Hello,
I’m Matthew Allen, a writer/historian/theorist/educator currently located in Toronto — or, more accurately, I find myself largely confined to my apartment while being in some ways more connected than ever to the global goings-on of architecture. It’s been a strange limbo. The past days, weeks, months have been nerve-wracking — most of us have been transfixed by the developments of each passing moment. At the same time, architecture has made some bold plans for the future. I’m thinking mostly of justice movements — social and environmental — that have gone mainstream (or have they?), but other agendas have been picking up steam as well.
These trajectories continue in events this week. There is a course on Native / Indigenous Design on Monday. A panel on Anti Racist Design Education & Practice and a discussion of Black Reconstruction on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we’re invited to take in the long view with a lecture promising Four Billion Years of Architectonic Earth. A lecture on Thursday offers to Reimagine the City as a Commons. There are two conferences on Friday, one on Housing and the Black Community and the other on Climate Justice and the City. There are also some big names at the Peter Eisenman event (Tuesday) and a few architects to which I feel personal affinity: SO-IL (Monday) and Neri & Hu (early Friday morning). Finally, I’ll suggest the Urbanism Of The Southern China Metropolis symposium on Wednesday and the weeklong Institutional Performance Festival - in which they are simply inviting the public to attend their internal meetings (example, ‘Tuesday at 10am: “A Meeting about a New Book”) - put on by the CCA.
It’s a lot to take in — and it’s crucial not to lose perspective on the future. So, for the December 7th issue of NYRA, which I am guest editing, I would like to ask contributors to take on the task of reviewing events, buildings, or publications that point ways forward. With expert knowledge comes unique insight, so we ask: What is coming next from your own corner of the world of architecture? As ever, we also want to see contributions which address the most important events, exhibitions, openings, and groundbreakings happening in New York this month.
This is not about utopian prognostication. If architecture culture (in New York, in America, globally) is an ongoing project, then how should we continue to build it, and where will it bring us? Ideally, coverage of events happening this month will be juxtaposed with plans of action and short bulletins on the likely near future of architecture.
I’m hoping to hear from you! But if I don’t, please take a moment to discuss the ideas that matter to you with the other architects in your life. Let’s make critical engagement a foundation of our culture.
Events.
11/16 | MONDAY
Kathryn Yusoff: Geo-Logics: Natural Resources as Necropolitics
12:00pm | GSD
Marianne Cusato: The Architecture of Place: American Housing & Social Justice: Undoing the Lasting Legacy of Housing Segregation
1:00pm | ICAA
A Meeting about Digitization, Institutional Performance Festival
2:00pm | CCA
Jeannette Plaut
5:30pm | AIANY
Tatiana Bilbao
6:00pm | GSAPP
SO-IL: Conglomerate Ordering
6:00pm | Princeton
Native / Indigenous Design
6:30pm | Museum of Design Atlanta
11/17 | TUESDAY
A Meeting About a New Book, Institutional Performance Festival
10:00am | CCA
Christine Facella
1:00pm | Spitzer
Anna Maria Bounds: Bracing for the Apocalypse: An Ethnographic Study of New York’s ‘Prepper’ Subculture
1:15pm | GSAPP
Peter Eisenman: the Becoming Unmotivated of the Sign with Pier Vittorio Aureli, Preston Scott Cohen, Elisa Iturbe, Greg Lynn and Nader Tehrani
2:00pm | Cooper Union
Anti Racist Design Education & Practice With Kiki Cooper, Jennifer Low, Justin Garrett Moore, & Maria a. Villalobos H.
2:15pm | DMU
Axelle Karera: Paraontology: Disruption, Inheritance, or a Debt That One Often Regrets
7:00 | Cooper Union
Black Reconstruction Collective: Black Reconstruction
7:30pm | GSD
11/18 | WEDNESDAY
Dorion Sagan: Dissipative Spacescapes and Living Buildings: Four Billion Years of Architectonic Earth
12:00pm | GSD
A Meeting About the Design of a New Exhibition, Institutional Performance Festival
3:30pm | CCA
Sandra So Hee Chi Kim: Living Liberation: Dialectical Practice and Micro-Revolutions
5:00pm | Cooper Union
Vishaan Chakrabarti: Towards a New Architecture Practice
5:15pm | Cornell
Sean Canty
5:30pm | Ohio State
How Architects Study Buildings: Measured Drawings from the Renaissance to Today
6:00pm | ICAA
Market-based Predatory Development: Race, Class, and the Underdevelopment of Black Neighborhoods in the U.S.
6:00pm | Buffalo
Urbanism Of The Southern China Metropolis Symposium
7:00pm | NYIT
11/19 | THURSDAY
A Meeting About Architectural Prizes, Institutional Performance Festival
11:30am | CCA
Walter Hood: Hybrid Landscapes
6:00pm | MIT
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello: Unbounded
6:30pm | Yale
Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center: an Adaptive Reuse Case Study
6:30pm | GSAPP
Jack Halberstam (Techno-Critical Assemblies)
7:00pm | GSAPP
Sheila Foster: Co-Cities: Reimagining the City as a Commons
7:30pm | GSD
11/20 | FRIDAY
Neri & Hu
8:00am EST | RIBA
A Meeting About Digital Content in a New Exhibition, Institutional Performance Festival
11:30am | CCA
Climate Justice and the City Symposium
1:00pm | GSAPP
Elisa Iturbe (The City & Carbon Modernity)
3:00pm EST | UCLA
Housing and the Black Community Symposium
5:15pm | Syracuse
—
To see the complete list, go to nyra.nyc/events
—
—
If you would would like to write up an event for us - do it! See an example writeup here. Most write ups are incorporated into the column ‘SKYLINE,’ some become larger articles. All correspondents receive $30 and their name in the paper. Ask to cover an event: editor@nyra.nyc.
—
If someone forwarded you this newsletter, sign up here.
If you want to support our contributors and receive the Review by post, subscribe here.
If you want to pitch us an article, write us at: editor@nyra.nyc