During 2024–2025, the School of Architecture hosted one colloquium and three symposia.

The Mind and Space Colloquium, organized by Yoko Kawai, was held in a series of four events across the 2024–2025 academic year. The colloquium explored important questions including how our mind perceives space and whether our spaces can influence mental health. The events reflected contemporary academic conversations on mind and space from the conceptual, such as the cultural definition of the self and space, to the scientific, which can be measured. Accordingly, invited speakers joined from the fields of philosophy, religion, neuroscience, cognitive science, environmental psychology, and behavioral science.

Building a Planetary Solution: Regenerative Architectural Strategies for a Planet in Crisis was held on February 20–22, 2025. The lifecycle of the built environment—the production, operation, and, ultimately, disposal of buildings and infrastructure (and their aggregation as towns and cities)—currently accounts for nearly half of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, more than half of solid waste generation, and nearly three quarters of energy consumption. These statistics fail to capture the range of systemic challenges we face as a consequence of our unique but ubiquitous capacity to produce and consume the artifacts of our industriousness. As we approach this critical planetary threshold, what scientists describe as a “climate tipping point,” how can architects and their colleagues in the building sector mitigate or even reverse the ecological and atmospheric impacts of the work? What if, instead of continuing to deplete and degrade our planet’s natural ecosystems—its forests, peatlands, wetlands—the making of global buildings and cities could become a force to incentivize their restoration, reverse climate change, and enhance biodiversity? 

Speakers included Paul Anastas, Deborah Berke, Phillip G. Bernstein, Darrell Brooks, Stephanie Carlisle, Oswaldo Chincilla, Alison Cunningham, Ana María Durán Calisto, Anna Dyson, Christian Gäth, Eva Gladek, Adam Hopfner, Daniel Ibañez, Indy Johar, Micha Kretschman, Sara Kuebbing, Matti Kuittinen, Joshua Kuhr, David Lewis, Tanya Luthi, Maurie McInnis, Philipp Misselwitz, Kiel Moe, Alan Organschi, Marc Palahí, Vyjayanthi Rao, Barbara Reck, Chandra Robinson, Andrew Ruff, Jennifer Russell, Allyx Schiavone, Karen Seto, Noah Silvestry, David Skelly, Andrew Waugh, Lindsey Wikstrom, Mark Wishnie, Catherine De Wolf, and Julie Zimmerman.

Discrepant Circulations was held on March 27–28, 2025. As questions of mobility become more prominent in architectural theory and history it is time to rethink circulation, a term that has long shaped how the field conceptualizes movement. Circulation is more than a synonym for the spaces through which people and things pass; it locates tensions between movement and arrest, passage and capture, flow and containment. What the discipline of architecture calls circulation concerns more than ideals of fluid, elegant, or efficient mobility: it also names operations that organize, differentiate, and channel people and things by means of pathways and diversions, openings and closures. Over the last two decades, adjacent fields such as art history, anthropology, global history, and film and media studies have theorized circulation in a different manner, examining how the meaning of images, signs, knowledge, or commodities are transformed by their currency in global networks. These different theoretical traditions can be brought into productive dialogue to grasp points of complementarity and of friction. The symposium, organized by Craig Buckley, aims to refresh and expand attention to concepts of circulation by bringing together a leading group of historians, architects, theorists, and curators to think together about the opportunities and hazards of this pervasive, yet under-examined, concept in the discipline. Discrepant Circulations has been generously supported by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund at the Macmillan Center, the History of Art Department, and the School of Architecture.

Participants included Ross Exo Adams, Tim Anstey, Aleksandr Bierig, Craig Buckley, Jordan H. Carver, Francesco Casetti, Swati Chattopadhyay, David Gissen, Samia Henni, Francesca Hughes, Diana Martinez, Morgan Ng, Alena Beth Rieger, Kishwar Rizvi, David Sadighian, and Mark Wasiuta.

Supply Chain Equity: Modern Slavery, Architecture, and Construction was held on April 11–12, 2025. The ongoing legacy of chattel slavery and the persistence of modern slavery weigh on the architecture, construction, and engineering industries, from material supply chains to jobsites. While the professions recognize the necessity of this work, the inertial weight of current practice and systems have sidelined early efforts to confront slavery in contemporary society. Yet the momentum for change continues. Architecture and law students—along with colleagues from environmental, social work, business, and policy programs—seek connections to justice and exploitation-free practice. Building on this momentum, the symposium invites participants to work across disciplinary lines, harness expertise, and seek pathbreaking solutions together. Supply Chain Equity was supported by the J. Irwin Miller Endowment, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Gordon H. Smith Lectureship in Practical Architecture Fund, and was jointly organized with the University of Michigan Law School.

Speakers included Sheela Ahluwalia, Greg Asbed, Phillip G. Bernstein, David Blight, Bridgette Carr, Jordan H. Carver, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Luis C.deBaca, Billie Faircloth, Seth Guikema, Kayleigh Houde, Alicia Ley, Shawn MacDonald, Chavi Keeney Nana, Randy Newcomb, Alan Organschi, Jacob Reidel, Amy O’Neill Richard, Nora Rizzo, Ana Tomic, and Ryan Welch.

Symposia at the Yale School of Architecture are supported in part by the J. Irwin Miller Fund.