GSAPP Conversations

Third-year M.Arch student A.L. Hu speaks with Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph of Design, Bitches on the occasion of their lecture at Columbia GSAPP on September 19, 2016. They discuss the firm's origins and the nature of their collaboration; finding inspiration in the rebellious spirit of Los Angeles culture including fashion, contemporary art, and music; and how smaller, fast-paced projects fuel their office both creatively and financially. "For us, process is the most important thing. The process is what drives the work, more so than the expectation of the end result." – Design, Bitches

Jorge Otero-Pailos, director of Columbia GSAPP's Historic Preservation Program, speaks with British cultural historian Robert Hewison during the Spring 2017 Semester, when Hewison taught the course “John Ruskin and the 19th Century” at Columbia GSAPP. They discuss Hewison’s life-long fascination and study of John Ruskin, teaching students to draw as means of exploring truth, and the influence of Ruskin’s thinking on the field of preservation in particular through his study of Venice. The conversation took place in advance of Hewison’s lecture “John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye”, held at the School on February 16, 2017. “Ruskin was an expert in interdisciplinarity, long before interdisciplinarity had been invented. To study Ruskin, you have to study literature, you have to understand art history, you also have to be prepared to think about geology, to think about botany; and you’ve got to think about economics, political economy and all those things. Because as Ruskin’s mind expanded away from just writing about art and architecture, the next step was to write about society, political economy, and so on.” —Robert Hewison

Selva Gürdoğan, director of Columbia GSAPP’s Studio-X Istanbul speak with Ziad Jamaleddine of L.E.FT Architects about his research on the history of mosque design, which was captured in the exhibition Praygrounds at Studio-X Istanbul during March and April 2017. Ziad Jamaleddine is on faculty at Columbia GSAPP, and co-founded L.E.FT with Makram El Kadi in New York in 2005. They have designed residential and cultural projects in New York, Dubai, Turkey, and Beirut, including the recently completed Amir Shakib Arslan mosque located in the remote village of Moukhtara, Lebanon. Speaking about his long-term research project on the history of mosque design, Ziad Jamaleddine says, "The Islamic City was a statement against the body of knowledge that we have inherited for more than 100 years now. ... What was interesting about the map is that it continues to unravel and we continue to populate it with more and more information, while at the same time undoing this idea of homogeneity or unity in Islamic art and architecture."

Third-year M.Arch student Stella Ioannidou speaks with Point Supreme co-founders Konstantinos Pantazis and Marianna Rentzou on the occasion of their lecture at Columbia GSAPP (https://www.arch.columbia.edu/events/463-point-supreme) on March 20, 2017. Point Supreme was founded in Athens in 2008, one year before the Greek economic crisis. Pantazis and Rentzou discuss their use of collage as a visualization tool, the relationship between small and urban scale projects, what it meant to launch a practice during an economic crisis, and the importance of addressing local issues in their work. “The collage allows us to create a new hierarchy between things. We can get away with changing distances or parameters that somehow are not important or should not be accounted for in mathematical terms. ... The collage allows you to give different emphasis to the different things according to what their actual experiential importance is.” —Konstantinos Pantazis, Point Supreme

Columbia GSAPP faculty members Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) and Bryony Roberts speak about the relationship between performance and architectural space, and Roberts' use of performance as a medium for critically engaging cultural history.

Dean Amale Andraos speaks with Umberto Napolitano of LAN (Local Architecture Network). Napolitano co-founded the Paris-based LAN in 2002 with Benoît Jallon, and taught an advanced architecture studio at Columbia GSAPP in the Spring 2017 Semester. They discuss Napolitano's title for his course, The Form of Density, and his interpretation of "density" with a specific look at Paris. He also speaks about the process of designing his office and the role of the work space in the creative process.

ArchDaily's Editor-at-Large James Taylor-Foster visits Avery Hall to speak about Columbia GSAPP's End of Year Show with Dean Amale Andraos. They discuss the role of books and portfolios in the students' work, the experimental presentations by first-year students, and the reciprocal exchange between advanced students and their professors.

Coinciding with his lecture at Columbia GSAPP on March 27, 2017, third-year M.Arch student A.L. Hu speaks with Li Hu. Li Hu is founding partner of the Beijing-based firm OPEN Architecture, and former partner of Steven Holl Architects. They discuss the influence of New York in Li Hu's professional development and the city's relationship to Chinese cities, the integral role of nature and plants in his projects, and the need to create public space that brings people together and introduces drama to urban life.

Dean Amale Andraos speaks with Kersten Geers, who taught an Advanced Studio at Columbia GSAPP in the Spring 2017 semester and is co-founder of OFFICE KGDVS with David Van Severen. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including installations at the 2016 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and most recently in an exhibition with Go Hasegawa at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Andraos and Geers discuss a shared obsession with books and the integral role that book-making plays in their professional offices and teaching. Geers echoes Aldo Rossi’s call for evaluating architecture within a cultural context, and sees books as the ideal tool for creating a place where architectural work acquires value and meaning – a device to establish a context of ideas. “David and I think we have quite an open-minded practice, but even so you somehow cannot avoid that it is enclosed – it does have borders. And if you want to keep on living with the practice, it’s important to keep on thinking, to keep on looking, to keep on discovering. The books, and for that reason also the teaching, allow you to look further and to find these other things.” –Kersten Geers on the integral role of making books as part of his practice with David Van Severen

Dean Amale Andraos speaks with Kate Orff about the role of climate change in the design of future cities, with a particular look at the role water plays in reframing urban infrastructure and networks. Orff directs Columbia GSAPP's Urban Design Program and is founder of the landscape architecture and urban design studio SCAPE, which focuses on resiliency and has received particular attention for the natural breakwater “oyster-tecture” developed for Staten Island. In this eleventh episode of GSAPP Conversations, Orff joins Andraos to discuss what it means to think across scales and connect our human life with the geological time scale, how traveling international studios allow students to better address challenges shared by otherwise very different cities, and teaching the reciprocity of physical design and social context.

Jorge Otero-Pailos, director of Columbia GSAPP's Historic Preservation Program, speaks with Francine Houben of Mecanoo. They focus on her firm's ongoing renovation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC, originally designed by Mies van der Rohe. During the design process, Houben says she "felt two men on my shoulders ... In a kind of very subtle way, I balanced Mies and Martin Luther King and if it was conflicting, Martin Luther King won.”

Dean Amale Andraos speaks with Momoyo Kaijima who co-founded Atelier Bow-Wow with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto in 1992. The Tokyo-based firm is well known for it’s light, multifunctional design aesthetic combining a focus on urban conditions with the relationship between space and its inhabitants. Kaijima and Tsukamoto are teaching an Advanced Studio at Columbia GSAPP during the Spring 2017 semester, and Kaijima delivered a public lecture at the School in April 2017. In this 9th episode of GSAPP Conversations, Kaijima talks about the relationship between research and practice as it is made visible in the books they’ve published (including Made in Tokyo), the difficulty and rewards of working in the Fukushima area following the 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident, and her interest in working across generations to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between buildings and their inhabitants.

James Brillon, a second-year Columbia GSAPP M.Arch student speaks with Tatiana von Preussen (M.Arch ’07), Catherine Pease, and Jessica Reynolds, the co-founders of London-based vPPR Architects. They met at Avery Hall prior to the trio’s lecture in January 2017, and discuss how the firm uses precision, geometry, light, and communal space to overcome the extreme constraints of developing housing on infill sites in dense London neighborhoods. They offer the following advice to students about to enter the profession in a politically and socially turbulent time: “Exercise your democratic rights, protest and make your voices heard, and keep being idealistic. Because in the next few years you'll be the people who are making the decisions, and it's really important that you don’t lose sight of the idealism you have as a student.” –vPPR

Dean Amale Andraos speaks with Professor Hilary Sample, who directs the Core Architecture Studios at Columbia GSAPP and is the co-founder of MOS Architects with her partner Michael Meredith. They discuss the lasting influence of Ai Weiwei's Ordos 100 on the firm’s thinking, the role of representation, and how MOS Architects pursues an inclusive way of working and thinking while maintaining a purposefully small office. Sample directs GSAPP’s Housing Studio, which has a long tradition at the School and invites students to think across typologies and scales while considering a range of cultural, geographic, and environmental contexts. Sample speaks of the studio’s travel to Mexico, which coincided with the November 2016 Election, and the importance of considering New York City’s housing legacy in relation to global references.

Current Columbia GSAPP student Jarrett Ley speaks with Sir Peter Cook, one of the founders of the radical experimental group Archigram, who delivered a lecture at the School in the Spring 2017 Semester. They discuss architecture as a tool for shaping radical thought, the relationship of the current political climate in Britain, Europe, and the United States on architectural education and practice, and how the most interesting new architectural projects seem to come from unknown architects in smaller countries.