Watch the 2021 Spring Lectures online
This past spring, we turned with hope, but not certainty, to our post-pandemic future. Against what we could not know, we turned to what we can; to history, and in particular to its alternatives, its margins, and its new, creative possibilities. We explored the architecture of the Amazon, concrete architecture in the Global South, and mapping the architectural history of Cairo. We examined the materiality of production and the materiality of race, spaces of care and spaces between, and inescapable history of identity and information. We looked back to native title and all around us at the invisible architecture of criminal justice and incarceration. And we took all of these discussions as imperatives for new modes of thinking, and making, together.
Events were held online and streamed on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter channels. Lectures were posted afterward on YouTube. We invite you to explore the full public program below or on our Youtube playlist, and find more details on our events calendar.
Spring 2021 Public Program, MIT Department of Architecture
“NAMA and the architecture of the Amazon”
A Research Studio conversation with Marcos Cereto, Angelo Bucci, and Xhulio Binjaku. Moderated by Cristina Parreño.
February 25
Mohamed Kamal Elshahed
Author, Curator, and Architectural Historian
“Surveying Modern Architecture: The Case of Cairo”
Presented with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
March 4
Christiana Moss
Principal, Studio Ma
“Joy Within”
Presented with the Building Technology Group
March 11
“Future Blueprints of Justice”
A Research Studio conversation with Oana Stănescu and the Stanford Legal Design Lab
March 18
“Conversations on Care: Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski / WAI Think Tank”
Presented with the Critical Broadcasting Lab
March 25
Launch event: Thresholds 49: Supply
Featuring editors Nina Wexelblatt and Jack Hanly with Timothy Hyde and contributors to the issue
April 1
Mariam Kamara
Principal, atelier masōmī
“How we narrate our yesterday determines how we imagine the future of architecture”
April 8
Michelle Moore Apotsos
Associate Professor, Department of Art, Williams College
“Lived Heritage and the Sacred Topography of Harar Jugol, Ethiopia”
An Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture event
April 12
“Happening Now”
A Research Studio conversation with Catie Newell, Virginia San Fratello, Brandon Clifford, and Zain Karsan
April 15
Azra Akšamija
Associate Professor, MIT Architecture
"Future Heritage"
Presented with the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
April 22
Herzog & de Meuron
Christine Binswanger and Jason Frantzen
“The Hospital / The Allure of Complexity”
A talk by Christine Binswanger followed by a conversation with Hashim Sarkis and Jason Frantzen
The 30th Arthur H. Schein Memorial Lecture
April 23
Joseph Kunkel
Executive Director, The Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative
"Bridging Boundaries in Native and non-Native Communities: An architecture for wealth-building and equitable opportunity"
MIT NOMAS Lecture
April 29
Engineering Independence: Concrete Architecture in the Global South
A symposium in collaboration with the Building Technology Group
April 30
Felecia Davis
Associate Professor, Penn State College of Arts and Architecture
“Seams: Race, Architecture, and Design Computing”
Presented with the Design and Computation Group
May 6
Anna Arabindan-Kesson
Assistant professor of African American and Black Diasporic art in the Departments of African American Studies and Art and Archaeology at Princeton University
“Vision and Value: Cotton and the Materiality of Race”
Presented with the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art program
May 13
“Hawai'i Non-Linear”
A Research Studio conversation with Chris Leong, Dominic Leong, and Sean Connelly
May 20
Our spring 2021 online public program is supported in-part by the Arthur H. Schein (1951) Memorial Fund.
#BlackLivesMatter.