HyperNormalisation and portals to normals otherwise

Carnegie Mellon Architecture (CM—A) is excited to announce its spring 2026 public programs lineup for the theme HyperNormalisation and portals to normals otherwise.

Last semester, we explored the phenomenon called HyperNormalisation—a condition when the sociopolitical complexities of a society grow so sprawling, contradictory, and totalizing that its population stops trying to make sense of them and adapts to them until they become norms. HyperNormalisation today describes the everydayness of crisis, many of which are facilitated by architecture and spatial design, as it ritualizes us into accepting environmental devastation as a part of our food or building production processes, carceral expansion for profit-making, or privatized breath as ordinary facts of life. We are numbed to disaster, and are lulled into perceiving injustice as both natural and inevitable, or at times, an intellectual debate or inquiry.

This semester, we delve into spatial practices otherwise, or at least, how to create avenues/portals to get there. Practices “otherwise” comes from a rich sociological intellectual history and describes practices that fall outside dominant Western definitions. Rolando Vázquez's work on “epistemic disobedience” and decolonial aesthetics provides a great foundation for thinking “otherwise” as a refusal of Western hegemonies. Such spatial thinking is also introduced in the works of Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten and José Esteban Muñoz, who continue to influence how architects and spatial thinkers articulate non-normative, fugitive, or care-based practices.

With these frameworks, we ask: What do/could the next worlds look like; the ones that can lead us out of the trap of HyperNormals? What are the portals to next worlds? And how do we make them? Let's time travel. Let's swim in dreams.

Carnegie Mellon Architecture's public programs are organized by Tuliza Sindi, Curator for Public Programs and Director of Publications, in consultation with a committee. The committee includes: Jared Abraham, Niloufar Alenjery, Sarosh Anklesaria, Mary-Lou Arscott, Christi Danner, Matthew Huber, Meredith Marsh, Vernelle A. A. Noel and Tommy CheeMou Yang.

Some of our events are livestreamed and their links can be found on our website.

Carnegie Mellon Architecture's public programs series is generously sponsored by the Alan H. Rider Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Architecture Fund, the William Finglass Practice Lecture Series Fund, the Watson Chair in Architecture Fund, and the Hans Vetter Memorial Lecture Fund.

Public lectures/workshops
Kabage Karanja (Cave Bureau), William Finglass Lecture (lecture & workshop)
Wednesday–Thursday, January 14–15

Koray Duman (lecture)
Wednesday, January 28

T. Andrew Stone (lecture)
Thursday, April 23

Symposia/public conversations
“Making Alive: Cities! Decommodified, Regenerative, Pluriversal, Reworlded” (symposium), with guest participant Prof. Arturo Escobar (Watson Chair 2025–26)
Wednesday–Thursday, March 11–12

“Cybernetics/Design/Philosophy: Conversational Pedagogies for Engaging Artificial Intelligence” (public conversation), with guest participant Prof. Arturo Escobar (Watson Chair 2025–26)
Thursday–Friday, March 12–13

“Conversations with Machines: Uncanny Tools” (workshop series)
Friday–Sunday, March 27–29

CM—A Thinks Allowed
This discursive series brings together faculty and students to explore a single shared text. Each participant offers their interpretation through the lens of their own practice, research and worldview, before opening to a moderated dialogue. The series invites the CM—A community to witness how one text can refract into many, revealing points of connection, contrast and curiosity, with the aim to cultivate a culture of exchange where ideas get sharpened and challenged collectively.

Normals Otherwise: Reworldings
“Politics of the Very Worst: An Interview with Philippe Petit,” by Paul Virilio
Thursday, February 5

“Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead,” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Thursday, February 19

CM—A Bookshelf
This new event series invites Carnegie Mellon Architecture faculty to share the readings that shape their worlds. Each session offers a glimpse into their relationship with reading; understood broadly, from books and essays to folklore, films, songs, or family archives. In conversation with a guest of their choice, they reflect on the texts that linger, unravel their imagination, anchor their sense of belonging, or spark their practice. From nursery rhymes to government documents, philosophy to fantasy, each Bookshelf becomes a portrait of reading as a living, evolving practice.

Tommy CheeMou Yang, CM—A in otherwards Imprint's inaugural editorial board member
Wednesday, February 4

Book launches
x-change 2025, by Tuliza Sindi and Meredith Marsh (co-editors)
Friday, January 16

Building and Unbuilding the City Museum: From Le Corbusier to Ahmedabad, by Sarosh Anklesaria and Lily Chi (co-editors)
Friday, April 17

PLOTLINE
PLOTLINE is Carnegie Mellon Architecture's film series, curated to run in parallel with our public programs. Each season of PLOTLINE extends the themes explored in our lectures and exhibitions into a cinematic register—using film as another mode of critical inquiry, reflection and conversation.

Nezouh (2022), by Soudade Kaadan
Wednesday, February 11

małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore (2020), by Sky Hopinka
Wednesday, February 25

CM—A Computational Design Event Series: Zones Unseen
The spring 2026 series “Zones Unseen” brings together researchers and practitioners across architecture, data visualization, robotics, visual studies, and cybernetics to illuminate contemporary blind spots in design practice and culture. From interrogating the socio-technics of AI in architecture and time-based media to diffracting the nature of data and of scientific practice, the speakers shed light on contemporary technologies' unfolding within the social, material, and visual worlds of design.

“Encoding Situated Knowledges,” by Lara Stöhlmacher (lecture)
Friday, February 20

“Visual Reasoning Models and Critical Montage,” by Robert Rappaport (roundtable)
Friday, March 6

“Wither Design,” by Nathan Felde (lecture & conversation)
Thursday–Friday, March 12–13

“Data Natures,” by Jer Thorp (workshop & lecture)
March 28–29

“Researching New Ways of Science; a Journey in Soft Robotics,” by Yiğit Mengüç (conversation)
Thursday, April 9