Fall 2024 public programs

This fall, the UIC School of Architecture continues building its public program with a deep conviction that the cultural shift of paradigms in architectural education and discourse is paramount. The school’s public program aims to contribute to both the theoretical and practical fields of architectural practice, reinforcing the importance of collective thinking and its role as a nexus of intellectual and creative engagement.

All events are free and open to the public. For accessibility accommodations, please contact us at arch@uic.edu.

Lecture series
5:30pm, 1100 Architecture + Design Studios

September 9: Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio
Respondent: Zehra Ahmed

October 2: Charles Waldheim
Respondent: Clare Lyster

October 7: Sebastián Adamo
Respondent: Florencia Rodriguez

November 18: Matt Shaw
Respondent: Grant Gibson

November 21: Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago (book launch)
Alexander Eisenschmidt. Discussion with the book’s authors.
5:30pm, Graham Foundation, 4 West Burton Place, Chicago, Illinois 60610.

Wednesday Episodes are We@UIC
Wednesdays at 1pm, 1100 Architecture + Design Studios

September 11: Meet Fresh Meat
Architecture and Design Open Archive
Room 3100 A+DS

October 9: What Do We Gain from the Architectural Competition When We Lose? (Panel Discussion)
Kelly Bair, Vincent Calabro, Paul Dolick, Chris Frye, Paul Preissner
Moderator: Kelly Bair

October 30: Bob Magruder

November 20: Antonio Torres

Other events
September 20: A Day in the Life of Design & Construction (Panel Discussion)
PWC (Professional Women in Construction)
1pm, 1100 Architecture + Design Studios

October 16: Pollen – The UIC/SoArch Journal #1 (Panel Discussion)
Conversation about publishing in architecture
5:30pm, 1100 Architecture + Design Studios

Pollen: we launched a journal, stay tuned!
Pollen – The UIC/SoArch Journal is a yearly publication that presents ideas and conversations happening within the school into the world in an expedient and compelling print format. It capitalizes on the school’s public program not to repackage the work of students and faculty (visible via other channels) but to open the conversations happening at the school to wider audiences. Its editorial approach is to assemble distinctive voices and encourage their interaction, even debate, particularly around a topic defined as the “dossier” of each issue.
In this inaugural issue, Fall 2024, the dossier centers on This Is Not Contemporary, a March 2023 conference inspired by Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of contemporariness as a way of adhering to time through disjunction and anachronism. Participants in the conference—including Zehra Ahmed, Paul Andersen, Kelly Bair, Shantel Blakely, Esther Choi, Ignacio G. Galán, Stewart Hicks, Andrew Holder, Mariana Ibañez, Thomas Kelley, and Paul Preissner, among others—each contributes a text. Commissioned written and visual contributions complement the dossier, confronting these texts with historical contextualization, sharp criticism, and design speculations from students and faculty.

Zehra Ahmed named 2024–25 Garofalo Fellow
We are thrilled to announce that Zehra Ahmed has been selected as the 2024–2025 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellow. During her fellowship year, Zehra will teach design, history, and theory courses, and prepare an exhibition and lecture for spring 2025.
Zehra Ahmed is a researcher and writer based in Chicago whose work focuses on architectural history and culture in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Currently, she is developing an archive of projects and architects to expand knowledge of the Arab city and resurface its overlooked histories, typologies, elements, concepts, and modes of representation for contemporary design. Prior to joining UIC, she earned an MA in the History and Theory of Architecture, where her research considered the history of postmodernism in a postcolonial context. She served as text editor for the publication Crown Hall Dean’s Dialogues 2012–17, and her writings have been published in DAr, a journal that investigates the formal architectural values of the Islamic world, and Flat Out, a journal of design criticism on which she also serves as a member of the editorial board.
Her research proposal, excerpted as follows, will pursue the Arab city as a project: “As the birthplace of law, writing, agriculture, and the first cities, the region popularly referred to as the Middle East played a seminal role in the development of our abstract, modern way of life. And yet its recurring role in architectural discourse is as a foil to the West: from Le Corbusier to Aldo van Eyck to recent materialist discourse, perceptions of the Middle East and North Africa as either archaic and primordial or trapped between lost empires and colonial encounters, tend to dominate.
The fellowship project, titled Arabia Interrota, will “interrupt” these narratives by operating at the intersection of reality and fiction. Beginning with a graduate seminar and design studio in the fall and culminating in an exhibition and conference in the spring, each respective format will selectively engage with a different aspect of the Arab city (generically speaking)—language and typology; landscape and ecology; representation and the canon; critical archaeologies and speculative futures. Ultimately, the ambition of the research is to harness new points of view and open space in this unique region for a renewed design imagination.”

Contact us at arch@uic.edu. More information at arch.uic.edu.