Publication

  • And Now: Architecture Against a Developer Presidency
    James Graham
    Editor
    Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2017
  • GRANTEE
    Columbia University-Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
    GRANT YEAR
    2015

Silent protest of African-Americans in New York City, 1917. Copyright: Underwood & Underwood, NY.

The essays gathered in And Now explore the nature of architecture's many long-standing complicities. Architecture coordinates colossal expenditures (of material, of energy); it scripts forms of labor (in its construction, in its operation, and in the programs it houses); and it is both a repository and generator of capital. Architecture participates, centrally, in defining modes of life, whether for the privileged or the dispossessed—designing and building the boundaries between the "haves" and the "have-nots." This fundamental reality of architectural practice need not inspire either nihilism or defensiveness but should rather be understood, quite simply, as the terrain we navigate. Naming these complicities and the injustices they perpetuate is a first step toward addressing them.

Amale Andraos is dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a principal of WORKac, which she cofounded with Dan Wood in 2003. WORKac has achieved international recognition for projects such as the Centre de Conferences in Libreville, Gabon; the New Holland Island Cultural Center master plan in St. Petersburg, Russia; and the Edible Schoolyard at PS216 in Brooklyn. Andraos has taught at numerous institutions, including Princeton, Harvard, and the American University in Beirut. Her publications include 49 Cities, which rereads visionary cities through an ecological lens, and the forthcoming Architecture and Representation: the Arab City. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Andraos serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York and is a member of the faculty steering committees for the Columbia Global Centers, Middle East, and the Columbia Global Centers, Turkey.

James Graham teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), where he also serves as director of publications and is completing his dissertation. He is the founding editor of the Avery Review, a monthly digital journal of critical essays on architecture, and has edited several of the volumes on the GSAPP Books imprint. His writing has appeared in Grey Room, AA Files, Manifest, JSAH, Aggregate, and the New Inquiry.

Columbia University (founded 1754) is one of the world's most important centers of research, while at the same time, a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The university recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the university to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.