As we approach the semester’s midpoint, the School activates conversations that reimagine architecture’s role in shaping housing, heritage, and innovation. Programs and news this week reflect on the politics of urban life, the preservation of shared histories, and the evolving tools that expand design’s capacities.

Desirée Valadares (University of British Columbia) will deliver the Detlef Mertins lecture on the Histories of Modernity. With an introduction by Mabel Wilson and a response by Ateya Khorakiwala.

Desirée Valadares is a landscape architect and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver in the Geography Department and a Faculty Affiliate in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies. Her research, writing and photography centers on the cultural memory, infrastructural imaginaries, and heritage politics of Pacific War landscapes in Canada, Alaska and Hawai‘i. Her published works appear or are forthcoming in Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, Aggregate: Architectural History Collaborative, Radical History Review, Change over Time: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, and The Funambulist. Her editorial contributions are featured in the Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians (2020-25) and The Avery Review: Critical Essays on Architecture (2020-21).

The Detlef Mertins Lecture on the Histories of Modernity is an annual lecture in honor of the life and work of Detlef Mertins (1954-2011), endowed by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown. Previous speakers include Lucia Allais, Craig Buckley, Zeynep Cęlik Alexander, Ayala Levin, Anthony Acciavatti, and Sophie Hochhäusl.

Karen Kubey ’09 M.Arch participates in the public panel “Architecture and the Right to Housing in New York,” joining architects, planners, and housing justice advocates to examine how design and policy can confront the housing crisis and reimagine a more equitable city—asking how the right to housing can be realized in practice and how architects might contribute to systemic change. Thursday, October 9, 6:30–8:30 PM at New School University Center. Learn more.

• Faculty Jorge Otero-Pailos opens Onera Foundation’s inaugural exhibition with, “Treaties on De-Fences”, sharing a selection of sculptures and prints inspired by and derived from his work as the preservation architect for the decommissioned Saarinen-designed US embassy in Oslo.

• Faculty Weiping Wu speaks in recent Century of Cities Podcast, “How China’s Cities Shape the World’s Urban Future”, reflection on Shasnghai’s meteroic rise, reflecting on Shanghai’s rapid transformation, the tensions between density and sprawl, and the enduring lessons that shape global urban development. In conversation, Wu situates China’s urbanization within the broader choices facing cities today, from technology, migration, and climate adaptation.

• Faculty David Benjamin speaks with Columbia AI for new piece, “What Does It Mean to Be Creative in the Age of AI?”, on the terms of generative design in expanding creative possibilities.