The Columbia GSAPP End of Year Show is a momentous collaborative effort to mobilize the disciplines of the built environment as crucial sites where the conflicts of the present can be both studied and intervened. It includes work from the School’s degree programs in Advanced Architectural Design; Architecture; Computational Design Practices; Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices; Historic Preservation; Real Estate Development; Urban Design; and Urban Planning.
The work presented addresses questions of climate and ecological crisis, urban and environmental inequalities, the accountability of infrastructures and technologies, bodied activisms, and geopolitical conflict. To name a few, this includes projects where a variety of mental health conditions are acknowledged and supported; projects that contribute to democratizing access to water, and the long term management of waste; and projects confronting the effects of AI on real estate markets in nonurban areas. Schoolwide, there is a commitment to rethink materiality through an intersectional approach to decarbonization, where the technical, the aesthetic, and the political are seen as interrelated. It also includes the recently developed pedagogical format of the GSAPP Design Clinics: transdisciplinary platforms participated by faculty and students, and communities across the world who are facing challenges that can be intervened through the collaboration of the disciplines of the built environment with other departments across the Columbia University campus. For example, the Data Mourning Clinic, led by Marina Otero with Daniel Miller, addressed the imminent physical disappearance of the island nation of Tuvalu due to rising sea levels and the frameworks for its possible futures as a dispersed community. The Design Clinics form part of a broader set of pedagogical transformations at GSAPP, intended to acknowledge and mobilize the disciplines of the built environment as relevant and committed contributors to the presents and futures of the planet.
The exhibition also features a special presentation of selected work in the context of the questions raised during the ACTIONING SUMMITS held throughout the past academic year. Part of GSAPP’s Public Programming, these summits are an unprecedented undertaking aimed to identify possible ways to address methodological questions specific to the current times, such as how to accelerate action in dealing with urgent crises like housing, how to scale up climate action, what changes are needed in design practices to engage in reparation, or how to articulate scientific, spiritual, and political ontologies. THE ACTIONING SUMMITS have brought together the GSAPP community with academics, researchers, activists, and designers from around the world, including Anna Tsing, Ada Colau, Kate Crawford, Aimi Hamraie, Marjetica Potrč, Paulo Tavares, Laura Tripaldi, Michael Marder, James Bridle, Albena Yaneva, Supawut Boonmahathanakorn, Allyson Martinez, David Gissen, and others.
