Across the Americas

This event explores contemporary architecture models operating Across the Americas. Academics, researchers, and practitioners will join in a conversation on the strategies and plans of action developed to operate in multiple scales, contexts, and jurisdictions, and how these affect ideas around professional identity and language across the continent. What are the clashes and encounters between the local and the global? How do we deal with the displacement of resources and materials? And how academia and critical thinking affect professional flow?

Speakers:

Julian Palacio, Principal of JP/A
Jorge Ambrosi & Gabriela Etchegaray, Principals of AMBROSI ETCHEGARAY
Rafael Gamo, Rafael Gamo Studio
Elisa Silva, Principal Enlace Arquitectura
Maite Borjabad Lopez-Pastor, Curator of Contemporary Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago

Moderators:

Laura Gonzalez Fierro, Principal of +ADD
Agustin Schang, Architect, GSAPP Incubator Manager

Guest Respondents

Benjamin Cadena, Studio Cadena
Pauline Claramut, Architect, ‘19 MSUP
Maria A. Linares, Architect, '19 CCCP
Pedro Rivera, Rua Arquitetos

RSVP

This event is hosted by Latin GSAPP Student Association

Julian Palacio:
Julian Palacio ('02 MSAAD) is an architect based in New York and founder of JP/A. His design experience spans more than a decade working across a broad range of scales in the United States and abroad, including award-winning cultural, mixed-use and residential projects. Julian has been awarded the MacDowell Fellowship by the MacDowell Colony for the Arts and is the recipient of the Deborah J. Norden Travel Fellowship from the Architectural League of New York. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Architecture at The Cooper Union and has previously taught at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Master’s degree from Columbia GSAPP and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.

AMBROSI ETCHEGARAY:
AMBROSI ETCHEGARAY is an art and architecture studio established in Mexico City in 2011 by Jorge Ambrosi and Gabriela Etchegaray ('18 CCCP). Were appointed curators for the Mexican Pavilion at the 2018 Biennale di Venezia and awarded first place for the construction of the FICA Pavilion 2016 located in the central square of Mexico City. They were selected by the Architectural League of New York with the recognition of Emerging Voices 2015, and they have both been invited to national and international schools of architecture as critics and lecturers. They teach a Summer Studio for the AAD program and a Fall Studio for the M. Arch, both at GSAPP, Columbia University.

Rafael Gamo:
Rafael Gamo has a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and graduated from the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City. Both cities have been the starting points form where his work has evolved and fluctuates between the local and the global scales. His interest in images lies in the complex relationship between the photographer and the subject. He is the co-founder of Here-There, Acá-Allá, a photography workshop that uses photography as a tool to bridge gaps between members of migrant families. For the last 15 years, his work has focused on photographing contemporary architectural practices, ranging from large-scale public works to intimate interiors. His photographs are widely published in international books and magazines, including El Croquis, Domus, Casabella, Architectural Record, Wallpaper*, Cultured, Icon, Mark, amongst others. He has been an invited lecturer at ICP, Yale University, NYU, and NYIT.

Elisa Silva:
Elisa Silva is director and founder of Enlace Arquitectura 2007 and Enlace Foundation 2017, established in Caracas, Venezuela. Projects focus on raising awareness of spatial inequality in the urban environment. Elisa has received several awards including a Graham Foundation Grant in 2017, the Wheelwright Fellowship in 2011 and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2005. She has authored several publications on mapping, informal settlements and public space. Elisa is currently Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University School of Architecture and was Design Critic at the GSD in 2018. She has taught at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela since 2011. Elisa has a Master of Architecture from the GSD and grew up between St. Louis and Venezuela.

Maite Borjabad Lopez-Pastor:
Maite Borjabad López-Pastor ('16 CCCP) is a Spanish architect, curator, and researcher based in Chicago and NY whose work revolves between architecture, art, and politics. She is currently Curator at the Architecture and Design Department at the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously she has worked at The Metropolitan Museum and the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery (NY). As an independent curator she has developed diverse exhibitions, symposia, happenings and events focusing on varied forms of critical spatial practices working with architects, scholars, visual artists and performers in collaboration with the Emily Harvey Foundation, New Museum Incubator (NY), Tabakalera (San Sebastian) or La Casa Encendida (Madrid) among others. She has taught at Barnard College and at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (Columbia University), and has served as a guest critic in several architecture schools as GSD-Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Pratt Institute, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Chicago, among others.

Laura Gonzalez Fierro:
Laura González Fierro (‘08 MSAAD) is an architect and graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México (2002) and holds a master’s in architecture from Columbia University GSAPP (2008). In 2010, she founded +ADD, a heterogeneous practice that is human-centric with international presence in the fields of architecture, urban planning, design and consulting for the industry; working on different formats, scales, and geographies. Her work has been published by Braun Publishing, LEAF Review, PIN-UP and other publications. She also founded the Long Distance Experimental Lab (LED), a platform dedicated to multidisciplinary research on the built environment to activate spaces and conversations. In 2018 she co-curated Walls of Air: The Brazilian Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Agustin Schang:
Agustin Schang ('15 CCCP) is an architect and independent cultural producer based in New York where he manages and programs the GSAPP Incubator, a launch pad for new ideas and projects about architecture, culture, and the city, an initiative from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) in association with NEW INC; New Museum’ Incubator. He studied architecture at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and graduated in 2015 from the masters in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University GSAPP with a thesis on archives and architecture. Since 2003, he had collaborated in multiple art, architecture, and cultural projects with prestigious institutions as the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Columbia GSAPP, New Museum’s Ideas City; Friends of the High Line; Emily Harvey Foundation, Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona, Fundación Proa and Ministerio de Cultura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires among others.

Image Credit: Philippe Petalas