architectures After

The almost reclassification of Architecture in the U.S. as a non-professional degree, under the passing of Public Law 119–21 (i.e., the Big Beautiful Bill) has prompted, for some, anxieties about the future of the profession, and for others, an opportunity to reimagine Architecture as a more publicly engaged, socially embedded, and collaborative field of practice. But, within such questions on Architecture after de-professionalization (which is happening in other parts of the world as well, including but not limited to the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and Australia), “otherwise architectures” persist, rehearsing alternative futures into being in attempts to redress our waning carbon, colonial, and capitalist present—systems that have long been enforced by the rigid boundaries of professionalization. Historically, the formal field has limited what architecture can become, in part, through its entanglement with extractive real estate economics, strict legal liability that disincentivizes temporality or circularity to prioritize permanence, and building codes that marginalize organic material use and de-industrial production methods.

This year, architectures After is attempting to elucidate two concepts, as demonstrated in its title. The lowercase “a” for “architectures” articulates the already-existing plural spatial practices that exceed the disciplinary boundaries of capital “A” Architecture. The capitalized “A” for “After” attempts to name the present as a condition of “Afterness,” or a state of aftermath of extractive modernity that we already inhabit, that alternative/otherwise architectures—conceived as distributed practices and disparate modes of spatial production—are already coexisting in and/or with. Here, “after” is less a temporal marker of a future horizon, but an ethical or methodological orientation rooted in imaginaries beyond Architecture’s inherited disciplinary norms founded on extractive infrastructures, histories, and political economies. The lineup of this year’s events, therefore, isn’t structured around an anticipated “after,” nor planning for it. Through ten interrelated and entangled sub-themes, it is attempting to identify critical architectures that are already rehearsing alternative futures toward justice, repair, and liberatory futures, in efforts to make tangible expansive spatial futures beyond the collapsing assumptions that have long governed the discipline.

The (abridged) sub-themes include:

After Carbon / After Comfort: If bodily and collective comfort is a construct, what architectures become possible when comfort itself is reimagined?

After Erasure / After Demolition: What does an ethics of intervention look like when demolition is not assumed as Architecture's default response to necessities for change.

After Borders / After Territories: What happens when sites are understood as contested geographies produced through colonial cartographies, territoriality, property lines, migration, governance, logistics, ecology, memory, and indigeneity, opening architectural practice to fundamentally different ways of constructing and imagining conditions of “place”.

After Ownership / After Property: What architectures emerge when stewardship, reciprocity, and collective responsibility displace ownership and possession as our primary or exclusive relationship to land?

Afterlives: This considers Architecture not only as a medium through which the afterlives of slavery, colonial rule and incarceration persist, but also as a practice capable of repair and reconstruction.

After Authorship: What forms of architectural agency become possible when authorship is understood as collective, and not exclusively individual through the figure of the starchitect, spectacular forms and market allegiances?

After the Anthropocene: What forms of practice emerge when humans are understood as only one actor within a larger web of living things?

After Digitalism: The digital revolution transformed Architecture's mediums and methods of representation toward an increasingly accelerated threshold: “hyperdigitality.” This is how computation appears as a seemingly inevitable condition of practice that conceals the vast infrastructures, extractive economies, invisible labor, and systems of surveillance that sustain them. This theme thus asks what forms of architectural practice become possible once the digital is understood as political, material, and environmental conditions that are not neutral.

After Bigness: The collapse of NEOM’s The Line may signal capitalist limits around manufacturing urbanity from nothing. Here, we explore what Robin Evans and Michael Meredith argue for in its place; a Smaller Architecture: one that is more local, radically inclusive, anarchist, concentrated, attentive, and deliberate.

After Speed / After Time: What architectures emerge when speed (and its resulting associations) is not treated as the profession’s foundational, unquestioned and inevitable value, and when a myriad of temporalities form the basis of practice?

The full sub-theme outlines, as well as event info updates, can be found on our website.

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: Sarosh Anklesaria, Gerard Damiani, Christi Danner, Jeremy Ficca and Nida Rehman.

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.

Fall 2026 Lineup
 
September 29–October 1, 2026 
Presentations & workshops: Facade Tectonics Institute 2026 World Congress
Contributions from CMU include papers by Laura Garófalo, Azadeh O. Sawyer, and Vicky Achnani and workshop contributions by Omar Khan and PhD-CD students Jiaying (Vina) Wei, Myles Sampson and Sohyun Jin.

Monday, October 19, 2026
Film screening: Skin of Glass (2023), by Denise Zmekhol for Afterlives sub-theme.

Thursday, November 5, 2026
Book talk: Concrete Colonialism—Architecture, Urbanism, and the US Imperial Project in the Philippines (2025), by Prof. Diana Jean S. Martinez (author) for After Speed / After Time sub-theme.

Wednesday, November 11, 2026 
Live cinema event: New Planetary Imaginaries, by Liam Young (Unknown Fields) for After the Digital sub-theme.

Thursday, November 12, 2026
Workshop: “Why We Build Worlds,” by Liam Young (Unknown Fields) for After the Digital sub-theme.

Monday, November 16, 2026
Public lecture: Smaller Architecture, by Michael Meredith for After Bigness sub-theme.