 Hi, Andres, wonderful to be speaking with you today. So, you know, I'm inviting you today to kind of give us some highlights about the Advanced Architectural Design Program, which you've been now directing for a few years and that you've really, you know, both, I think, carried in terms of continuity, in terms of what the program has represented for the school and for the field historically, but also really transformed it and bringing, you know, what I see as, you know, you as a leading architect of our generation experimenting with all sorts of new ideas. You brought those new ways to engage architecture and the world today to the program. And so I wanted to first talk about the program in general and then get more specific about what's really bubbling up and has been exciting about it for you. Well, I'm really happy to be talking about the AD now with you. I think it's a very important moment to be an architect now. There's so many changes that are happening and all of them come through architecture. Architecture is a huge voice in the way our world is being reinvented. We're seeing things that we thought that were permanent to fall down, certain things that we no longer can support in a way. And we have to reinvent and reconstruct. We built our world and architecture is a huge force on this. And this is the AD. The AD is bringing talented people from all around the world that already have a trajectory and they basically come to the AD to learn how to be and to kind of construct themselves as architects that can have a relevant voice in the way the world is being reinvented. And as you said, this is something that it's been historically happening with the AD. It's behind many of the people that are leading the innovation and kind of the new ways of doing architecture now. And it's been historically the place where many cultures were introduced to architecture and to Columbia at large and GESAP. And that kind of capacity of being a place of experimentation, among people coming from many different places and that already have a kind of high engagement with architecture is what makes this program such a cordon of innovation and renovation of what architecture is and relevance for architecture to occupy space. You know, I always think about the precision with which you choose your words, issues of transcolarities, the omnipresence and centrality of design, the fact that we are already completely actively engaged in terms of transforming the built environment. But beyond the visible, right? That we can also design policies and we can design social interaction and we can design this experience. And I think you've really broadened that. And when we see the work of the students in the last few years in terms of representation, I think there's a real quality to that work that is now, again, I always think about and we've talked about that, that the AD is this kind of experiment that people think about at the periphery but actually it's completely infiltrates the school and then from there transforms the field. So I wanted to speak a little bit about these words that you've chosen and then how you see that being represented through the work of the students and then influencing the rest of the school and beyond. Yeah, I think we're working basically in the AD with, as you said, like design is a huge place from which the world can be transformed, understood, criticized, sort of is the place also where action can happen and it's not something that basically we should not give enough importance. Design is central to the way we're discussing the world and it's a great platform from which basically we can change it. But that comes with a very particular understanding of what is design now. Design is in the intersection of many things. It's formal, it's material, it's technological but it's also political, financial, social, ecological. It's also regulating the way we relate to other species. There's so many issues that have to do with the way the world happens now that comes to design. And this notion of design as the intersection of all these realities is what we're bringing to the AD and it's what we explore in the AD. We're working very clearly with an environmental paradigm, a paradigm in which architectural action expands across scales. And that's why a big part of the program is about trans-calarities. How do we operate at different scales simultaneously? How do we take decisions at one scale that have the capacity to affect others? How do we do things that basically change the climate? And that's the other thing. The school has a very clear focus now on climate and that's something that makes this up probably one of the most exciting places in the world from which you can discuss architecture. And climate is the paradigm in which we are basically. This is our culture, this is our politics, this is the way we're in the world. But climate is also something that is extremely complex and that's why it needs certain tools, certain discussions and a huge amount of people that know how to deal with it. Because climate has to do with, of course, the way temperatures are changing, but also methodology. But it also has to do with the accountability of technology. How do we evaluate the way our technology operates at different scales? It has to do also with the cyclability of materials. How we move from a culture of extraction to one that basically understands the flow of materials as something that we architects have to care about. Or for instance, it had to do with a qualitative and inter-species relationships. How we deal with biodiversity in the world that is greatly important in the transformation of climate. And we also deal with geopolitics and borders, issues, and nations, and we see that with the current coronavirus outbreak, how the territories we operate in are also affecting our climates and also affecting the politics we're part of. So this context is what I think makes architecture exciting and important and relevant now. And basically, both the AD and GSAP at large is the place where basically people come here to connect and to gain the capacities to operate there relevantly. And I think what's been very exciting is to see how in the first semester, you've curated a series of conversations with leading practitioners who are completely transforming the fields, who are on the cutting edge. They're not your standard architect. They're kind of re-conceptualizing the practice. And then when AAD intersects with a Mark program, suddenly this focus on climate change, climate at the building scale, then these discussions across 18 studios and visual studies, and it really comes into focus with this kind of relationship between the core in the first semester and then a kind of expansion where the AAD again starts to infiltrate the rest of the school. Yeah, this is crucial. Basically, one of the big excitements about the AAD is that people are coming from all around the world. It's a super diverse program. And that's very important because that means that people bring their own insights. They have their own experiences and they are connected to very different realities. We have people that are coming from all around the US, but also people from different places in Africa, from people coming from Asia, but also people from Europe and Latin America. And they bring all those realities to the AAD. And the first moment is a moment of how do we build up a common discussion? How do we build a language that allows us to operate with accuracy and that also be ambitious with the role that our designs can play in topics that are very complex? So the first moment is an immersion in this way of operating together. That allows us to go much farther. It's a moment of gaining collective capacities. And that is a very exciting, intense moment in the life of all of us. And then the second thing, it's the ecosystem of GESAP. That, I mean, some of the most important, kind of a big number of the most important brains in architecture in the last decades are co-inhabiting the same building in a city like New York with some of the most ambitious and kind of capable young practitioners, thinkers. So that ecosystem is also amazingly important. And the AAD are kind of nurturing their capacity to really insert themselves and mold with that ecosystem in a way that they're very empowered to make the best of it. And then they each of them define their trajectories according to their concerns. And there's a huge variety. We have like 20 studios for people to choose. And I mean, a huge amount of tech courses and there's amazing places where you can explore all kinds of tools. And that's the moment in which people that might be more inclined to work with territorial issues, they find their trajectories and they navigate the diversity of the school, which is a diversity that is very curated. It's not whatever. It's really focused on what is happening to the world. So basically it's the exciting moment in which a group that has already its own conversation, a language that allows them to bring diversity into a common ground. They find a huge infrastructure, a huge ecosystem where they can become very detailed in what is that that they want for their careers to be basically. As you were talking, I kept thinking about the very real quality of the drawings that have been coming out of the AAD. Of course, what we do as architects is we represent the world and we project it and we imagine it. And exactly what you said, it comes through the students drawings, which is it has this kind of scale, territorial scale. But if you zoom in at every zoom in, there is an unbelievable level of detail. Like the students have imagined how a plant is growing on this shelf in this office room or, you know, and I think that it's very tangible, what you're describing. You see it through the work of the students. And for me, when you start having a kind of visual culture that becomes this shared ground, it's not just that the words become lines, they become drawings, they become spaces, they can become shared imaginations. I think that's what has been transforming the culture of the school. And in particular, I wanted to, you know, the transformation is not just about the AAD program itself, but it's about the MR program and that intersection and intersecting with David Benjamin and intersection with Hilary Sample and the core, thinking about the conversations around climate at the building scale that gets focused in the advanced studios and, you know, how we're really zooming in onto these issues from the different perspectives, but the shared language is really kind of building now to new modes of kind of practice, I think. Yeah, I think that the issues we're dealing with, they don't know about practices or about disciplines. We are the ones that have to learn how to cooperate with others and other forms of knowledge inside. We're basically facing also transformation in the way we construct epistemology and ontology. Like we're really changing the way we do things, we think things and we think them together. And I think that is no longer about divisions of, okay, this is industrial design or this is architecture, this is urban design, this is really we're operating, redefining those limits and what are the ways that we can interact. And that's something that is very exciting now at GISA, that there's a huge collaboration between different fields that the airmarks are working with the AEDs together and that there are so many discussions that are basically spaces for cooperation and not for competence, but actually for kind of contributions that build something much bigger than the individual contributions. And I think that that's very important because for instance, the discussion that we're having the AED program together with the advanced studios with the Benjamin that is leading them, it's really important for me. Like we're looking at the climate change but at the building scale, we're looking at the details of how buildings are part of climate change and what is the way that by changing the way we deal with buildings, the way we design the form, the materials, the way they operate in long term periods, what is the way that we can intervene climate crisis and we can make a difference. And that is a discussion that has been immensely productive. We have now people, I mean, I could point to maybe a hundred works that are looking very specific issues of how we do buildings now and that are starting to produce totally new lines of work that in 10 years probably will be the architecture that we're looking at and that is shaping our lives. And I have the feeling that this is hugely important. We're planning now to do studios together with Urban Design because from different methodologies, we're looking at the same realities and it's needed to find a way to work together and to make the best of these dialogues and these co-production. So co-production, I think it's changing competence. In the past, we were thinking of architectures architects and people that could fight with each other. And now I think that we're looking at a new model in which basically we understand that we have to work together and that is actually much more exciting, much more kind of beautiful, but also much more clever. It brings a new intelligence and also much more effective to have a voice in society. One other thing that I want to say is that the school is also in Columbia University at large and I'm very excited to see that this is also something that G-SAP is very good at, is bringing discussions together with other centers, with the center of so many institutes across campus that are also dealing with this, like the ones we're dealing with, but they have their own insights that when we work transdisciplinary, basically we can gain also an agency as architects that we couldn't have with these capacities and we're in New York. And New York is a huge column of brains, practices, platforms, infrastructures. It's very exciting to see how people are reacting and kind of reorganizing the whole life of the city now these days. And I think the AD is expanding there in New York, in Columbia, G-SAP, in all these different levels. It's sort of, we really take seriously being part of things and that means that we're not just touristing in the city or touristing in the country, but we're really building up long-term associations, collaborations, methodologies that allow for that. And for me, this is, I mean, this is really game-changing. This is, I think we're witnessing a change in our discipline. Thank you, bye-bye.