Columbia GSAPP is pleased to announce that Erica Avrami has been promoted to James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation with tenure, effective July 1, 2024. Professor Avrami has taught courses in the School’s Master of Science in Historic Preservation program since 2010, and became a full-time professor in 2014. She also serves as an advisor in the Ph.D. in Historic Preservation program. Through her scholarship and teaching, Professor Avrami examines the role of historic preservation beyond individual buildings in order to consider heritage policy at social and environmental scales. Her work particularly focuses on the relationship between communities and their sites, and the intersections of social justice, equity, and climate in the context of preservation policy.

Read the full announcement on GSAPP News.

Stéphanie Bru & Alexandre Theriot of the architecture firm, BRUTHER, will deliver the final lecture of the 2024 Arguments Lecture Series, titled “(Hyper)comfort.” Introduction by Benjamin Weisgall followed by response and Q&A by Sebastián Adamo.

Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot founded the office BRUTHER in 2007 in Paris. BRUTHER’s projects take design back to its essentials, exploring the fields of architecture, urbanism, landscape, research, and teaching. They apply a design of resistance, free from any mark of mannerism, style, fashion, or excess.

Organized by the MS in Advanced Architectural Design program as part of the AAD Arguments Lecture Series.

Robert Gerard Pietrusko is a cartographer, composer, and Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Introduction by from Adam Vosburgh, followed by an audience Q&A.

Robert Gerard Pietrusko’s research, practice, and teaching focus on the history and speculative design potential of environmental media. His design work, which is conducted under the name of his studio, Warning Office, is part of the permanent collection of the Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and has been exhibited in more than 15 countries at venues such The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Palais de Tokyo, ZKM Center for Art & Media, and the Venice Architecture Biennale, among others.

Organized by the MS in Computational Design Practices program as part of the MS CDP Conversations with Practitioners lecture series.

• All five episodes of rAADio season four, “WHAT IF?, are now live. Listen here. This season of the AAD student-run podcast unpacks narratives, challenges historical legacies, amplifies marginalized voices, and explores imaginative methodologies.

• New Columbia Magazine article features 6 major artworks by Columbia alumni and faculty, including, “Shadow of a Face,” the monument to abolitionist Harriet Tubman created by faculty Nina Cooke John ’98 MSAAD. Learn more about the monument.
  
• Google New York HQ, a collaboration with CookFox and Gensler, involved the expertise of several GSAPP Alumni. Notably, in a recent Metropolis feature, Rick Cook (cofounder CookFox) credits Professor Jorge Otero Pailos’ concept of “experimental preservation” as a guiding perspective for the building’s transformation.