Fitch Colloquium 2025: Fragments of the Imagination

The 2025 Fitch Colloquium, titled Fragments of the Imagination: Provenance, Preservation, and the Afterlives of Architecture, brings together leading voices in preservation, architecture, art history, museum practice, and the humanities to examine the conceptual, ethical, and artistic stakes of working with architectural fragments.

Organized by Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) in collaboration with Provenance Projected—an international research collective exploring the social, material, and historical lives of buildings and their futures—the colloquium asks:

–How might architectural fragments be mobilized to reimagine the built environment—not as static inheritance, but as a site of imaginative transformation?
–How can institutions such as museums, archives, and landmark commissions be rethought in light of the provenance and circulation of architectural fragments?
–How does provenance shape disciplinary knowledge and epistemologies within architecture, preservation, art, and beyond?

This year’s colloquium is grounded in GSAPP’s experimental approach to preservation pedagogy and its teaching collection of historic architectural fragments housed in the school's Preservation Technology Laboratory.

The colloquium will conclude with a concert in Columbia’s St. Paul's Chapel of choral music from sixteenth-century Iberia. Curated by music historians Susan Boynton and Eric Rice, the program explores the afterlives of medieval chant. The music will be performed by University of Connecticut's Collegium Musicum under the direction of Eric Rice, in collaboration with singers from the Department of Music at Columbia University.

Speakers include:
Michael Allen, Visiting Assistant Professor History, West Virginia University / Susan Boynton, Professor of Music, Columbia University / Uwe Fleckner, Professor of Art History, University of Hamburg, Director of Warburg-Haus / Tone Hansen, Director, Munch Museum, Oslo; Columbia GSAPP / Amandine Kastler & Erlend Skjeseth, Partners Kastler Skjeseth Architects; Associate Professor and Assistant Professor, Oslo School of Architecture / Evangelos Kotsioris, Assistant Curator, Architecture & Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York / Giuseppe Lignano & Ada Tolla, Partners LOT-EK; Adjunct Associate Professors, Columbia GSAPP / Eleonora Pistis, Associate Professor of Art History, Columbia University / Francisco Prado-Vilar, Distinguished Researcher, CISPAC, Uni. Santiago de Compostela / Amie Siegel, Artist and filmmaker / Lucian Simmons, Head of Provenance Research, The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Albena Yaneva, Professor of Architectural Theory, Politecnico di Torino; Adjunct Professor, Columbia GSAPP.

Schedule
Saturday, September 20, 10am–6:30pm
Public colloquium at Columbia University with three thematic panels: Cut, Carry, Combine

10am: Introductions 
10:15am–12pm: Cut: Recovering fragments and the ethics of architectural disassembly
12–1pm: Lunch
1–2:45pm: Carry: Circulation, relocation, and the politics of provenance
2:45–3:15pm: Coffee Break
3:15–4:45pm: Combine: Integrating fragments into new narratives, pedagogies, and futures
5pm: Choral music concert
5:45–6:30pm: Cocktail reception

Organizers
Jorge Otero-Pailos, Professor and Director of Historic Preservation, GSAPP, Columbia University / Mari Lending, Professor, Oslo School of Architecture and Design; Project Leader, Provenance Projected / Erik Langdalen, Professor, Oslo School of Architecture and Design; Deputy Project Leader, Provenance Projected.