Columbia University: The Latest Architecture and News

Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) will launch Studio-X Rio this week with Dean Mark Wigley in attendance. Studio-X Rio is GSAPP’s global network of advanced research laboratories for exploring the future of cities. With locations in Amman, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, and now Rio de Janeiro, it is the first truly global network for real-time exchange of projects, people, and ideas between regional leadership cities in which the best minds from Columbia University can think together with the best minds in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

The Museum for African Art, New York, and Columbia University’s Institute of African Studies, Committee on Global Thought, and Center for African Education have announced the creation of Sightlines: New Perspectives on African Architecture and Urbanism, a lecture series devoted to Africa’s rapidly changing urban environments.

Sightlines will comprise talks by distinguished practitioners of architecture, urban planning, and architectural theory, each of whom will apply his or her particular area of expertise to the exploration of contemporary African cities as unique built environments. The lectures, which will be open to the public free of charge (see schedule below), will examine the architectural, social, physical, and emotional contours of the cities, while also addressing the global relevance and applicability of this emerging field of discourse. Sightlines additionally includes a lecture by Senegalese artist Viyé Diba, whose work is tied to urbanization.

Complete lectures schedule after the break.

The Spontaneous Architecture mini-competitions are a series of twelve monthly competitions to last throughout 2010. The entries are single images, and the entry fee is $5 per entry. The competition winners will be decided by fellow competition entrants (although no entrant may vote for their own proposal).

This collective voting will harness the group’s intelligence and interests and hopefully catalyze a discussion within the participating group which will be formally continued in a live event in New York City. The event will be held in collaboration with Columbia University’s Studio-X in downtown Manhattan and will coincide with the announcement of the competition winner(s).

They have recently launched the first one. Details, after the break.

Two events will take place next week at Columbia University. On Monday, ‘Pointless’, a lecture by Elizabeth Diller. Then on Wednesday, ‘Re:Activators’, a lecture by Jürgen Mayer H. Both events will take place at 6:30 PM in Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium, Columbia University.

An urban design debate and a book launch will take place next monday November 9 at 6:30PM at the Wood Auditorium in Columbia Unviersity. “After BIGness” is the debate in which Alan Berger, Associate Professor at MIT, Kenneth Frampton, Professor at GSAPP, and Mahadev Raman, Principal at ARUP will discuse the designing for post crisis cities.

This Monday, October 19th, young architects working and living in France will present their recent projects in a debate taking place at Columbia University (Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, 6:30pm). Architects participating will be:

A few months ago, the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University organized an open international design ideas competition. The competition, Imagining Recovery, which coincided with Obama’s first 100 days of presidency, asked participants to imagine what recovery could look like and supplement the maps, charts and graphs of Recovery.gov with images of lived experiences, as announced earlier on AD.

Submissions were received from 25 different countries and on May 13, the distinguished jury selected ten projects for recognition and of these, only three to be the prize winners.

Project winners after the break.