Building on last week’s dense constellation of conversations and exchanges, this week the school continues to operate across Avery and the city, as faculty, returning graduates, and researchers bring their work into shared forums and collective debates.

Michael Young is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Graduate Studies at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. He is the author of The Estranged Object (Graham Foundation 2015) and Reality Modeled After Images (Routledge 2022). His practice Young & Ayata have received the Progressive Architecture Award, Design Vanguard Award, Young Architects Prize, AIANY Honor Award, and the 2025 Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Michael was the recipient of the 2019-20 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Rome.

Introduction and response by Benjamin Weisgall & AAD Students

Last week, GSAPP welcomed alumni back to campus for two lectures leading up to the annual all-alumni party. Daniel Chang ’99 MSUP, ’99 BU delivered the 2025 Doryan Winkelman ’86 MSRED Real Estate Development Lecture, reframing sustainability as an active practice of relational adaptation from planetary metrics down to material performance. Joshua Jih Pan, ’67 MSAUD, inaugurated the Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series, emphasizing architecture as a critical negotiation among cultural depth, environmental accountability, and practical constraints.

Trevor Paglen joins Eva Franch and Jose Luis de Vicente’s AAD studio this week for a discussion on the work of Paglen Studio, whose investigations trace the contours of contemporary invisibility, from classified satellites, secret military infrastructures, and other inaccessible terrains. The conversation is open to all degree programs. Food will be served. Wednesday, June 18, 4:00 PM in Avery 114.

• TAKK, the practice of faculty Mireia Luzárraga Alvarez with Alejandro Muiño, received Spain’s prestigious 2025 FAD Award, in the category Ephemeral Architecture for Seasonal House, a continuous, climate-driven experiment. The 400 m² industrial space rejects conventional climate control and challenges traditional domestic models advancing a resourceful and adaptable architectural response to ecological limits.

• Faculty Lydia Kallipoliti delivered the keynote lecture at Planetary Experiments: Environments by Design in Dresden, addressing design’s entanglement with ecological crisis. Framing design as a mode of planetary experimentation, she called for new spatial and ethical frameworks of cohabitation beyond technocratic sustainability.

• Columbia GSAPP and Columbia Engineering lead the University’s role in the founding of Gotham Foundry, a city-backed hub for sustainable materials innovation. The initiative is driven by a consortium also including CUNY, FIT, and community biolab Genspace.