every single document. Many people look at every single thing that you include in your application so you can be sure that you are here because we really like what you've done so far and what you represent and what you bring to the school. I'm going to explain a little bit what we stand for, what you're getting into. The school is really part of, it's very much anchored in New York. As you see, Columbia campus is a campus that is open to the states and that it's actually that's something that we, here at GSAP we try to get as far as we can in connecting to our neighborhoods, to our communities, to the city and beyond. We're not an isolated school. We're a school that understands that our disciplines are deeply entangled with the realities that we care for and we don't claim our disciplines to be isolated or autonomous. We don't want to have discussions only with our peers. We want to make sure that we're connected to what is happening in the world and especially to the tensions, the political, the technological, the cultural tensions that are shaping our futures. We're standing actually underneath, we're here underneath the Avery Library and this is something that is crucial for us. We really believe that knowledge is a way to get empowered and to be connected with others in projects that empower collective will and also that bring freedom and justice to societies and ecosystems and we think that this is our strength also, the anchoring to knowledge and to the formal production of knowledge and many other ways of disseminating it, making it circulate. So we're happy to be here very literally underneath books and documents and that's something that we intensively use as a resource for the school and you will be really using the library very intensively and beyond that. But of course we are also here on top of other realities and we started this year looking at what is underneath this. Here there's doors that if we open them we basically discovered that there's water that is circulating underneath this building and this is crucial. If we didn't have pumps, permanently pumps in the water, this water that is showing how sea level rises, how sea level is rising, good start covering our auditorium. So what we do here is not let's say operate from a safe position. Actually last year these are videos that came did. This is basically what happened here a few months ago. So we're in a moment that our work is needed. We really need to understand that there's no safe position from which many of the tensions that we care for are pushing for us to make decisions to action our ideas to become activists. In the past we could imagine culture, this is from the 18th century, as a safe position from which you could see the risk of the world. But we understand now that this has been the attitude of modern cultures and often of our disciplines. These images are probably part of the past in the way they're showing that there's a possibility for, let's say, detached from the urgent transformations and crises that are shaking the world. On the contrary, we believe that there's no safe position as our pumps taught us in the last months and that we really are needed in the world out there to respond to urgent matters. So you all are needed. We're not going to have, let's say, useless conversations about ourselves. We really want to have the capacity to operate in a world in transformation that is basically facing difficulties and that needs to change and to transform. This, of course, is also something that we do through knowledge, established knowledge, scientific knowledge, facts that are unquestionable. But we also know that there's a high level of uncertainty in the way we can impact the world and the way the world is evolving. And that's why we need to experiment. And this is a center that stands for experimentation, for challenge, also knowledge, but not in any way. We understand that there's a political and critical dimension to the experiments we do. Our laboratories are laboratories that are working with the interest, with the affections, with the mobilization of representation of many actors. And we want to make sure that our experimentation is an engaged experimentation. That is what happens across programs. This is the historic preservation program. This is part of the natural material labs that the MR program and the AD programs mostly participate. But of course, this is open to all the programs across the school. Our work here is permanently based on both acknowledging and studying, established knowledge, but also to challenge it and to deal with uncertainty through engaged experimentation. This is something that we do across programs all the time. And this is basically what we stand for and that what we invite you and expect you to be part of and to become part of. In a way that allows also your each of you to make decisions to shape your trajectory within the school in this very broad cold one of experimentation and knowledge, but also to make sure that whatever trajectory you follow is really part of a conversation with others, of our interaction of a cohort you're part of and this is the daily image of the computational design practices group that many of you are admitted to now. The second thing that I think is crucial for a school is that we're inter, we really work, we're a school that can have the luxury of work across disciplines. In this same building, we have very different disciplines that work together. And that means that each of them nurtures their differences, but also we interact with each other. And also as students of GSUB, you can take courses across programs, you can even take courses across other schools in the university. And we have this very, very intentional set of programs, ecosystem of programs that also have already established dual degrees and associations and alliances with other schools across campus. But this is not something that we just do through programs or administration. We do it very effectively as we're here. We have here the directors of each of the programs at the back and some of the front. We have Patricia Erington, Felicity Scott, we have Kate Orff and Laura Corgan, we have Mario Guden, we have Jorge Otero Pailos, and myself also as the AD director. And we have basically a way of working that each one is nurturing a difference, a very different approach. The CCCP is really problematizing what the rest of the people is doing, whereas others are optimizing processes and thinking what is the way that things could be facilitated. And we have Jorge that is looking at the dust with the historic preservation laboratory and Laura that is looking at the way computational practices are becoming sites for criticality. And we have the MR program with Mario's leadership looking at uncertainty and entanglements as the way architecture operates relevantly in societies and ecosystems. We have Kate Orff developing forms of interspecies relationships and ecosystem approaches to systemic design. So we have each of the programs are real status looking at the way value can be consolidated and questions of affordability and even justice are addressed from the perspective of financial analysis and development. So each program is really looking at different tools, mobilizing different traditions. But with that, we built also a conversation together. And this is the common circle that Laura Corgan and many faculty organize across the school to discuss questions of anti-racism across program and looking at what is the way that each discipline is contributing through their specific knowledge to confront racism and colonialism in the built environment. And circles are not an accident. We also have these opportunities where we have a number of clinics where students and faculty from different programs get together to resolve urgent issues that are not easy to address. And we also have a number of transdisciplinary courses that you can take in the school. But this is actually what we do. This is for instance part of the urban design and Kate Orff and David Smiley led super studio that brings together people from the climate school with people from UD and faculty also from planning to discuss together the future of Colombian cities of specifically Cartagena, Bogota and Cali addressing questions of ecology and water justice in coordination and working hand by hand with the majors and the municipalities. And we had the other day review where the majors were basically around and they were discussing. And we have other circles. We have the the CCP circle where people from all around the city, cultural leaders, I would say, people that are basically clever people from different fields from art, theory, history are brought together to discuss the work and the development of the work of each of the students. And we have these circles moving around. This is a very run right then the this in the desert in the middle of the desert you can see the sun right on site having these discussions and as also understanding as you see that we very much close for our proximity. We're very much close to what is happening in the next block here. But when we look at the next block we also understand that it's saved by dynamics that are transnational by migrations, by remittance, by histories of of displacement and exploitation that are can only be also developed if we collaborate with others across the world transnationally. And this is what we do and what we want to do and that's why our circles expand expand and we and each time differently. And our circles also work through technology and this is of course how could it not the computational design practices program does things differently and this specificity also translates in the way these conversations are built through technological mediation. And of course this is something that our school stands for. This is the place where the paperless studios were invented and discussed and responded and confronted and and subverted and many many other things happen. But also we understand these other technologies are crucial part of what we do. So we don't believe in the obsolescence one technology making of solace the others but actually the possibility of building an ecosystem where all these different technological ranges and trajectories can be mobilized. The third thing that I think is crucial for our school is that we we don't do and this is things that I'm picking up it's not that I promote them is that this is what basically I observe that is happening so I'm sharing with you information that I do through the ethnography of the school but our practices are very situated and by this I mean that we don't do abstract speculation what the work that we do here is highly situated and that means that we take very seriously who we work with how we work with people how we actually allow them to be part of what we do and we allow ourselves to be part of what they do and we build these alliances on basis of justice and reciprocity this is from for instance from the urban planning program and there's a high knowledge and know how across programs on how to do community work but also we do that through other techniques this this is from the from work that could only be done through the tradition of spatial practices that the the lower organ has been developing in the last decade and that understands that also this way of engaging and situating work benefits from technological mediation's data other things that of course can only be addressed through political tools and through a critical perspective this is for instance a studio work that is highly situated in the realities in the society and in the history of Atlanta and of course that's the way to to and by Manolat Masu and that this is really the way to engage with the complexity that societies like Atlanta comprise and to to to situate our work in the nuances of these societies and then the work of course becomes much more relevant and also much more public in the way that it it has a life beyond the school and of course it requires representational efforts theoretical efforts effort to conceptualize differently what we do and of course this is from the CCP that is a great contribution to the school I always think of the CCP as a little bit of a kind of subverted commando within the school right infiltrated in what we do and very literally now there's a table at the at the studios where the CCP students are observing and interrogating what the rest of the people do but this is of course what we do and this is why we also can address questions that maybe other schools cannot in a way that is relevant and that is far to to the world and the way we work with others but this is inserted in our building our building is really the first place where we situate and that's why I wanted to reflect on the fact that we have water underneath and this is what we keep doing so basically we see our close proximity as an opportunity to interrogate how our practices as disciplines operate and as part of these of course there's many other initiatives the school also makes big efforts to not not only expand our knowledge but actually think that the only way to be part of a community is also to be reciprocal to the knowledge that the community already has and we want to give the tools of develop the tools and the diplomacy and the efforts to bring others here listen to them learn from them incorporate with them in the production of knowledge and activism and that's what we do for instance with the community fellows and other initiatives where we invite people from our communities from New York and from from other places also to come here and to to become part of the the university when we look across programs there's certain issues and topics and approaches and perspectives that again if we do a scanning of the school are growing as import more and more important I would say that we grounding understanding that basically our practices are anchored in very specific realities and that we have to measure what we do what's what are the limits and what are the agencies of what we do by looking very carefully carefully at the way that we whatever we do is entangled with a specific realities is very important and this is not just an acknowledgement it requires a specific methodologies ways of working that allow the work we do to be both effective and representing this very deep concern about how our practices are grounded in realities that are unstable that are conflicted that are problematic and that are also providing opportunities and agencies and that's something that we do across programs and we do differently way in different ways in each of the programs and of course it requires very precise tools and or very non-precise in some cases tools that we nurture in each program differently but also across and it also requires books and research and a scholarship that is produced in the school very quite massively and in a very relevant way and also creative way methodologies that we develop here then become very impactful in all the places the climate regimes of course how could it not be a crucial aspect of what happens here we have a huge focus on climate and climate knowledge but also climate action and this is something that that again requires a specific knowledge but also tools but also experimentation and that's something that we do through a scholarship and coalitions and but also through experimentation through mobilization of existing opportunities that design computational practices critical practices planning urban design preservation real estate offer and of course this is again a focus of the scholarship the tools the computational developments the urban planning experiences that we do and of course that convey that we convey make public all the time and I could speak only a you know for hours only about this dimension of the school but also it's an opportunity to engage with others as we could not do other ways and the third is decolonizing and confronting racism as we all know many of our practice or our practices are deeply rooted in modern traditions that we need to confront at this point and that is something that is exciting at the same time that is needed and it's it's fair that we do this and we are doing this across programs again this is a word from the AD Ruth Garcia and Natalie Frankovsky developed last summer with students this is of course books that have been pioneering ways for our disciplines to confront racism and to understand how modern traditions are inevitably or intrinsically connected to the unfolding of racism and coloniality across the world we do it through work that studio work that is by Manorad Masu or this work by Mabel Wilson in the studio that in the advanced studio that Mabel Wilson and Jordan Carver developed last year this is for instance the studio of Kabagge Stella Mutegge and in Kabagge from Cape Broad developed last summer decolonizing museum institutions in New York and the thought I would say that of course we could find others and recombine them differently but the thought is a very radical transformation from a culture of extraction to a culture of mutual care and again this we could find across programs this is from architecture and this is also from advanced studio five and Jean Liu and definitely a different take on technology we're not thinking that technology in itself it's the determinant what the future of societies and ecosystems are but rather that technology is a site for dispute an arena for criticality where so many different options and alternatives and forms of dissidents to mainstream can be nurtured this is for instance work on the computational design program looking at the last mile as an opportunity to rethink social justice or and that's something of course that we also do through different ways to approach skills and and that is a tool that was developed last year by the CDB program these skill trials that allowed each student to work on the way that they on their trajectories that the instrumental or the the skills trajectories that they need to have according to what they want to achieve and of course that's also something that translates into other ways of thinking are disciplines and the way they perform from architecture to real estate to to urban planning to urban design to to historic preservation this is for instance for instance the work of the students of Anthony Bunky in in urban planning well this is for instance the the work of of the exploring urban data course and this is studio six right right by Ada Giuseppe and and yeah then Giuseppe this is Marwa Chita studio work from the students from Marwa Chita studio all of them are opportunities to explore technology in depth but also understanding that any exploration of technology is a critical exploration of also the frames in which it is happening and and it's it also implies take responsibility of what is the way that it is used politically and that of course we are always happy to experiment with whatever is out there but again taking a very serious approach to it and the last one that I want to mention and I I could go on on others but these are the ones that I observe that are emerging from our school is the possibility of understanding cosmopolitanics biopolitics ecology as something that goes much beyond the culture of sustainability and that is actually embedded in the world that we are part of in our bodies in the way our bodies expands because it's themically in environments climate technology society cities and that way of understanding for instance gender is explored by in very different ways across the school also is the is something that we produce a scholarship that of course becomes very impactful about and we also have a specific experiments so for instance the way different species negotiate the coexistence and that's also reflected in specific buildings and designs that our students do and this was awarded with the Paris award or of course major work by by our faculty like Kate Orff and the word with her office escape as you know Kate Orff director of the urban design program I want to say that this room is seen many things good and bad things I would say many many disputes many discussions basically this has been decided where many of the ideas that circulate in the fields of the built environment originated and also where they were questioned and confronted and and that we keep doing we understand our school as a compulsory passing point of the making of this course practice and theory on the disciplines of the built environment and this is not only for ourselves it's something that we do in conversation with people from many different fields these are photographs of events that we have this year it's the world wars here E.L. Weisman was here brought by the CDP program in conversation with Laura Corgan we have Laura Poitras who came here to present and discuss the only place where she came to discuss her last movie All the Beauty and the Blood said were specific discussions about the built environment surveillance the uses of technology to control population and citizenship were questioning connection with art and artistic practices in New York and the way that power financial power took over the control on art and what is the way that was confronted by people like Nan Goldin and the collectives who was part of and that happened here and that kept happening we have Helle Schohl here we have Raven Chacon we have Emanuele Admasu in conversation with with Atalia the faculty of our of our school we have Poon Semper and Hada we have Becquale Mwan so basically what I'm trying to say is that we the school is basically a cold road that is I would say one of the world knows where the evolution and the politics of the built environment are permanently be questioned and where alternative ways of thinking and practicing it's presented and we we make sure that whatever new thing is happening or old thing this is for instance the moment where we discuss the long trajectory of ground labor here in this auditorium and this is of course something that is very lively and participated by faculty we have here the Thilia Vicuña in an event that was organized to discuss monuments on the occasion of the recent Chilean events that was organized by Jorge Otero Pailos and the historic preservation program so basically and we everyone is invited tonight we will have one of these very important discussions tonight with our very own Juan Herreroz that has been teaching here for 17 years and it's been producing some of the most relevant buildings that have experimented forms for novel forms of social association and articulation like the Mung Museum in the Oslo Harbor that was opened last year and that was happening at 6.30 and there will be also an opportunity to to discuss it after was having drinks out here at Brownies and we have but we also we also understand that our responsibilities to stabilize this knowledge these discussions and that's why we have a publishing house right here and many of you will be also connected to this and this publishing house is permanently producing books and discussing and circulating what they these are the next books that are coming up the amazing book on the on the air and the urban essence of the air of Naracal Villa for instance Revitalco and Turban Valen their entire work on bodies and technology and many others and we have and I mean I I could go on and on forever you will need your entire program to find out and to connect to all these things but I'm giving you a preview a sneak preview but we have a number of centers that are very active and that are shaping the the cultural and critical life of the school the Buell Center which is engaged now on a on a long project on interrogating land as relational not as a given and this is run by Lucia directed by Lucia Le the Center for Spatial Research that is directed by Laura Kurgan who's up here that he's been doing for the last decade right or more than that amazing work that is transformed the way cities territory societies have are imagine and mobilize and that's something that of course is everywhere and it's been influential in in the way we think now about societies cities ecosystems and keeps happening and many of you will work on this very directly the Center for Resilience Cities and Landscapes have had this amazing conference it's important this this year and that produces this very very impactful and relevant knowledge on ecology and climate preservation technology laboratory and directed by Jorge Otero pilots and all the members of the of the historic preservation group this is something a resource for the entire school many of you you know the programs will want to use this and it's totally open the the the historic preservation team makes this very available and actually I invite you to take a look it's quite fun to see all the the work that they're doing there and actually they're doing also work across our building they're exploring what are the different layers of painting that we have in different points now and we have many other labs and initiatives the post-conflict cities lab is actually looking at them Middle East and other forms of contested urbanism across the world and also connecting it to the way marginalized communities have related to urbanism in the U.S. and this is this is directed by Hiba Boakar an amazing faculty member from the U.P. program that is also very much bridging the U.P. program with architecture with all the fields Lola Benalos Natural Material Lab that I already mentioned that is looking at materiality as something that contains life in itself and retains life in itself and is doing that in a very relevant and radical way we have the extraction lab that is Crystal Sheep is here and it's doing amazing work as well the global Africa lab that Mabel Wilson and Mario Gooden are running which is incredibly relevant as we're working for a long time now and it's pioneering a different way to understand the way our disciplines unfold politically the urban heritage sustainable and social inclusion initiative that Erika Abrami who is a very important faculty of historic preservation has been running for the last years and doing very relevant publications alongside students from the U.P. program the embodied energy initiative that David Benjamin has been running and that is done amazing contributions even to think very important buildings in the city the collecting architecture territory this is an ecosystem the G-SAP incubator that helps students once they graduate to develop a specific projects that they can that can situate them as or that can create the needs where they want to practice I mean I don't want to overwhelm everyone the G-SAP incubator but what I'm trying to say is that this is an ecosystem of people that are really carefully engaging with societies and ecosystems that are enthusiastic about doing it and that are very happy to share this with our students we really are a faculty that is incredibly diverse but there's a few things that unite us we all share the importance of what we do we understand how important it is what we do in the future of the world we want to engage politically through what we do and critically in transform the world to something that is more inclusive more fair more just also most fun beautiful and inclusive and we want to do it with you we don't expect you to be instructed we are not instructing students we actually have this very complex ecosystem because we want you to come here with your own ideas your own cultures your own sensitivities and navigate our ecosystem to shape your trajectory we want each of you to be different in the way they're different already to bring your what is important for you but to find a way to grow on that and become very relevant contributors to our societies this is what we do and that's why we need this very broad and complex ecosystem that of course I explain to you and we will we will keep helping you to navigate it but the goal is that you have the capacity to shape your trajectory in the school that you make decisions about what is the way that you want to be part of our societies and in many of the programs that also implies that we offer STEM which allows you to for those that are don't have a U.S. passport allow them to allow you to work in the city and we also have career services that are helping you transition to your professional or next academic steps and that's also important we have our graduates go to many many different positions some of them become important in NGOs others play important roles in big offices architectural offices others go back to positions that they had in the past and they get a more important role there other want to do activism so they want to create new forms of practice other want to pursue an academic career all the others want to combine practice with teaching and we help you navigating and bridging the next steps and the student life of course is is not only about having fun we have fun but we also do many other things and that's why we have this also a broad and diverse opportunities for student groups we have the Black Student Alliance the G-SAPX Plus we have the Queer Students and Architecture Planning and Preservation we have the American Planning Association we have the National Organization of Minority Architects the Student Chapter you know like we have the Latin G-SAP we have the Masaha that was crucial during the recent Beirut crisis the Women in Real Estate Development the Urban Magazine the Urban China Forum but these are the groups that we have now but each of you can open new new student groups and we will be happy to support them to help with the funding I want to say that we also think that there's a great responsibility for us to be part of we are part of the world we want to make sure that we are part of the world but we also understand that this is not the same that celebrating globalization but we want to make sure that wherever we connect with it's also we're building a long lasting relationship and that of course brings new circumstances for Enza Issa it's a wealth that is we're connecting with her practice in Tabo Verde and as soon as I'm working with people there through her and this is of course another way of building these circles so this is where we are this is a very hall and we're very happy to welcome you here on top of this street that we need to make efforts to to retain away from our carpet but also underneath this library thank you very much for coming here today