Architecture school is back in session. Students have a whole new class schedule as well as new opportunities to learn from professionals in architecture and beyond via school-sponsored events, lectures, and symposia.
Below is a non-exhaustive roundup of spring 2023 lecture series presented by architecture schools from New York to Florida to Colorado to California. For most of the lectures and events, admission is free and open to the public. The linked events page for each school includes information about each lecture or symposium mentioned, as well as additional information on other upcoming events. Interested attendees can confirm specific dates, times, and locations on each school or program’s website.
AN will update this page as more schools release details on spring programming.
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design
Guest lecturers include UPenn’s Felecia Davis, director of SOFTLAB@PSU and an associate professor of design computing in the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University as well as Loreta Castro Reguera, a Mexico City–based visiting instructor at the school and co-principal of Taller Capital. On March 6, Thom Mayne is hosting a launch for M³: modeled works [archive] 1972-2022, his forthcoming book.
Yale School of Architecture
Kicking off the spring lectures are Yale School of Architecture Dean Deborah Berke and architect and designer David Rockwell, who will chat about how art informs placemaking. Later in the semester, Shigeru Ban has a talk entitled “Balancing Architectural Works and Social Contributions” and Ann Beha will speak on January 26 for “Straight Up, with a Twist: Clarity, Intention, Delivery.”
University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design
This year Weitzman Spring 2023 Lecture Series includes a symposium that explores how design, race, and climate change impact Philadelphia housing as well as a panel with the curators of Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect;, an exhibition that highlights the work of the first woman architect in the United States with a solo practice. These group talks are complemented by individual lectures by landscape architect Sara Zerde and the Director of Interpretation at Philadelphia’s historic Eastern State Penitentiary, Sean Kelley.
The Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture (SoA)
Continuing its fall theme, the SoA’s spring 2023 public programs investigate materiality. This semester the focus will be on “extractivism.” The spring series “shines a light on the politics and geographies of the materials architects use. Where do they come from and how are they extracted? How do we negotiate the human and energy cost of their production? What roles might architecture play in reshaping material economies?” Speakers include individuals like Xu Tiantian (DNA Architects), Karen Abrams, as well as a panel on “Architecture’s Ecological Restructuring” with Rania Ghosn, Margarita Jover, Sylvia Lavin, Fadi Masoud, Antoine Picon, and Neyran Turan.
The University of Texas at Austin | School of Architecture
A star-studded lecture series at UT includes talks by Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu (Oyler Wu Collaborative), Tod Williams (Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects), and Lorcan O’Herlihy (Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects).
Rice University School of Architecture
Notable events at Rice include “Plantation Plots: What are our Decolonizing Designs?” by K. Wayne Yang and an Architecture and Reproductive Justice lecture by Lori Brown (ArchiteXX).
University of Colorado Denver College of Architecture and Planning
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at SUNY Buffalo Department of Architecture Joyce Hwang will explore how “[we) can we design for the more-than-human world,” while Columbia GSAPP’s Andrés Jaque will deliver a lecture entitled “Superpowers of Scale.”
University of Miami School of Architecture
The spring series includes talks by Fabio Gramazio + Matthias Kohler of GRAMAZIO KOHLER , as well as weekly panels in Februrary curated by Germane Barne (Community, Housing, and Identity Lab), Chris Meyer (Littoral Urbanism Lab), Joel Lamere (Future Objects Lab), Dean Rodolphe el-Khoury and Indrit Alushani (RAD Lab). The school’s Mediterranean architecture lectures and symposia are presented in conjunction with the Florida chapter of the Institute for Classical Architecture & Art.
Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
SCI-Arc’s spring series features talks by Sarah Oppenheimer and Chris T Cornelius (studio:indigenous), who will discuss how he “incorporates timeless Indigenous values in contemporary architecture. Chris’s work posits Indigenous design thinking can be a tool to de-colonize design.”
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Boghosian Fellow Lily Chishan Wong, is set to host a “Pet Plants,” a symposium that “examines the use of vegetation in architecture and its spatial, socio-political and environmental dimensions.” The spring sessions also include talks by Lindsey Wikstrom (Mattaforma) and Aleen Akanda, head of store design at the skincare brand Aesop.
Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP)
Professor Mabel Wilson and Brenna Bhandar, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, will spotlight “new approaches to the history of the intertwining of law, visual culture, and land—and the benefits of cross-disciplinary, cross-geographic, and cross-historical comparison and collaboration” as part of the “Conversations on Architecture and Land in and out of the Americas.” Also on the docket is a two-day conference in February, “Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict: Current Research, Ongoing Debates, and Next Directions,” is organized by Assistant Professor Hiba Bou Akar with the urban planning program and the Post-Conflict City Lab and the Urban Planning Program.
