Location
About
Fall 2026 Lecture Series
School of Architecture
All lectures begin at 5 pm EST. Lectures will be held at EMPAC Theater, except Bernard Tschumi’s lecture, which will be held at EMPAC Concert Hall. Design studios will end early to allow students and faculty to arrive on time.
Wednesday, September 16
Cecilia Puga / Cecilia Puga – Paula Velasco Arquitectura
“Some Character in Search for an Author”
Mosaic Associates Architects Lecture
Cecilia Puga is co-director and co-founder of Cecilia Puga – Paula Velasco Arquitectura, a practice connecting independent professionals from various disciplines and specialties. Through international competitions, the studio has worked on the new headquarters of Chile’s Ministry of Cultures and Heritage, the infrastructure design project for Queulat National Park, and the master plan and preliminary project for Punta Arenas’ International Passenger Terminal. Recently, the studio won first place in a public competition to design The National Archive Building in Valparaiso, Chile.
Puga has practiced in Santiago since 1995, working on projects at different scales and with different programs, from single-family homes—including the House in Bahia Azul—to collective housing, educational and industrial facilities, and urban design such as the renovation of public spaces in Cerro Toro. She has taught at Universidad Católica de Santiago, ETH Zurich’s School of Architecture, the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard GSD, and Barcelona Institute of Architecture. Her work has appeared in national and international publications, including issue 53 of 2G, dedicated to her work. Her office was one of 100 offices selected by Herzog & De Meuron to design a villa in Inner Mongolia for the Ordos 100 project, led by artist Ai Wei Wei.
Wednesday, October 7
Jesse Reiser + Nanako Umemoto / RUR Architecture
“Anaesthetic Architecture”
Frank Pitts ’75 Lecture
RUR is a cosmopolitan, design-obsessed architecture office and atelier, bringing together four generations of architects and designers from diverse cultures and areas of expertise. Its mission is to create bespoke architecture that resonates beyond clients’ needs, regardless of scale, site, or program, and to develop projects that advance the people, cultures, and ecologies around them.
RUR describes its architecture as an art of optimism, requiring a forward-looking attitude and the nerve to stand apart from present norms. The studio believes that reconciling past traumas and addressing contemporary discord calls for architecture that imagines a more ideal world. As society becomes increasingly divided, RUR argues for a cosmopolitan architecture committed to enhancing the lives of people everywhere.
A recently completed project is the 755,000-square-foot Taipei Music Center. RUR argues that sustainability is a minimum requirement, and that architecture should also be measured by the qualities it exhibits and affords over time, and by how it improves people’s lives. The studio’s shared motivation is to posit and construct both a more livable world and a world worth living in.
https://www.reiser-umemoto.com/
Wednesday, October 14
Mauricio Cortés Sierra / Basilica de la Sagrada Familia
“Sagrada Família: The Dream of a Genius, A Collective Endeavour Across Generations”
Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture
Mauricio Cortés Sierra studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the 1990s. His generation was marked by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and a resulting focus on structure, safety, and innovation. At UNAM, he developed an interest in structural geometry and lightweight roofs, themes that later connected with the work of Antoni Gaudí.
After graduating, Cortés moved to Barcelona to pursue a doctorate in architectural design at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB), where Gaudí had studied in the 19th century. In 2006, he began collaborating with the Sagrada Familia Construction Board, working on some of the cathedral’s most complex elements. Cortés is currently the lead architect of the Sagrada Familia.
Cortés began working on the cathedral’s ground floor, extending the neo-Gothic cloisters around the Nativity façade, the only section Gaudí lived to see completed. These organic forms contrast with the more geometric, parametric spires, including the Tower of Jesus Christ. Cortés led the design and construction team for the central towers: the Four Towers of the Evangelists, the Tower of the Virgin Mary, and the Tower of Jesus Christ. Their completion was a major milestone, requiring new technologies and careful study of drawings, models, written sources, and photographs. Cortés identifies completion of the cathedral’s main elevation, the Glory Facade, as a primary future challenge.
Cortés describes work on the Sagrada Familia as a process combining history, precision, and cultural responsibility. Each intervention must respect Gaudí’s structural and aesthetic logic while adapting to current technical and construction advances. Because Gaudí did not leave all the final plans, architects and engineers continue to study his scale models, experimental geometries, and three-dimensional models. Today, digital tools, parametric modeling, and high-precision manufacturing help develop Gaudí’s organic forms.
https://sagradafamilia.org/
Monday, October 19
Philip Beesley / Philip Beesley Studio Inc.
“Metastable Aether: Systems for Living Architecture”
Lee Harris Pomeroy ’55 Lecture
Philip Beesley Studio is an interdisciplinary design company in Toronto, Canada, specializing in architectural design for public buildings, public art, and experimental installations. The group is associated with the Living Architecture Systems Group, the School of Architecture and Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and Riverside Architectural Press.
Over the past two decades, the studio’s sculptural work has focused on immersive textile environments, landscape installations, and intricate geometric structures. Recent work features interactive sound, light, and kinetic mechanisms with distributed control systems. Studio research focuses on the aesthetics, technology, and craft of responsive envelope systems, including digital fabrication of lightweight, flexible component arrays containing embedded sensors and actuators.
Projects range from urban design to personal couture. The studio combines traditional heavy machining and building crafts with digital visualization, industrial design, digital prototyping, electronics, and mechanical engineering.
A recent project is Aria: Sentient Constellation, installed at TU Delft Science Center. Developed over several years, it is a permanent public-art installation on the TU Delft campus, presented with the municipality of Delft, TodaysArt, artists from the Netherlands and Canada, and STEAM educators. The project works with TU Delft’s Architecture and Engineering departments and Canadian research partners. A new Living Architecture Systems Group sculpture and testbed will be installed at the entrance to the new Science Centre facility. The installation is intended as a public beacon and will connect to student design explorations and workshop activities inside the building.
https://www.philipbeesleystudioinc.com/
Wednesday, October 28
Billie Tsien / Studio Tsien
“Begin Again”
Mike Wacholder Memorial Lecture
Billie Tsien, AIA, is an architect and co-founder of Studio Tsien. She was formerly a founding partner with Tod Williams of the New York City-based studio Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners (TWBTA). The firm’s work reflected the values of nonprofit, cultural, and academic institutions through serene and enduring architecture. Academic projects include buildings at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Bennington College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Public and institutional projects include the Phoenix Art Museum, the Hood Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, and the LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park. The firm has also worked with artists, including as exhibit designers for “Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà,” the U.S. Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Its other work includes the renovation of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, the U.S. Embassy Complex in Mexico City, and the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Tsien holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice at Yale University and contributes to cultural institutions including the Architectural League of New York, the National Academy of Design, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy in Rome, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she serves as president. Her awards include the Thomas Jefferson Medal Award in Architecture, the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture Firm Award, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, and the National Medal of Arts.
https://www.studiotsien.com/
Monday, November 2
Bernard Tschumi / Bernard Tschumi Architects
“Abstract”
Kenneth L. Warriner Memorial Lecture
Bernard Tschumi is an architect and theorist. In 1983, he won the competition for Parc de la Villette, a 125-acre cultural park organized around activities as well as nature. His work explores the concepts of “event” and “movement” in architecture and draws on disciplines such as literature and film.
His projects include the new Acropolis Museum; Le Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts; the Vacheron-Constantin Headquarters; the Richard E. Lindner Athletics Center at the University of Cincinnati; concert halls in Rouen and Limoges; architecture schools in Marne-la-Vallée, France, and Miami, Florida; and the Alésia Archaeological Center and Museum. The office has also worked on infrastructure and master plans in Beijing, Shenzhen, New York, Montreal, Chartres, Lausanne, and Santo Domingo. Recent projects include the Hague Passage and Hotel, a Philharmonic Hall for Institut Le Rosey, an expansion of the Vacheron Constantin headquarters, a redesign of the Paris Zoo, and the Binhai Science Museum in Tianjin, China. The 75,000 m² Biology-Pharmacy-Chemistry Center for the University of Paris-Saclay opened in 2022. A Center for Sciences and Entrepreneurship near Geneva is under construction, with an opening planned for 2025.
Tschumi received France’s Grand Prix National d’Architecture in 1996 and has received awards from the American Institute of Architects and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects and an international fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. His honors in France include the rank of Officer in both the Légion d’Honneur and the Order of Arts and Letters. In 2024, the Académie des Beaux-Arts awarded him the Grand Prix d’Architecture (Charles Abella Prize).
A graduate of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Tschumi has taught at institutions including the Architectural Association in London, Princeton University, and the Cooper Union in New York. He is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he was dean from 1988 to 2003. Tschumi is a permanent resident of the United States and has French and Swiss citizenship.
His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and galleries in the United States and Europe. A retrospective first shown at the Centre Pompidou has traveled to the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.
https://www.tschumi.com/