Want away winter with these spring 2022 educational lectures and talks

It’s late January and that could only mean one thing: architecture schools have either freshly launched—or will shortly—their respective public programs including lecture series for the spring semester.

The reality is that we’re still very much in the midst of a crippling global pandemic as the omicron variant continues to tear across the country. Although things have changed a bit for the better since those chaotic yet lonely early months of COVID-19 thanks to the introduction of vaccines and mass testing, academic public programs are still very much largely online-only although many schools have embraced a hybrid model of safe, in-person events accompanied by virtual alternatives. As always, it depends on the city, state, and institution.

Below, is a non-exhaustive roundup of forthcoming or already-under-way spring 2022 lecture series presented by architecture schools from coast to coast. Specific dates and times as well as detailed registration information and any in-person attendance requirements can be confirmed on the events pages of each respective school/program.

Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture

Entitled World Making, the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture’s Spring 2022 Public Programs include lectures, conversations, and hands-on workshops led by, among others, Olalekan Jeyifous, Jorge Otero-Pailos, and Marina Tabassum. All events are free and open to the public.

Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Columbia GSAPP is holding all of its Spring 2022 public programming—as always, free and open to the general public unless otherwise noted—virtually via Zoom. On the lecture front, this year’s series commenced on January 24 with Brigitte Shim, principal at Toronto’s Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, and continues throughout the coming weeks with presentations from, among others, Sarah Bronin, Jay Cephas, Olalekan Jeyifous, and Danish architect Dorte Mandrup, who will present the concluding lecture on April 18.

Harvard Graduate School of Design

Harvard GSD’s Spring 2022 Public Lecture Series kicks off February 3 with Indigenous architect Sam Olbekson’s “Culture, Community, and Environmental Justice in Contemporary Indigenous Design” and continues through late April with featured lecturers including, among others, HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge (February 8), Senior Loeb Scholar Lesley Lokko (March 1), Anne Lacaton of Pritzker Prize-winning French practice Lacaton & Vassal (March 28), and Jenny Jones and David Godshall of Los Angeles- and San Francisco-based landscape architecture studio TERREMOTO (April 5.) While some events are online-only, Harvard IDs are required to attend in-person lectures held at Gund Hall. All public programming will be live-streamed on the GSD website.

Rice University School of Architecture

Rice Architecture’s 2021-2022 Lecture Series, Building Identities, continues through the spring with forthcoming presentations from Ann Lui, Yen Ha, Michael Maltzan, Yolande Daniels, Adib Cúre, and Carie Penabad, Fuensanta Nieto, and Dominique Perrault. All lectures are free and open to the public and are primarily held on-campus at Farish Gallery in MD Anderson Hall unless it is an online-only event or another physical venue is indicated. Wish to join from afar? All Rice lectures and public events are also being livestreamed.

Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis

Forthcoming featured guest lecturers at Sam Fox include, among others, HARQUITECTES (February 3), Tatiana Bilbao (February 22), Dwane Oyler and Jenny Wu (February 25), Oliver Schulze (March 2), Wiel Arets (March 28), Fuensanta Nieto (April 7), Marina Tabassum (April 11), and Thomas Phifer (April 18). All events held as part of the school’s Spring 2022 Public Lecture series will be held online via Zoom.

Southern California Institute of Architecture

SCI-Arc is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and has announced an appropriately eye-popping slate of springtime public programs including special events, podcasts, exhibitions, editorial content, community initiatives, and much more, all honoring “the myriad contributions SCI-Arc has made to revolutionizing architecture and architecture education across the past five decades.” As far as lectures go, there’s a ton on tap including talks from Ana María León (February 9), Mario Gooden (February 23), Erin Besler (March 2), Anupama Kundoo (March 9), Sekou Cooke (March 21), Liam Young (March 30), and Catherine Opie (April 6). All public events at SCI-Arc will be produced as hybrid affairs, open for in-person admission (with proof of vaccination) and accompanied by a free livestreamed component.

The Bernard & Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York 

Entitled Radical Black Space, the Zoom-based SCIAME Spring 2022 Lecture Series at the Spitzer School of Architecture commences on February 10 with a group discussion, “Conversation: Black Land Consortium,” featuring Jerome Haferd, Emanuel Admassu, Curry Hackett, and Jennifer Newsom. Following that, featured guest lecturers include Craig Wilkins (February 17), Justin Garrett Moore (February 24), Amber Wiley (March 3), Iman Ansari (March 17), Tara Dudley (March 24),  Shani Peters and Joseph A. Cuillier (March 31), and Cameron Rowland (April 28). All lectures are free and open to the public.

The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture

UT Austin’s School of Architecture recently kicked off its Spring 2022 Lecture Series with “Radical Re-Housing,” a virtual presentation from SO–IL’s Jing Liu. Beginning in February, the series, which is free and open to the public, will assume a mix of both strictly virtual and in-person/virtual hybrid events. (Largely the latter). In addition to Liu, scheduled guest lecturers include Miroslava Brooks, Maxi Spina and Jia Gu, Susan Jones, Igor Marjanović​, Anne Holtrop, Võ Trọng Nghĩa, Kutan Ayata and Michael Young, Alan Organschi, Lonneke Gordijn, Fuensanta Nieto, and Salvador Macías Corona and Magui Peredo Arenas. All lectures can be livestreamed on Texas Architecture’s YouTube channel while most in-person events are held at Goldsmith Lecture Hall. (The concluding April 22 lecture from Salvador Macías Corona and Magui Peredo Arenas of Guadalajara-based Estudio Macías Peredo will be held at Jessen Auditorium in Homer Rainey Hall).

Yale School of Architecture

Kicking off with a lecture from Liz Diller, YoSA’s recently announced roster of public programs will be a Zoom-based virtual affair up through spring recess; the school will announce its post-spring recess event attendance policies in the coming weeks. In addition to Diller, other featured lecturers include Amber Wiley (February 10), Deborah Berke and Annabelle Selldorf (March 31), Rodney Leon (April 4), Douglas Spencer (April 7), Gregory Crewdson and Iwan Baan (April 11), Laura Harjo (April 14), and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (April 21). As always, alumni and the general public are welcome.