During 2025–2026, the School of Architecture hosted four symposia.

Criticism in the New Commons (October 30–31, 2026). Critics of the built environment face a bleak landscape. The critic no longer enjoys either the authority granted by legacy print media publications or the imagined consensus of elite aesthetic taste. Yet when criticism abandons aesthetics altogether, it risks losing sight of its object, fixating on the context at the expense of the text. This symposium asked: How might we restore urgency to the task of criticism, to put it back into crisis and discover new forms of collective dialogue? And how might we reimagine methods of criticism that speak across dispersed and fragmented audiences? Focusing on criticism of the built environment—of which we are all stakeholders—this symposium invited critics across disciplines to ask whether, and how, acts of public-facing writing might help build a new commons. This symposium was organized by AJ Artemel (M.Arch. ’14), Izzy Kornblatt (Ph.D. ’28), David Sadighian (B.A. ’07, M.E.D. ’10), and Jaime Solares Carmona (Ph.D. ’29). Participants included Merve Emre, Hal Foster, Christopher Hawthorne, Molly Heintz, Samuel Medina, Suzanne Stephens, Kate Wagner, and Oliver Wainwright.

How do we build relation? (January 23, 2026). This symposium was co-organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Yale Ph.D. Program in the History and Theory of Architecture. Presenters included Catherine Ahn, Sonali Dhanpal, Fabrizio Furiassi, Ignacio G. Galán, Dimitris Hartonas (M.Arch. ’19), Jordan Kinder, Piergianna Mazzocca, Ecem Saricayir, Priyanka Sen, Shivani Shedde, Maxwell Smith-Holmes, Olga Touloumi, Asya Ece Uzmay, Paul Wu (M.Arch. ’20), and Chenchen Yan.

From Power to Possibility: Adaptive Reuse of Industrial Giants (April 1, 2026). As communities accelerate toward a clean-energy future, thousands of fossil-fuel power plants will be decommissioned. Many of these structures are monumental—grand in scale, powerfully engineered, commanding prime waterfront locations. Rather than defaulting to demolition—discarding enormous, embodied carbon and erasing industrial heritage—the priority must be transforming these sites into community assets supporting health and well-being, climate resilience, and economic development.  This symposium was organized by lecturer Norma Barbacci, Nina Rappaport of Vertical Urban Factory, and Anstress Farwell from the New Haven Preservation Trust. Participants included Norma Barbacci, Daniel Campo, Felipe Dulzaides, Douglass Farr, Anstress Farwell, Marco Ortíz, Nina Rappaport, Jeremy Alain Siegel, Lola Sheppard, Aaron Vaden-Youmans, and Manresa Wilds.

Domestic Revolutions and Feminist Cities (April 9–10, 2026). The feminist city is a work in progress. Organized by Charles Gwathmey Professor in the Practice Tatiana Bilbao and senior critic Annie Barrett, and dedicated to Professor Emerita of Architecture, Urbanism, and American Studies Dolores Hayden, this symposium spotlighted innovators from Europe, Latin America, and the United States who are reinventing urban design to recognize women’s work and civic participation. Participants included Emily Abruzzo, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Annie Barrett, Tatiana Bilbao, Lori Brown, Gabriella Carillo, Alessandra Cireddu, Karolina Czeczek, Ana María Durán Calisto, Dolores Hayden, Maria Rosario Jackson, Eva Kail, Elke Krasny, Zaida Muxi, Chelina Odbert, Anna Puigjaner, Diana Rodriguez Franco, Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, Allyx Schiavone, Malkit Shoshan, and Maria Vassilakou.

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