The Avery SPOT pavilion, designed and built by Columbia GSAPP students for the Spring 2021 seminar The Outside Project led by Professor Laurie Hawkinson and Associate Professor of Professional Practice Galia Solomonoff has been featured numerous press outlets including Architectural Record, Untapped Cities, and Architect’s Newspaper.

Photo by Nicholas Knight

It has been my greatest honor to serve the GSAPP faculty, students, alumni, and staff over these past years. It is not easy to capture the outstanding intellectual as well as human qualities that I believe render our School special and different: the vibrancy, dedication, passion, imagination, resourcefulness, and creative irreverence that make its ecology sparkle. Thank you all for the thoughtfulness, care, and commitment you have brought to the School over these past years.

Sincerely,
Amale Andraos
Dean

In honor of Pride Month, we are sharing a selection of resources featuring contributions by GSAPP alumni and events from the School’s media archive. For a comprehensive University-wide round-up, check out the Columbia News article “How to Celebrate Pride Month 2021 at Columbia.”

• Watch the Stonewall 50: Defining LGBTQ Site Preservation symposium, hosted by GSAPP in April 2019, which included three panels: Reinterpreting the House Museum, LGBTQ Site Preservation: An International Perspective, and Recognizing LGBTQ Sites in the United States. The event was co-organized with the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, the student organization QSAPP (Queer Students of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation), and the Office of the University Chaplain as part of the Stonewall 50 Consortium.

• Read Safe Space: Housing LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness, a book published by QSAPP in 2019.

• Browse over 350 sites on the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project Self-Guided Tour by downloading the Vamond app (Apple or Google Play) and searching LGBT, or view the index on your desktop browser. NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project is led by Professor Andrew S. Dolkart MSHP ‘77, Ken Lustbader MSHP ‘93, Jay Shockley MSHP NG '80 (Project Directors), and Amanda Davis MSHP '06 (Project Manager).

• Watch Planning For, With, and By the LGBT Community, a panel discussion organized on February 16, 2016, by the Urban Planning Program and QSAPP.

Image: The sign reading “Queer Symposium” on the lap of Alma Mater created by QSAPP students in February 2019 references an image on the cover of the first edition of Pride of Lions: The Newspaper of the Gay People at Columbia in April 1972.

Columbia GSAPP is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the IDC Foundation to establish the Hilyard Robinson Scholars Program offering full tuition scholarships for Intro to Architecture/Intro to Urban Planning summer program students. Named in honor of the School’s first African American graduate and former chair of the architecture department at Howard University, Hilyard Robinson scholarships are specifically aimed at undergraduate students currently enrolled in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and are intended to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity in the field of architecture and related fields and to introduce the possibility of career paths to underrepresented individuals.

Image Credit: Photo of Hilyard Robinson by Roger Smith. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library.

“I’m looking through everything more through a social justice framework than I ever have before.” - Caitlyn Campbell ‘21 MSCCCP

Read more about Caitlyn.

“Professor Hiba Bou Akar brings anecdotes from her days practicing planning in contexts that don’t have such progressive aims, her responses to which I find very inspiring as I contemplate entering professional practice myself after graduation.” - Hayes Buchanan ‘21 MSUP

Read more about Hayes.

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 on this page.

The opportunity to speak about the job market with trusted alumni—including those in other American cities and international locations—is invaluable to emerging practitioners. The demand for mentorship has remained high since the program’s inception March 2020. To volunteer as a mentor, send a note to gsappalumni@columbia.edu with your job title, company name, and location.

Summer dates below:

• June 22
  
• July 6
  
• July 20
  
• August 3
  
• August 17

The Career Services team at GSAPP matches current students with GSAPP Alumni Mentors to meet at least twice a semester. Mentors help students explore their career interests, discuss the transition from academic to the professional world and provide guidance with the job searching process. Interested alumni can send a note to careers@arch.columbia.edu to enroll.

If you are in a position to support students through a contribution to the Scholarship Fund, please consider making a gift today. Gifts can be made online at this link.

On March 25, the White House announced four new members to the Commission on Fine Arts — GSAPP Faculty Justin Garrett Moore and GSAPP alum Peter Cook ‘89 MArch (HGA Architects) together with Hazel Ruth Edwards (Howard University) and Billie Tsien (Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects). The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts oversees design and architecture of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.

The 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, How Will We Live Together?, features a strong representation of Columbia GSAPP’s faculty and alumni through installations and curatorial projects.

The GSAPP Housing Lab contribution presents historical research on an overlooked housing type which rose as a result of the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901. The project was developed by Daisy Ames, Bernadette Baird-Zars, and Adam Frampton, and the digital adaptation for Venice was realized by Ericka Song ‘20 MArch who served as one of the Lab’s inaugural Graduate Research Assistants.

Learn more about installations that include contributions by Nora Akawi ‘11 MSCCCP and Architecture Ph.D. candidate Ife Vanable; Associate Professor David Benjamin '05 MArch; Joel Sanders '81 MArch, Paula Vilaplana de Miguel ‘19 MSCCCP, and Faculty Ignacio G. Galán; Faculty Nahyun Hwang and David Eugin Moon; Associate Professor Anna Puigjaner; Paul Preissner '00 MArch; Madeeha Yasin Merchant ‘14 MArch; and Stefana Simic ‘11 MArch here.


Image Credit: Alive: A New Spatial Contract for Multi-Species Architecture by Associate Professor David Benjamin’s firm The Living. Photo by Stefano Schiaffonati

The interview-based project reveals a new emergence of food apps that are transforming the social and culinary landscape in North Africa.

“With the emergence of the unregulated gig economy, and particularly food delivery apps, new social patterns and economic logics have flourished online, redefining preset gendered relationships and economic power structures. Despite their potential to be places of labor rights exploitation and wealth concentration, in countries such as Egypt, food apps are offering women empowerment, by turning their domestic kitchens into spaces of production. Through a curated soundscape of different anonymous voices from Cairo, Rebel Kitchens intends to provide a space able to visualize this complex reality.” – Anna Puigjaner and Alina Abouelenin

Visit the Rebel Kitchens website.

Gustavo Lopez Mendoza ‘22 MArch, together with Ji Ku '22 SEAS and Juliet Brooks '22 MBA, received Best Overall Award from the Columbia Engineering Entrepreneurship’s 2021 Design Challenge. Their proposal, Polymasa, upcycles ocean plastics for biocomposite 3D printing.

View the winning presentation here and learn about the Design Challenge here

The New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards are among the highest honors for outstanding preservation accomplishments in New York City. Andrew Dolkart, Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia GSAPP, is being honored this year for his decades of service to the field and to his students.

To mark this occasion, Emily R. Kahn, a graduate of the M.S. in Historic Preservation program, interviewed Professor Dolkart about his work and the significance of this award to him. Read their conversation here.

Nathan Ogle ‘95 MSAUD and other members of his Class have been engaging in a new model for informal forums. “Each of our sessions are a rotating loose presentation and open discussion,” shared Nathan. “I have started inviting others, such as my students and Richard Plunz etc. Video recordings are posted for those who cannot make it.”

The GSAPP Alumni Office is glad to help alumni reconnect with former classmates. Please send an email to gsappalumni@columbia.edu to access Class Lists.

Faculty Andrés Jaque led a private tour of the 13th Shanghai Biennale: Bodies of Water exhibition for Columbia GSAPP students and alumni. The tour took place on site at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China. Andrés is Associate Professor of Professional Practice and Director of the Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design program and the Chief Curator of the Biennale.

Image Credit: Phoebe Zhang ‘15 MSAUD

J. Yolande Daniels ‘90 M.Arch and Mario Gooden '90 M.Arch, Associate Professor of Professional Practice at GSAPP, gave a walkthrough of Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America for fellow Class of 1990 M.Archs Meta Brunzema, Ross Caan, Judy Choi, Javier de la Garza, Joel Towers, and Beth Weinstein.

J. Yolande Daniels and Mario Gooden are members of the Black Reconstruction Collective and their works were featured as part of the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

Image Credit: Joel Towers, Meta Brunzema, Judy Choi, J. Yolande Daniels, Mario Gooden, Beth Weinstein (l to r). Photo by Joel Towers.

Professor and Historic Preservation Program Director Jorge Otero-Pailos opens the exhibition Distributed Monuments on June 18 at Sapar Contemporary. The show features work extracted from two distinctive sites: the Old U.S. Mint in San Francisco, a center of wealth production during the California Gold Rush, and Lyndhurst Mansion in New York, a landmarked example of the Gilded Age.


Image: Jorge Otero-Pailos, Distributed Monuments 74 and 75, Diptych, 2020, from The U.S. Old Mint and Lyndhurst Mansion. Dust transferred onto a latex cast and stretched on canvas.