Post-Lecture Conversations

︎︎︎Thursday 04/08 10.00 EST
Oana Stănescu is a Romanian architect with a wide ranging and interdisciplinary practice. She is interested in the spatial translation of ideas and environments as reflections of culture at large. Most recently, Oana was nominated for the 2019 MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program. Her projects include the +POOL, a floating, water filtering swimming pool, as well as a wide-range of collaborations with Nike, MoMA, Virgil Abloh, The Office of PlayLab, 2x4, Arup, New Museum, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Need Supply, Fool’s Gold, Kanye West, and many more. Current projects include the reconversion of a 500m-long funicular into a public park in Romania, a non-profit hotel on the island of Bali in Indonesia, and a vacation home in Canada.

︎︎︎ Friday 04/09 19.00 EST
WAI Architecture Think Tank is a planetary studio practicing by questioning the political, historical, and material legacy and imperatives of architecture and urbanism. Founded in Brussels during the financial crisis of 2008 by Puerto Rican architect, artist, curator, educator, author and theorist Cruz Garcia and French architect, artist, curator, educator, author and poet Nathalie Frankowski, WAI is one of their several platforms of public engagement that include Beijing-based anti-profit art space Intelligentsia Gallery, and the free and alternative education platform and trade-school Loudreaders. Based on the emancipating and persecuted alternative practice of education performed by lectores like Luisa Capetillo in the tobacco factories in the Caribbean, Loudreaders is an open pedagogical platform and free trade school that engages with architectural education as a form of mutual aid and critical solidarity in the age of Covid-19. Garcia and Frankowski are faculty at Virginia Polytechnic and State University. Their work has been part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial and exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art New York, Neues Museum in Nuremberg, and the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology Lisbon.  They are authors of Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto, Pure Hardcore Icons: A Manifesto on Pure Form in Architecture, A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education, and the upcoming book From Black Square to Black Reason: A Post-Colonial Architecture Manifesto.

︎︎︎Monday 04/26 10.00 EST
Azra Akšamija, Ph.D. is an artist and architectural historian based on Boston, MA. She the founding Director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab (FHL) and an Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Architecture, Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT). Her work explores how social life is affected by cultural bias and by the deterioration and destruction of cultural infrastructures within the context of conflict, migration, and forced displacement. Akšamija is the author of Mosque Manifesto: Propositions for Spaces of Coexistence (2015) and Museum Solidarity Lobby (2019), and the editor of Architecture of Coexistence: Building Pluralism (2020). Over the past twenty years, her artistic work has been exhibited in leading international venues, including the Generali Foundation Vienna, Secession Vienna, the Royal Academy of Arts London, Queens Museum of Art in New York, Biennials in Venice, Valencia and Liverpool, Design Week Festivals in Milan, Istanbul, and Amman. Her most recent work was shown at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization (2019), the Kunsthaus Graz (2019), Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover (2020), the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (2020), and Venice Architecture Biennale (2021). She holds master’s degrees in architecture from Graz University of Technology (2001), Princeton University (2004), and a Ph.D. from MIT (2011). She received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2013 for her artistic design of the prayer space in the Islamic Cemetery Altach, the 2019 Art Prize of the City of Graz, and an honorary doctorate from the Monserrat College of Art, 2020.

︎︎︎Thursday 04/29 10.30 EST

Christine Binswanger joined Herzog & de Meuron in 1991, became a Partner in 1994, and has been Senior Partner since 2009. She is responsible for projects in many countries, with particular focus in Switzerland, France, Spain, and the US. She has been in charge of many museum projects, including the expansion of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the PAMM Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the extension of the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, France. REHAB Basel, Centre for Spinal Cord and Brain Injuries, and the new Kinderspital Zürich, are notable examples of a number of hospital projects she leads. Her experience in urban development includes large civic planning projects, such as the Master Plan for Lyon Confluencein Lyon, France, and the Nordspitze project in Basel, Switzerland. Her expertise also extends to buildings that redefine existing typologies, such as 1111 Lincoln Road, a mixed-use structure for parking, retail, a restaurant, and private residence in Miami Beach, and the FORUM UZH, a new building for the University of Zurich in the city center. Christine studied architecture at the ETH Zurich from 1984 to 1990 and received the Meret Oppenheim Prize in 2004 in recognition of her active leadership in the architecture and art community.

08/17 to 08/21 — 1, 2

BIPOC Design in the Built Environment Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
In this week-long virtual event participants will build community while creating new and edit existing Wikipedia pages of BIPOC designers whose work is connected to the built environment. After a short introduction held live via Zoom on Monday, August 17, 2020, stay for the kick-off of virtual Edit-a-thon where attendees will participate in training and begin editing Wikipedia pages of designers who have left their mark on the fields of art, architecture, art history, activism, landscape architecture, urban planning, urban design, and more.The Edit-a-thon will have synchronous and asynchronous components so participants can edit in person and at their convenience. Live editing will take place via Zoom and support will be available by Slack. 

Thursday 09/12 — 6:00 PM — Stella Room — MIT NOMAS

MIT NOMAS Mixer
Kick back with MIT NOMAS (National Organization of Minority Architecture Students) to meet our members, and find out about our projects. Sign up for informal mentoring or a leadership position, join our NOMAS Conference design competition team, or grab some food and drink!


Thursday 02/21 — 6:00 PM — 7-429/Long Lounge — MIT NOMAS

Bryan Lee, "Design as Protest: Building Power"
Design as Protest explores the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice from America's inception. Like all institutions, Design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. We look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create injustice throughout the built environment. The lasting permanence of our professional decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the residual impact of our work in and to seek Design Justice wherever possible. Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, we as designers, are at our best when we are willing to serve the people denied power.
Bryan Lee is an architect and design justice advocate as well as founder/director of Colloqate Design a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice. Along with this is he the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized the Design As Protest National Day of Action. Bryan has led two award-winning architecture + design programs for high school students and has received multiple national awards and fellowships most recently noted as one of the 2018 Fast Company Most Creative People in Business.

Colloqate was named of the 2019 Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York. Read more about their work via Architect Magazine.