This film screening and panel discussion will be in person and is part of the Spring 2025 Sciame Lecture Series, titled "Still Making Space for Gender"

Ada Karmi Melamede is one of the most accomplished female architects in the world, but very little is known about her outside her home country of Israel. ADA - MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT is a deeply moving portrait of an extraordinary woman directed by her daughter, filmmaker, and former architect, Yael Melamede.

Ada is a true pioneer who, like many successful working mothers of her time, was forced to make impossible choices. Despite personal sacrifices, Ada's work gave physical form to some of Israel’s highest democratic ideals, most notably in the acclaimed Supreme Court building in Jerusalem, the Open University, Ben Gurion Airport, and numerous civic institutions around the country.

ADA - MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT profiles a woman and artist deeply tested by the realities of career and motherhood, a unique mother-daughter bond, and a fragile nation grappling with unrealized dreams.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with:
Yael Melamede
Mary McLeod

Yael Melamede (she/her) is the co-founder of SALTY Features—an independent production company based in New York City whose goal is to create media that is thought-provoking, vital, and enhances the world. Melamede’s documentary credits include DEATH&TAXES (DocNYC 2024), ADA-MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT (ADFF 2024) FLOYD ABRAMS: SPEAKING FREELY (American Masters/PBS 2023), PAY OR DIE (MTV Films 2023), the Jigsaw Productions/Amblin Entertainment six-part series WHY WE HATE (Discovery 2019), WHEN I WALK (News & Documentary Emmy Award Winner POV 2015), (DIS)HONESTY—THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES (CNBC 2015), INOCENTE (Academy Award Winner- Best Doc Short, MTV Films 2013), BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN (IFC Films 2009), and MY ARCHITECT (Academy Award Nominee, HBO 2004).

Mary McLeod (she/her) is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she teaches architecture history and theory. Her research and publications have focused on the history of the modern movement and on contemporary architecture theory, examining issues concerning the connections between architecture and politics. She is the editor of and contributor to the book Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, as well as the co-editor of Architecture, Criticism, Ideology and the website Pioneering Women of American Architecture (with Victoria Rosner). Her essays have appeared in journals such as AA Files, Journal of Architecture, Assemblage, JSAH, Casabella, and Oppositions and in books such as Modern Architecture and the Lifeworld, Architecture School, Modern Women, Feminism and Architecture, Building Systems, Architectural Theory since 1968, and Complexity and Contradiction at Fifty.

Suggested Reading: Goldberger, P. (1995, August 13). ARCHITECTURE VIEW; A Public Work That Ennobles As It Serves. The New York Times. 

"Still Making Space for Gender" centers women and LGBTQIA+ folk in the built environment. While the discourse framing gender morphs and gender identities broaden and become more intersectional, the predicament remains the same. Women and LGBTQIA+folk continue to struggle against exploitation and fight for equal rights and equity opportunities in the United States, with this situation troubling unrelenting claims of exceptionalism at home and abroad. Although gender politics are ever present, achievements are hard-won and sometimes rolled back in the face of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other ingrained expressions of exclusion. Buildings, cities, and landscapes are not only where battles over gender unfurl, but these spaces also foster identities and incite change. In this lecture series, trailblazing women and LGBTQIA + design practitioners, scholars, and activists—working in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design—insist that gender must remain in sharp focus if we are to shape equitable and just built environments.

All lectures/film screenings are free, open to the public, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact  ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu " rel="noopener" target="_blank"> ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu .

This lecture series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74, CEO of Sciame Construction.