Dear Alumni,
As we close the second half of the spring semester, I am writing to express my heartfelt gratitude to you for your support of, enthusiasm for, and dedication to GSAPP. Over the past year, so many of you in our collective GSAPP family near and far have come forward to support the school and our students. From the Tuesday Talks mentorship program to participation in the Alumni Conversations, from offering employment to our graduates to generously giving to the Annual Fund, your commitment has been powerfully felt across the school.
You have supported us as we adapted to new virtual modes of learning and practice and hosted the first ever virtual Kinne Week, while also pushing GSAPP to define an ongoing commitment to equity through the GSAPP Anti-Racism Action Plan, which was recently updated to report on our progress and outline our next steps. In just a few months we will be delighted to welcome our newest students, who are being admitted from the most competitive pool of applicants in recent history.
The end of this semester brings a virtual format to the traditional Career Fairs, Commencement, End of Year Show, and our Alumni Reunion, and we are especially celebrating those who are acknowledging 5, 10, and 25 year anniversaries of their graduations. I invite you to continue to engage with GSAPP and our incredibly talented students and alumni, and to join the diverse lectures, symposia, and professional development programming scheduled for the months ahead.
With great thanks and warm regards,
Amale Andraos
Dean
|
|
|
Scenes from GSAPP
Last weekend, Faculty Bilge Kose and students from her Digital Heritage Documentation class conducted a field survey at the Langston Hughes House to practice survey methodologies for cultural heritage buildings and gain experience with digital technologies of photogrammetry and Lidar. |
|
|
This year’s MSRED students participated in a Harlem History Tour which included opportunities to meet restaurant owners, small business operators and residents throughout the neighborhood. The group concluded their tour at Columbia’s new Manhattanville Campus to learn more about the future of the area.
The tour was organized by Joshua Gonzalez (Impact Investing Club Co-President), Sarah Khalfoune (Social Chair) and Mustafa Kamil (Social Chair) from the MSRED Class of 2021.
Photo Credit: Mustafa Kamil
|
|
|
As part of Kinne Week Walk, Faculty Jaffer Kolb and Ivi Diamantopoulou took students from their studio One Barn Five Obstructions to Edgemere, Queens. The studio investigates the architectural potential of pre-engineered buildings as a new civic magnet in this seaside neighborhood. |
|
|
Director Josh Jordan shares a scene from the semester at the Making Studio. |
|
|
Reconstructions:
Architecture and
Blackness in America
On view at the Museum of Modern Art
February 27 through May 31, 2021
Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, MoMA’s first exhibition to explore the relationship between architecture and the spaces of African American and African diaspora communities, features work and contributions by several GSAPP alumni and faculty members.
The exhibition is organized and curated by Mabel O. Wilson ‘91 MArch, Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor at GSAPP, and Sean Anderson, Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA.
The accompanying publication, or “field guide,” includes scholarly essays by the curators, members of the advisory committee, and invited scholars in addition to the exhibition participants. Contributors with GSAPP affiliations include:
Emanuel Admassu ‘12 MSAAD ‘13 AAR, Assistant Professor
Ifeoma Ebo, Adjunct Associate Professor
Mario Gooden '90 M.Arch, Associate Professor of Professional Practice
Roberta Washington '71 M.Arch
V. Mitch McEwen '06 M.Arch
J. Yolande Daniels '90 M.Arch
Justin Garret Moore '04 M.Arch, '04 MSAUD, Adjunct Associate Professor
Amanda Williams, Adjunct Associate Professor
More information about the exhibition can be found through these online resources:
Read more on our website.
Image Credit: V. Mitch McEwen. Film still of R:R. 2020. Digital file. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist. The Museum of Modern Art, New York
|
|
|
Women Making History
Congratulations to the Columbia GSAPP alumnae on this year’s shortlist for the Female Frontier Awards by World Architecture News!
ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR
Christina Seilern ‘96 M.Arch
Silvia Kuhle '94 MSAAD
PIONEERING AWARD
Pascale Sablan '07 MSAAD
|
|
|
“Architecture and architectural education are both, more than ever, at a crucial crossroads.” — Dean Amale Andraos
To honor Women’s History Month, Interior Design spoke with 11 women forging positive change as architecture school deans in the northeast including Amale Andraos, who became Columbia GSAPP’s first female dean when she stepped into the role in 2014.
Read the full article.
Image Credit: Amale Andraos. Photography by Raymond Adams.
|
|
|
Save the Date:
All Alumni Week
The Columbia Alumni Association is launching All Alumni Week from Saturday, April 10 to Friday, April 16. A series of virtual programs will showcase how our broader alumni community is shaping the world we live in.
GSAPP REUNION
This year marks a milestone for Classes ending in 1’s and 6’s. Columbia GSAPP is working with Reunion Alumni to develop special programming as part of All Alumni Week. Reunion Alumni are invited to organize events with their particular Class and/or Program, from video chat Social Hours to panel discussions open to all alumni. We hope these Alumni-led happenings will add a personal dimension to the Reunion experience that is tailored for the GSAPP community. If you are celebrating a reunion this year, we would love to hear from you! Please visit this link to add your GSAPP memories to a digital collection or volunteer to organize an event.
Contact Leslie Kuo with any questions.
|
|
|
Get Involved
**Post Open Job Opportunities**
If your firm is in a position to expand its team, please considering hiring from the GSAPP community. Post job opportunities, from full-time or part-time positions to summer internships, directly on the Engage jobs platform or contact a career services team member. More information can be found on this page.
Call for Alumni Board Nominations
Interested in joining the Board? Nominations are currently being accepted through April 30 from alumni across all programs, generations, and geography. The Alumni Board particularly seeks nominations with demonstrated leadership and dedication to GSAPP, as well as a commitment to the GSAPP Anti Racism Action Plan.
Submit a GSAPP Alumni Board Nomination.
Call for Arch+Design Mentors
The Arch+Design Mentorship Program matches current M.Arch, MSAAD and MSAUD students with GSAPP Alumni. Mentors help students explore their career interests, discuss the transition from academic to the professional world and provide guidance with the job searching process. Students and mentors are asked to meet at least twice a semester. Interested alumni can contact Karen Cover to sign up.
To learn about upcoming cycles for mentorship volunteer opportunities with other programs, please reach out to the contacts below:
Call for Informational Mentors
Add your name to the list of informational mentors for the upcoming Tuesday Talks program on March 30. Visit the page for more information and view the current list.
Contribute a Commencement Message
GSAPP will host commencement on Thursday, April 29. Alumni are invited to submit video or image messages for Class of 2021 Graduates to be included in the virtual Ceremony webcast. More information can be found with the online submission form here.
Support the GSAPP Scholarship Fund
This year, GSAPP is dedicating all annual fund contributions towards tuition relief for current students, unless otherwise directed by the donor. If you are in a position to support students in this way, please consider making a gift today. Gifts can be made online at this link.
|
|
|
Alumni Interviews
Johnathan Sandler ‘98 MSRED, Principal and Strategy Director at Gensler, focuses on workplace and portfolio strategy. In a conversation with Eric Li ‘17 M.Arch, he offers guidance to emerging professionals and a look towards the future. Read the full interview. |
|
|
Upcoming at GSAPP
The following is a selection of this week’s events. Please remember to check the GSAPP Events calendar for the full list of public programs. |
|
|
March 24
12PM (New York) / 6PM (Amman)
This event is organized by the GSAPP Collective for Beirut and co-presented by Columbia GSAPP and Columbia Global Center | Amman.
As part of the GSAPP Collective for Beirut’s mission, this conversation brings together members of the Collective — Joanne Hayek ‘12 MSAAD, Mayssa Jallad ‘17 MSHP, and Salim Kadi '06 MSAAD — to discuss how they have each sought to engage with current crises in Lebanon through their diverse initiatives. The conversation will address the importance of data usage, grassroots movements, and the actual involvement on the ground during such events.
Register to Attend
|
|
|
Ekene Ijeoma
March 22, 2021, 6pm
Virtual
A lecture by Ekene Ijeoma with response by Amina Blacksher, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia GSAPP.
Ekene Ijeoma is an artist, professor at MIT, and the founder and director of the Poetic Justice group at MIT Media Lab. Through both his studio and lab at MIT, Ijeoma researches social inequality across multiple fields including social science to develop artworks in sound, video, multimedia, sculpture and installation.
|
|
Urban Renewal Through Preservation and Rehabilitation
March 23, 2021, 1:15pm
Virtual
Lecture by Francesca Russello Ammon, Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning and Historic Preservation, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
By 1965, nearly 800 American cities—located in almost every state across the country—sought to spur revitalization through the federal policy of urban renewal. This talk considers the Housing Act of 1954; practical constraints to its wider-spread adoption; and its prevalence, character, and material impacts on the ground.
|
|
Stop Go Pivot
March 25, 2021, 10am
Virtual
The annual conference of the Master of Science in Real Estate Development at Columbia GSAPP. In this two-day conference on March 25 and 26, industry leaders and prominent scholars come together to review the progress and performance of urban development of the first couple of decades of the 21st century.
This conference is co-chaired by distinguished alumni Adam Feil ’06 MSRED, Director, Elysian Investments and Ed Adler, ’88 MBA, Co-Founder Partner, Silver Eagle Advisory Group.
|
|
|
Mabel O. Wilson
March 29, 2021, 6pm
Virtual
A lecture by Mabel O. Wilson ’91 M.Arch, the Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture and Co-Director of the Global Africa Lab at GSAPP, Professor in African American and African Diasporic Studies, and Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) at Columbia University with Response by Amale Andraos, Dean of Columbia GSAPP.
Wilson is a founding member of Who Builds Your Architecture? (WBYA?) — an advocacy project to educate the architectural profession about the problems of globalization and labor.
|
|
Dr Romola Sanyal
March 30, 2021, 1:15pm
Virtual, 114 Avery
Dignity and Displacement: Precarity and the Politics of the Humanitarian Aid Infrastructure
Dr Romola Sanyal, Associate Professor of Urban Geography, Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, looks at histories of public housing and welfare knit together with humanitarian practices to examine the shifting politics of humanitarianism as it seeks to support vulnerable populations.
|
|
The Right to Infrastructure
June 7, 2021, 6:30pm
Virtual
Creative extraction: A Conversation on Concept Development
Danielle Purifoy and Louise Seamster present their conceptual framework for understanding black towns within extractive white space, highlighting questions of citizenship, extraction, and exclusion as they focus on how legal, spatial, racial, and economic systems structure black spaces’ access to infrastructure and facilitate environmental violence. Introduction by Reinhold Martin, Professor of Architecture and Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia GSAPP.
|
|
An Archaeology of Architecture: The Harlem and Pine Street African Burial Grounds
October 14, 2021, 6:30pm
Virtual Lecture
A lecture by Jerome Haferd
The talk will examine the history, advocacy, and futurity of two current efforts to re-claim and develop site of African enslaved burial in New York State. Haferd’s work examines how the erased histories, violence, and the proposition of redevelopment of these sites trouble our disciplinary limits of Architecture, Archival practice, and Preservation.
|
|
|
Open for Submissions
The Columbia Startup Lab opens its seats to a new group of Columbia founded startups this June. Applications are open through Wednesday, March 31. Attend the Open House on March 23 to learn more about the Lab and how to apply. Register here.
The AARP Purpose Prize seeks to tell a new story of aging—one full of meaningful impact and limitless possibilities. Social impact leaders who started their social endeavor after age 40 are eligible to apply by March 31. A $50,000 cash award is made to the Winner’s organization to help them succeed. Learn more about the Prize and how to apply here.
The ULI New York Awards for Excellence in Development are open to ULI members and non-members alike. Applications may be submitted for projects located anywhere within New York State, with the exception of Westchester County which is part of ULI Westchester/Fairfield. To submit an application, please download the Awards Application form below and follow the Submission Guidelines. Applications due April 9. |
|
|
|
