The fall 2024 Sciame Lecture Series holds a lens up to housing, the lack of it globally, and how architecture can provide a solution.
Photo credit: Prykarpattian Theater; Honchar family in Sloboda-Kuharska, Kyiv region.
The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York presents the fall 2024 Sciame Lecture Series, Design Matters: The Housing Question Revisited, examining innovative solutions to the global housing crisis. All lectures are in-person, free, and held at 5:30 pm on Thursdays at the Spitzer School of Architecture in Room 107, the Sciame Auditorium, 141 Convent Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10031.
The series situates the contemporary dilemma in the powerful arguments made by Friedrich Engels in the late 1800s. In his revolutionary text, “The Housing Question,” Engels argued that the dearth of adequate shelter was an inevitable consequence of the Industrial Revolution. As a result of working-class exploitation endemic to capitalist modernity, the housing crisis was resolvable only by a revolutionary reconstruction of workers’ power that would result in the collective ownership of land and the means of production.
“Design Matters” inverts Engels’s argument, putting design, architecture, and planning first. It expands his geographic, cultural, and temporal frame to include cities outside of Western Europe, and it probes places damaged by the devastating consequences of war, the climate emergency, and other catastrophes.
A bevy of on-the-ground examples, conceived at multiple scales and aimed at reconstruction, are changing policy, politics, practice, and design. In the face of extraordinary challenges, architects, planners, and providers are collaborating to produce humane affordable solutions to the housing crisis and suggesting that architecture is needed to provoke political change.
For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact
ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu
10/10/2024 The 1931 Aluminaire House and Housing Jon Michael Schwarting & Frances Campani
10/17/2024 From Rapid Sheltering to Social Housing Anna Pashynska & Tania Pashynska
10/24/2024 Unbordering: Notes on Transmission Nora Akawi
11/07/2024 Cultural + Urban Landscapes: Designing for Local Communities in Haiti Sabine Malebranche
The Sciame Lecture Series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74, CEO of Sciame Construction.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Thea Klapwald
e:
tklapwald@ccny.cuny.edu