New York+ COALITIONS: fall 2025 at Columbia GSAPP

The capacity of the disciplines of the built environment to engage the accelerating crises—climatic, environmental, social, and geopolitical—resides not in coherent masterplans or totalizing strategies, but in the meticulous choreography of dispersed interventions, stitched into a scalable, perpetually shifting fabric of action. Its potency emerges precisely through dissonance, multiplicity, and a systemic evasion of singular authorship and centralized control.

In recognition of the urgency not merely to observe change but to choreograph it, GSAPP has reimagined its public programming—not as a passive stage for presentation, but as an active platform for coalition-building and alliance-making. In recognition of the need to actively propel these choreographies into being, GSAPP repurposes its public program as an active platform—not simply for presentation, but for building coalitions, and cultivating alliances among individuals and organizations united by shared priorities and overlapping engagements. 

This expanded terrain of collaboration—now encompassing over a hundred actors rooted in New York and radiating through GSAPP’s global constellation—brings together architecture and art collectives deploying design as activism (including raumlabor, Floating Museum, and Espace Aygo); practitioners reimagining social and ecological fabrics (from LOT-EK, Jacques Herzog, Mary Miss, and Kate Orff, to WorkAC, TAKK, Ziad Jameleddine, Jorge Otero-Pailos, and Bernard Tschumi); designers recoding objects and technologies as agents of transformation (among them Yves Béhar, Margot DeMarco, Luam Melake, and b); many of the world’s most influential scholars (Desirée Valadares, Jonathan Levy, Beatriz Colomina, Ateya Khorakiwala, Albena Yaneva, and Mabel Wilson); and institutions pooling their capacities in a shared choreography of climate action (including the HBCU Green Fund, Donors of Color Network, ACE Observatory, and Columbia’s Environmental and Climate Justice Project).

Acknowledging that these challenges are inherently transnational—and that the GSAPP community itself is globally distributed—the School is launching the World Actioning Summits: a platform for intensive, action-driven collaboration between scholars, practitioners, and activists from across the world. The inaugural summit will take place in Seoul on November 1, 2025, as a catalyst for collective thinking, strategic intervention, and transdisciplinary collaboration.

Lastly, GSAPP is delighted to launch the Inaugural Terence Riley Summit. Conceived as a gathering of leading voices in architecture curation from across the globe, the Summit honors the enduring legacy of Terence Riley—GSAPP alumnus and the founding director of the School’s Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery. That this platform is enabled by the generous support of Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown, whose commitment to the field ensures that Riley’s spirit of curatorial experimentation will continue to provoke, inspire, and convene.

COALITION 1: Collectives
September 8, 6:30 PM
Faheem Majeed (Floating Museum); Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius (raumlabor); Espace Aygo
Responses: Joseph Zeal-Henry (GSAPP, City of Boston), Mireia Luzzáraga (GSAPP, TAKK Architecture)

John Foerster ‘64 Fund Lecture: Jacques Herzog (Herzog & deMeuron)
September 18, 6:30 PM
Response: Dean Andrés Jaque

The Library is Open 21
The New Design Museum
September 19, 1:00 PM
Beatrice Leanza

Elevating Cities, Actioning Real Estate
Curated by MS Real Estate Development
September 19, 9-5 PM
Kate Ascher (GSAPP), Larissa Belova (UBS), Nicholas Bienstock (Savanna), George Theron Bynum IV (Former Mayor of Tulsa), Tommy Craig (Hines), Clare Newman (Trust for Governors Island), Sonny Kalsi (BGO), Cecily King (GSAPP, Kipling Development), Barry Langer (Vornado), Christopher Munsell (GSAPP),Nitin Motwani (Merrimac Ventures, Miami Worldcenter Group), Melissa Román Burch (NYCEDC), Jonathan Rose (Jonathan Rose Companies), Maria Torres-Springer (Ford Foundation, Former First Deputy Mayor of New York City), Claire Weisz (WXY), Tom Wright (RPA)

Fitch Colloquium
Fragments of the Imagination: Provenance, Preservation, and the Afterlives of Architecture
Curated by MS in Historic Preservation
September 20, 10am–7pm
With Michael Allen (West Virginia University), Susan Boynton (Columbia University), Tone Hansen (GSAPP, Munch Museum), Giuseppe Lignano & Ada Tolla (GSAPP, LOT-EK), Eleonora Pistis (Columbia University), Francisco Prado-Vilar (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela), Amandine Kastler & Erlend Skjeseth (Oslo School of Architecture), Evangelos Kotsioris (Museum of Modern Art), Amie Siegel (Artist and filmmaker), Lucian Simmons (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Albena Yaneva (University of Torino) and Uwe Fleckner (University of Hamburg).

Introduction: Jorge Otero-Pailos (GSAPP, Otero-Pailos Studio). Discussion with Jorge Otero-Pailos, Mari Lending (Oslo School of Architecture), Eric Langdalen (Oslo School of Architecture)

BIPOC Climate Justice Summit
Organized by Columbia Environmental and Climate Justice Project, HBCU Green Fund, Donors of Color Network and ACE Observatory
September 21, 9am–5pm

The Library is Open 22
Rooted Transience
September 25, 12:30pm
Nawaf bin Ayyaf, Faysal Tabbarah and Ziad Jamelledine, and responses by Navina Najat Haidar (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Jorge Otero-Pailos (GSAPP, Otero-Pailos Studio) 

On Climate Coalitions and CALL: A Conversation with Mary Miss
September 29, 6:30pm
Mary Miss (City as Living Laboratory) in conversation with Kate Orff (GSAPP, Columbia Climate School, SCAPE), moderated by Bart-Jan Polman 

The Detlef Mertins Lecture on the Histories of Modernity: Desirée Valadares(University of British Columbia)
October 9, 6:30pm
Introduction: Mabel Wilson (GSAPP, AAADS, studio&). Response: Ateya Khorakiwala (GSAPP)

Open House Lecture: LOT-EK
October 20, 6:30pm
Giuseppe Lignano and Ada Tolla (GSAPP, LOT-EK)
Response: Dean Andrés Jaque

Buell Abundance Talks: Plans on the Planet
October 23, 12pm
Jonathan Levy (UChicago), Courtney Bender (Columbia)
Response: Chelsea Spencer (Buell Fellow)

Resilient Coastal Communities Workshop 
Curated by MS Architecture and Urban Design and GSAPP’s Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes Saturday, October 25, 9am–5pm

COALITION 2: Coalition of Designers
In collaboration with PIN-UP Magazine
October 27, 6:30pm
Felix Burrichter (PIN-UP), Margot DeMarco, Luam Melake, Nao Tamura, and additional guests

Buell Abundance Talks: Sites on Earth
October 31, 12pm
Yasmina El Chami (Sheffield) Sophia Roosth (NYU)
Response: Spyros Papapetros (Princeton)

GSAPP Inaugural World Actioning Summit in Seoul
Saturday, November 1

The Library is Open 23
Archigram Facsimile
November 14, 1pm
Beatriz Colomina (Princeton), Thomas Evans (D.A.P.), Amelyn Ng (GSAPP), David Grahame Shane (GSAPP), Bernard Tschumi (GSAPP, Bernard Tschumi Architects)

Yves Béhar (fuseproject)
In Collaboration with The World Around
November 19, 6:30pm

The Library is Open 24
Buildings for People and Plants
November 20, 12:30pm 
Amale Andraos (GSAPP, WorkAC) and Dan Wood (WorkAC) 

COALITION 3: Curators
Inaugural Terence Riley Summit
November 21