Critical, Curatorial,

and Conceptual Practices in Architecture

Masterof Science

in

MS. CCCP

Col

umbi

a U

nive

rsity

GSA

PP

1Columbia GSAPP

Critical, Curatorial,

andConceptual Practices in Architecture

2

Overview

3Columbia GSAPP

The Masters of Science in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture is designed to offer advanced training in the fields of architectural criticism, publishing, curating, exhibiting, writing, and research through a two-year, full-time course of intensive academic study and independent research.

The program recognizes that architectural production is multi-faceted and diverse and that careers in architecture often extend beyond traditional modes of professional practice and academic scholarship, while at the same time reflecting and building upon them of post-industrial development and indeed, of post-urban sensibility relative to traditional Euro-American settlement norms.

Applicants might be seeking further academic training or specialization after a professional degree or years of teaching, or even at mid-career. They might also have worked in a related field and be seeking an academic forum to develop additional specializations in architecture. The program also provides the highest level of preparatory training for application to Ph.D. programs in architectural history and theory.

The CCCP program is structured to reflect this heterogeneity and the multiple sites and formats of exchange through which the field of architecture operates while at the same time sponsoring the ongoing critical development and interaction of such a matrix of practices and institutions.

The program’s emphasis is thus on forging new critical, theoretical, and historical tools, and producing new and rigorous concepts and strategies for researching, presenting, displaying, and disseminating modern and contemporary architecture and closely related fields. The program is aimed primarily at those with a background in architecture who wish to advance and expand their critical and research skills in order to pursue professional and leadership careers as architectural critics, theorists, journalists, historians, editors, publishers, curators, gallerists, institute staff and directors, teachers, and research-based practitioners. Applicants might be seeking further academic training or specialization after a professional degree or years of teaching, or even at mid-career. They might also have worked in a related field and be seeking an academic forum to develop additional specializations in architecture. The program also provides the highest level of preparatory training for application to Ph.D. programs in architectural history and

CC

CP - O

verview

4

theory.The CCCP program includes a mixture of required core

colloquia, elective lectures, and seminars, and it culminates in the preparation of an independent thesis under the supervision of an advisor from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). This can take the form of: a written thesis on a historical or theoretical topic; a portfolio of critical writings; a print-based demonstration and visualization of rigorous, original research, or; it can involve the conceptualization, design, and a detailed prospectus and documentation for, or even production of (where feasible), an exhibition, publication, institute, major event, web-based initiative, time-based project, etc. The GSAPP faculty is unparalleled in offering a wide-range of expertise in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture, urban design, landscape, preservation, and spatial politics as well as in the conceptualization and production of publications and exhibitions.

Mark WasiutaCCCP Co-Director

Felicity ScottCCCP Co-Director

5Columbia GSAPP

CCCP students at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale during month-long Venice Observatory

CC

CP - O

verview

CCCP and M.Arch students at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon, during a ‘Collecting Architecture Territories’ workshop, Summer 2012

6

DegreeRequirements

7Columbia GSAPP

Core Courses

Total: 48 pts

Course Semester 1Fall

Semester 2Spring

Semester 3Fall

12 pts 12 pts 12 pts

Elective Electivex3

Electivex3 Elective8 x 3 pts: 18 pts

4 x 3/9 pts: 24 pts

Colloquium I:OperatingPlatforms

Colloquium II:Documents and

Discourse

Thesis I(9 pts)

Semester 4Spring

12 pts

Elective

Thesis II(9 pts)

CC

CP - D

egree Requirem

ents

8

Curriculum

9Columbia GSAPP

Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery in Buell Hall

Interpretations: Critical Shifts Symposium, Spring 2014

CC

CP - C

urriculum

10

Core CoursesCCCP Arch Colloquium I

Operating Platforms: Publication, Exhibition, ResearchProfessor: Felicity D. Scott

The domain of architectural work is multi-faceted, as are the multiple forms of practice and knowledge that reflect back upon it. In this sense architectural expertise appears in many formats, media, and institutional frameworks that extend beyond, while often informing, the discipline’s role in the production of buildings. This heterogeneous field incorporates periodicals, books, exhibitions, installations, research institutes and labs, pedagogy, criticism, manifestos, historical scholarship, posters, films, videos, performances, conferences, and much more. These many architectural modalities, as well as their institutional and mediatic interfaces, or forms of dissemination, have each, in distinct ways, played important roles in the conceptualization and transformation of the discipline.

Designed to look closely and critically at these fields of practice, this colloquium will focus on three interrelated platforms: (1) publications including magazines, reports, newspapers, and books and the architects, critics, writers, and publishers associated with them; (2) exhibitions in galleries, museums, worlds fairs, expos, biennales, and triennales and the architects, curators, and institutions involved, and; (3) experimental formats of research and the collaborative arrangements and institutions through which they function. We will investigate what role these have played in the formulation and understanding of architecture and will work to identify their contribution to seminal debates, to transformations in architecture’s technical and aesthetic characteristics, to sponsoring critical experimentation, as well as to the careers of many architects. We will distinguish the different forms of expertise they manifest; ask how they function as interfaces and to what audiences; and consider whether they serve to consolidate and codify existing architectural paradigms or to forge new critical and conceptual and well as aesthetic, material, and programmatic possibilities. We will look at how various practices emerged in their specific historical context and ask to what degree did they function to maintain a status quo or to act as critical and polemical launchings. We will ask, in turn, what scope there is for pushing new formats, developing new critical concepts, opening new trajectories of investigation, and expanding the very territories of the discipline.

11Columbia GSAPP

CCCP Arch Colloquium IIDocuments and Discourse Professor: Mark Wasiuta

The seminar will approach contemporary critical discourse through the filter of documents and documentation. In specific historical examples, and with a range of theoretical texts, the status, definition, use and authority of documents for architecture, architectural history, architectural exhibitions and architecture’s other media practices will be examined and assessed. Through the question of the document the seminar will survey a range of methodologies and approaches that have served to define, demarcate, or redirect the stakes of the discipline over the last decades.

In addition, the seminar will interrogate the current status of theory, its recent history, its application, its utility, as well as the anxieties that it has often fostered within and outside architecture. We will read a series of architectural and theoretical texts that offer important conceptual and intellectual tools for addressing architecture’s relation to technology, media, ecology, sexuality, spatial politics, and a range of other problems and directions. We will examine how, through new research and methodological approaches, the conceptual parameters of architectural history, theory, criticism, and practice have been expanded and how canonical figures and their works have been recast in distinct terms. The ambition of the seminar is twofold, aiming both to expand our familiarity with contemporary debates and to provide a focused forum for ongoing discussion regarding the articulation of new sites and strategies for research, writing, and practice.

CC

CP - C

urriculum - C

ore Courses

12

ElectivesIn addition to the required colloquia and thesis courses,

CCCP students have the opportunity to take a range of courses offered at the GSAPP and elsewhere in the University. Relevant courses within the GSAPP are found primarily within the offerings in history and theory, and include lectures and seminars and, when relevant, can take the form of an independent study under the supervision of a faculty member. Some of these courses have been designed specifically for the CCCP program, others are part of the broader history and theory curriculum at the school. Students are also able to enroll in Visual Studies courses, as well as non-studio based offerings in the Planning and Preservation departments. Students have also enrolled in courses offered by Art History, Anthropology, and in the Schools of Law and Journalism, as well as taking foreign language classes. The following is a list of relevant courses:

The Organizational ComplexReinhold Martin

Collecting Architecture TerrirtoriesMark Wasiuta

Thinking Race, Reading ArchitectureMabel Wilson

The Critic as Producer: Essays on ArchitectureJames Graham

Echoing Borders: The Production of Space Within New Paradigms of CitizenshipNora Akawi and Nina Kolowratnik

Architecture, Human Rights, Spatial PoliticsFelicity Scott

Aesthetics of DecayJorge Otero-Pailos

13Columbia GSAPP

Interpretations: Critical Shifts Symposium, Spring 2014

Interpretations: Critical Shifts Symposium reception, Emily Harvey Foundation, Spring, 2014

CC

CP - C

urriculum - Elective C

ourses

14

Thesis

15Columbia GSAPP

The second year of the CCCP program is dedicated primarily to the research and writing/production of a final thesis.

This can take the form of: a written thesis on a historical or theoretical topic; a portfolio of critical writings; a print-based demonstration and visualization of rigorous, original research, or; it could involve the conceptualization, design, and a detailed prospectus and documentation for, or when feasible the production of, an exhibition, publication, institute, major event, web-based initiative, time-based project, etc. Regardless of format, it must contain evidence of substantive research and conceptual rigor, and involve a written component and other materials that can be submitted in the form of a bound document in its final presentation. Each student conducts his/her research independently, under the supervision of a faculty advisor, as well as participating in mid-term and final reviews each semester.

The thesis is intended to be the culmination of a CCCP student’s education and work at the GSAPP. It provides the opportunity to undertake and develop a project in detail, a project that demonstrates the student’s capacity to make a significant and original contribution to the field of architecture (or a closely related discipline), and which allows them to synthesize their critical approach, experience, and expertise in a relevant format of his/her choice. In this regard it is also conceived as an opportunity to build on and demonstrate critical and research skills that will be relevant to subsequent pursuit of a professional or academic career, whether as an architectural critic, theorist, journalist, historian, editor, publisher, curator, gallerist, institute director, teacher, designer, research-based practitioner, etc. Concomitant with the ambitions of the CCCP program more generally, emphasis is on forging new critical, theoretical, and historical tools, and producing new concepts and strategies for researching, displaying, and disseminating modern and contemporary architecture and closely related fields.

CC

CP - Thesis

16

In the Fall semester, students begin by developing a 3-5 page written prospectus under the supervision of their primary advisor. This document should:

1. Introduce the project, including setting out its critical stakes or ambitions, its relation and intended contribution to the field or mode of practice in which it participates, its general scope and proposed content, its format, its intended audience, and any other important characteristics of the work.

2. Identify the theoretical or methodological framework through which you will approach the thesis, including a bibliography or list of relevant or related work and key resources (whether they be archives, libraries, institutions, technologies, spaces, buildings, faculty, other experts, etc.) This part of the document can also indicate the other courses a student intends to take during the second year which relate to the development of their thesis.

3. Outline a schedule for the development of research during the Fall semester and for the writing or production of the thesis during the Spring semester. This should indicate both a set of self-imposed deadlines and those of the program, and it should clarify the format and scope of each phase of the thesis, including what will be presented at each of the four reviews (described below). While this schedule might change during the course of the thesis year as the work develops, it should be set out as a guideline to direct the work and, along with the collective reviews, keep the student on schedule. The completed prospectus must be submitted to both the CCCP Director and the student’s advisor by the end of the fourth week of the Fall semester. It can be updated during the year and serves as a syllabus for the project.

Prospectus

17Columbia GSAPP

ReviewsStudents will be required to present their thesis project

four times during the course of the year.In the Fall semester there will be a collective mid-term and

a final review of each student’s research. In the Spring semester there will be a mid-term and final review of the overall project in a format appropriate to the work. In addition to being attended by all students, these reviews will include the CCCP Director, the advi- sors, and invited critics. Students are encouraged to suggest names for invited critics to the CCCP Director.

At each review students make a 15-minute presentation for the purpose of feedback and discussion of their thesis. The presentation format can vary according to the format of the thesis, but in all cases should include a succinct thesis statement, and an indication of working method, and proposed contribution to the field. The ambition, as with any review, is not only to present the work to a more public audience but also to get feedback for further development.

CCCP students and Directors in the Swiss pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale

CC

CP - Thesis

18

The specifications of the final thesis documentation varies according to the format of each project and any specific requirements detailed by the student’s advisor. The following are provided as general guidelines of what is expected.

History/TheoryExpectation: 12-15,000 word, illustrated documentation of a

carefully researched and argued written thesis.

ExhibitionExpectation: Approximately 80-100 page document

including detailed prospectus for the exhibition along with schematic design, identification of key objects and other media, key wall texts, and other elements such as a pamphlet or catalog. The written component should include a text equivalent to a catalog essay.

CriticismExpectation: 12-15,000 word, illustrated document,

which includes an introduction to the work, along with 8-10 individual pieces of criticism which together demonstrate the development of an original critical voice and position, and an understanding of the history and state of the field.

Research and VisualizationExpectation: Approximately 80-100 page, illustrated

document including introductory text and extensive and developed form of visualization of an original research topic.

PublicationExpectation: this could range from producing an issue 0

of a magazine or journal, to a well-developed catalog or book proposal, including a significant text component, design (or design guidelines) along with detailed evaluation of funding, audience, contribution to the field, etc.

InstitutionExpectation: 12,000-15,000 word document outlining

in detail the nature and operation of a proposed institution dedicated to architecture or a related field. This might include a carefully developed set of framing documents outlining its ambitions and mandate, and its proposed contribution to its field, as well as situating the institute within a broader framework of related institutions, both contemporary and historical. It should also describe the institutional structure, identify possible funding sources, location, activities, etc.

Format Requirements

19Columbia GSAPP

OtherTo be approved in consultation with advisor and CCCP

Director. Regardless of format, each thesis must have at least a short written component, which builds upon the student’s prospectus and includes other relevant documentation produced during the year. This needs to be bound and produced in triplicate: one copy for the advisor, one for the records of the CCCP program, and one for the student’s own records.

Interpretations: Exhibition Practice Symposium Poster, Spring 2012

CC

CP - Thesis

20

Selected Thesis AbstractsAlissa Anderson

Putting Alternative Architectural Histories into Circulation: Developing a Contemporary Publication Project in Critical Conversation with the American Guide SeriesAdvisor: Felicity ScottOverlooked America is a new series of books devoted

to exploring little-known architectural projects throughout the United States. Formatted as guidebooks and written for readers of all backgrounds by similarly diverse authors, each of its volumes brings the history of a single, previously-obscure project to light and life through compelling prose and visual materials. Covering a wide range of locations, dates, and project types, the series’ architectural subjects are united in their ability to reveal new information about the forces and actors who have constructed America as inhabited today. Read singly, the guides are absorbing worlds unto themselves. Read as a set, each of their histories becomes a key point tracing a larger topography: a human-made landscape in perpetual formation, in which architecture operates as sites of particularly perceptible activity and therefore of particular scholarly, poetic, and popular interest.

This understanding of America and its architecture is conceived in critical dialogue with that of the nation’s most famous guidebook publication project, the American Guide Series. Produced between 1935–1943 by the New Deal Federal Writers Project and comprising more than 90 volumes, the series’ mission was to create and circulate a definitive vision of a unified, culturally-mature U.S.—a mission its directors pursued using strict measures of editorial and administrative control.

Overlooked America sets out to share a very different vision than the Guide Series’. Rather than smoothing or suppressing difference, its books relate histories that highlight conflict and unevenness, their variety of authors seeking to challenge readers’ perceptions rather than control them. Ultimately, the series aims to demonstrate that America is open to reconstruction—physically and ideologically—and that architecture provides a vital way to speak of and to power.

The series’ first volume is the primary deliverable of this thesis. It will explore the Tower of History, a 21-story concrete observation tower and museum in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, completed in 1969. Drawing on personal interviews and previously unstudied archival documents, the book will unpack the unexpected architectural lineage of the project as well as its relationship with deindustrialization, the Second Vatican Council, and the Cold War.

21Columbia GSAPP

Óskar ArnórssonLines / Redlines: Universalism at the UN HQ, 1952/2014Advisor: Felicity ScottMy thesis develops an architectural project from a concrete

architectural condition, the United Nations Headquarters on the eve of it its first major renovation, through research and visualization. The project takes the form of a portfolio of writings and drawings that analyze the concept of universalism as it is constructed in the UN Headquarters, one of selected instances in the original building of 1952 and another of those same instances after the completion of the UN Headquarters General Master Plan in 2014. In the former iteration, I expect to find a schematic universalism which remains on the level of idealist tropes. In the latter, I expect to find the predominance of the pragmatic categories of sustainability, security and accessibility, masked with an allegiance to the tropes through the auspices of their preservation.

Gregory BartonExceptional Territory: The Case of Diego GarciaAdvisor: Laura KurganThe focus is on territory as a conceptual construction and

its relationship to the nation-state, particularly its structural role as an advantageous ensemble in theatres of war. Territory is something made both through acts of demarcation(/delineation) and designation(/declaration). That is to say, the myriad contours of territory are defined not only by geospatial limits and technological capabilities but are also a function of such linguistic variables as speech acts and legislative items. Through mapping and language, territory is here investigated as multi-scalar, relational and enabling; the extraordinary instance of Diego Garcia – a joint US-UK island military installation in the Indian Ocean – provides a case study to explore and problematize the questions and possibilities of territorial capacity, integrity and sovereignty. Cartographic research navigates the geopolitical vectors and institutions Diego Garcia inhabits and exploits in order to extrapolate more broadly the mechanics and instruments by which a state creates and utilizes territory as para-national operational space, often breaking or disregarding its own laws and international obligations in the process.

CC

CP - Thesis Abstracts

22

Elis MendozaCodifying Violence: Sites of the Mexican War on DrugsAdvisor: Reinhold MartinIn 2006, only eleven days after taking office, Mexican

president Felipe Calderon announced the Operación Conjunta Michoacán, a strategy that would derive in the so-called “War on Drugs”, transforming the cities and towns along the north of Mexico into perpetually contested places.

It is the argument of this work that the evident failure of the war on drugs has provoked a change in strategy; from a battle against drug trafficking to a battle for the way this moment is going to be portrayed and understood in the future independently of its outcome. It is an ongoing war for territory, not just in its physical form but also in the media, the society, the academic world, the international community, and the future. All the actors in this transformed war are displaying actions that involve more pressing matters than just the commercialization or distribution of illegal drugs.

The territory, the images, and the bodies, are symbols that narrate a complex structure of violence. The “war against the Narco” has become the “war against violence,” though it is not clear who is the perpetrator, who are the responsible parties, and who are the victims.

The aim of this thesis is to uncover and question the changes in the discourse and portrayal of this conflict. In order to accomplish this task I will analyze the effectiveness of a number of “actions” common to this war through what I have identified as the representative “sites of violence” knitting in this way a complex spatial matrix over the Mexican territory.

Caitlin BlanchfieldTesting Territory: A History of Spatial Strategies along the Rio GrandeAdvisor: Reinhold MartinArchitecture can cast predictable characters. Territory

can be a familiar stage. Narrative can fall into line. The border between the United States and Mexico is a space whose script is as entrenched as the walls that limn it, the tunnels that circumvent it, and the codes that interdict or enable passage across it. So, what can a space that doesn’t fit this bill tell us about the nature of borders and their relevance today? How does the making of a transbounded territory reinforce, circumvent, and throw into relief politics of space and nation-state, ideologies of land management, and the scales—from supranational to local—at which territory is produced? What spatial possibilities are opened up if we recast the protagonists and antagonists of conflict and contestation?

Transbounding territory and history, this thesis will destablize notions of borders, access and transnationality through a close-grained examination of three contiguous

23Columbia GSAPP

national parks: Big Bend National Park in Texas, Cañón Santa Elena in Chihuahua and Maderas del Carmen in Coahuila. By assembling a constellation of historical moments (1935-1945, 1971-1981, 1992-2002) archival documents, and contemporary voices the thesis will trace the emergence and implementation of a scientific method in the management land, from the nation-building projects of post-progressive pre-war years, to NAFTA-underwritten research ventures. Resource extraction, infrastructure development, and population distribution on national and supranational levels are written into the landscape here, and always subject to the micro-movements of local communities—from coveys of yellow-billed cuckoos to trespass cattle, from fluoride miners to geology students.

This is a history of shared economies and created capital, revealed in frontier myths or rhetorics of environmental sovereignty. It is a counter-narrative that draws the border not as a static line of collision, but rather an active force with physical properties mobilized or dispensed with to construct national identities, logics of conservation, and capital extraction. With agendas at times congruent and at times conflicting, presidents and park planners, UNESCO policy makers and research scientists, park rangers and local residents, experimented on the land, testing territory-making according to a narrative of scientific inquiry.

Marina OteroEvanescent Institutions: Capturing a Global Democratic ImaginaryAdvisor: Felicity ScottIn 2011, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, an

institution known for its creation of an international network of landmark museums, inaugurated –together with luxury car-maker BMW– a new cultural institution: The BMW Guggenheim Lab.

Rather than taking the form of a museum, the Lab was, instead, a “combination of think tank, public forum, and community center,” intended to bring programming out of the institutional space and to a wider audience. To this end, the BMW Guggenheim Lab was designed not only as a temporary and mobile structure, but also as a “Major New Global Initiative” stretching out over nine cities, and for the duration of six years, with three successive themes and architectural structures.

It might be polemically argued that the BMW Guggenheim Lab represents the emergence of a new paradigm for cultural institutions, offering a precedent for how they could affect the cultural, social and political environment through new means of circulation, methods of financing, and an expanded concept of participation.

The ambition of this thesis is, therefore, to inquire into and speculate on this paradigm shift (if any), its political implications, its territories and its imaginaries.

CC

CP - Thesis Abstracts

24

Nina KolowratnikThe Language of Secret Proof:A Notational System as Architectural Expertise in the Jemez Pueblo Land ClaimAdvisor: Mark WasiutaHow to imagine an evidentiary document that is working

within the regime of pueblo secrecy, however satisfies the factual demands on the evidentiary document in court? Can architectural tools produce a notational system that manages both demands on exposure and concealment and translates not merely rituals to court, but from a culture of secrecy to one of transparency?

This thesis is located within the ongoing Native American Jemez Pubelo land claim and the dilemma the Pueblo finds itself in at the moment of getting involved in a litigation where proof of the connectedness to the land claimed needs to be created, the reason why the Pueblo is claiming right to ownership however is anchored in the tribe’s spiritual religious system of significance—an essential feature of the Pueblo’s power-knowledge economy—and thus is regarded to be a secret.

This project tries to work through this double bind by means of drawing and notation. In a situation where criteria of proof betray the essence of what is to be proved, the evidentiary object needs to make a claim to truth while resisting to demonstrate what constitutes truth or tribal significance. In collaboration with the tribe I produced three evidentiary drawings which make the traditional, spiritual and daily use of the claimed Valles Caldera by the Jemez tribe evident, yet at the same time do not allow to be used as a guide to pueblo culture.

25Columbia GSAPP

Environmental Communications, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery

Environmental Communications opening discussion

CC

CP - Thesis Abstracts

26

2014

Ashraf AbdallaSayyida Zaynab Cultural Park for Children: The Architecture of Abdelhalim I. Abdelhalim and the Making of the Egyptian Neoliberal StateAdvisor: Reinhold Martin

Javier AntonRemains of National Identities: Twin Houses by Javier Carvajal in Somosaguas, 1967Advisor: Kenneth Frampton

Gregory BartonExceptional Territory: The Case of Diego GarciaAdvisor: Laura Kurgan

Caitlin BlanchfieldTesting Territory: A history of spatial strategies along the Rio GrandeAdvisor: Reinhold Martin

Katia DavidsonVirtual Spaces: A Digital Archive of Unbuilt WorksAdvisor: Mark Wasiuta

Tanya GershonTaking it to the Street: The Art of Public LifeAdvisor: Mabel Wilson

Devina KirloskarBehind the gates: New forms of private enclavism in IndiaAdvisor: Anupama Rao

Maximilian LauterCapital Artifacts: Critical Structures of AuralizationAdvisor: Mark Wasiuta

Elis MendozaCodifying Violence: Sites of the Mexican War on DrugsAdvisor: Reinhold Martin

Vahan MisakyanThe New Image of Human. Architecture as a virtual and psychological habitatAdvisor: Mark Wigley

Previous Theses

27Columbia GSAPP

Javairia ShahidRemapping Istanbul cosmopolitanism now:Control, agency and identity in transnational global transitionsAdvisor: Kazys Varnelis

Sabrina WirthSan Salvador, El Salvador: a portrait of spatial and social fragmentationAdvisor: Clara Irazábal

2013

Allison CarafaLocating the Blog: New mechanisms in reading, writing, and authorityAdvisors: Jeannie Kim and Kazys Varnelis

Francisco J. DíazContemporary SectionModes of Architectural Production at the beginning of the 21st centuryAdvisor: Felicity Scott

Nina KolowratnikThe Language of Secret Proof.A notational system as architectural expertise in the Jemez Pueblo land claimAdvisor: Mark Wasiuta

Marcelo F. López-DinardiDestructive Knowledge: Tools for Learning to Un-DoAdvisor: Mark Wigley

Jess NganSpeculations on Territory: the Diaoyu/Senkaku island disputeAdvisor: Craig Buckley

Helene NguyenThe Visualization of the Politics of EngagementAdvisor: Mark Wasiuta

Marina OteroEvanescent Institutions: Capturing a Global Democratic ImaginaryAdvisor: Felicity Scott

Sarah Rafson

CC

CP - Previous Theses

28

Chicks in Architecture Refuse to Yield: Reading the Feminist Architecture ExhibitionAdvisor: Mary McLeod

Bonny YauConstructing a Harmonious Society: A DictionaryAdvisor: Mabel Wilson

2012

Jordan CarverKnown Unknowns: Sovereignty Commoditization and the “War on Terror”Advisor: Mabel O. Wilson

José EsparzaInstitutional Infrastructures: An Alternative Model for Architectural Education in Mexico CityAdvisor: Felicity D. Scott

Atreyee GhoshInterpretations and Interventions: Tulshibaug Temple and Market Complex, PuneAdvisor: Kenneth Frampton

Arianne Kouri1959 Exhibition Exchange: The Exhibition Designs of the American and Soviet National ExhibitionsAdvisor: Craig Buckley

Albert José-Antonio LópezDivergent Modernities: Planning in Havana 1940-1960Advisor: Mary Caroline McLeod. External Consultant: Brian Brace Taylor

Carlos Mínguez CarrascoCuratorial Reanimations: Atlas of New York Architecture Exhibitions (1977-1987)Advisor: Mark Wasiuta

Jacob MooreOther ArchitecturesAdvisor: Ijlal Muzaffar

Victoria Bugge ØyePerforming Architecture: A Theoretical Investigation on the Notion of ‘Performativity’Advisor: Felicity D. Scott

29Columbia GSAPP

Ismaelly PenaRE-presentation: Architecture in process...Advisor: Mabel O. Wilson

Fernando PortalDesign Policies: Public Policies and Design Disciplines in the US. The NEA Design Programs, 1967-2012Advisor: Enrique Walker

2011

Nora AkawiDarabZINE: An Experiment in Public CurationAdvisor: Felicity Scott

Adam BandlerIntolerance: or the Inequity of InaccessibilityAdvisor: Mark Wasiuta

Yun Jie ChungRelocating Curatorial Practices and a Nostalgia for Architectural Narratives in Do Ho Suh’s Home ProjectsAdvisor: Felicity Scott

Sarah CloonanReshaping the Public Sphere and its Inverse Effect on Architectural SpaceAdvisor: Kazys Varnelis

Pollyanna RheeElucidating the Articulate Architect: The Objects of John Burchard’s Alienated AffectionsAdvisor: Felicity Scott

Federica SolettaThe (critical) Act of Curating Criticism: The Curator as Critic. Advisor: Anthony Vidler

Tong TongProspectus for a Publication on Architecture, Theater and CinemaAdvisor: Kenneth Frampton

CC

CP - Previous Theses

30

Resources

31Columbia GSAPP

Students are able to draw on the remarkable faculty, research, publication, public programming, and exhibition resources at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

The Avery Library is one of the premier architectural libraries in the world and the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery has been forging an important paradigm of archive-based exhibitions under the school’s “Living Archive” project. Other primary resources include the Department of Publications, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, and the many Labs and Experimental Units associated with the school that are working in fields as diverse as experimental publication, spatial information design, responsive systems, infrastructure and poverty action, landscape, networks, memory, and more. Students are expected to take advantage of the extensive programs of lectures, panel discussions, symposia, exhibitions, and other events that form a key part of the curriculum at the school. Visiting workshops will also be led by leading practitioners in the fields of the publication, criticism, and exhibition of architecture, urbanism, and landscape.

In addition to course offerings at the GSAPP, students are able to enroll in classes in other parts of the university including the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of the Arts, and the School of International and Public Affairs, subject to approval by the professor.

There are, for instance, many opportunities for collaborative exchange with the M.A. in Modern Art: Curatorial Studies Program of the Department of Art History and Archaeology. Other schools also have extensive public programs.

Beyond this, New York City offers unequalled resources for the study of architecture, museums, galleries, and the urban environment, including: the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Storefront for Art and Architecture, The Van Alen Institute, Artists Space, Common Room, Ludlow 38, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, The Architects Newspaper, and other museums, galleries, and publishing houses in New York. The GSAPP also has close relations with a national and international network of affiliated museums, galleries and publications including the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, Centres Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ACTAR Editorial, Domus, Abitare, and others.

CC

CP - R

esources

32

A number of competitive assistantships are available to CCCP students, including positions working with the Directors of Exhibitions, Print Publications, Special Events, and Online Communications. CCCP Students are also eligible to apply for other GSAPP Assistantships, such as those for Architectural History I & II and the Audio-Visual Department. These positions are typically advertised by the Dean’s office in May, with applications due in June. As such, they cannot be guaranteed in advance as part of an admissions offer. There are also other paid opportunities to work on the program’s website and other related activities. In addition, CCCP students are eligible to apply for Teaching Assistantships offered periodically through the Barnard and Columbia colleges undergraduate architecture program.

Assistantships

The CCCP program does not require but does strongly recommend that students undertake internships during their course of study, either in New York during the academic semester or globally during the Summer and Winter breaks. Relevant Internships are offered by MoMA, the CCA, the Van Alen Institute and Van Alen Books, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts, SFMOMA, MACBA, and other institutions and we are working to expand these opportunities. Students have also been accepted into Columbia University Libraries’ Graduate Student Internship Program and other university initiatives. The program director is also working to expand these opportunities.

Internships

33Columbia GSAPP

Interpretations: Promiscous Encounters Student Symposium, Spring 2012

Messages and Means exhibit, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Spring 2014

CC

CP - R

esources

34

Print ephemera, Summer 2014 Venice Observatory at the Emily Harvey Gallery

Environmental Communications, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery

35Columbia GSAPP

The CCCP program aims to engage students within the public sphere through encounter with many formats, interfaces, or what we call “operating platforms,” ranging from public events — lectures, symposia, workshops, installations and exhibitions — to publications, web-based activities and other modes of dissemination of work and ideas.

In addition to the students’ involvement in all such areas of the GSAPP’s activities through CCCP assistantships (working with the directors of exhibitions, print publications, public events, and online media), and work generated from student theses, the program sponsors public lectures (as part of the main lecture series) and hosts workshops with visiting critics, curators, editors and institute directors. Students have also initiated exhibitions, symposia, and other activities, notably including a series entitled “Interpretations,” beginning in Spring 2011 with a day-long symposium dedicated to exhibition practice.

Public Sphere

Students are responsible for identifying and contacting an advisor for their thesis by the beginning of the second year of the program.

It is important that students choose an advisor who is able to critically contribute to the development of the thesis during the year including: reviewing the thesis prospectus; meeting periodically, as per requirements of the student; attending mid-term and final reviews in both the Fall and Spring semester; and grading student’s work in consultation with CCCP director.

The thesis is typically undertaken under the supervision of a GSAPP faculty member. In special cases, and subject to approval by the program director, a student’s thesis might be supervised by an appropriate outside qualified specialist, such as a curator, critic, or editor.

AdvisorsC

CC

P - Resources

36

Co

ver

Des

ign:

Kee

s B

akke

r

Student BodyCountries of Origin, 2012-2014

37Columbia GSAPP

38

2015–2016

Col

umbi

a U

nive

rsity

GSA

PP