Architectural theory has at times been taught as a strictly academic enterprise, one set in opposition to the material demands of architectural practice. This symposium, THEORY ACTS, posits instead that theory is a crucial instrument for developing an activist practice, and that the textual and discursive sides of architectural education are vital to becoming an engaged citizen (of the design disciplines and the world at large). At a moment of political intensity in the United States and globally, what are the possibilities of architectural theory in helping us reckon with our profession’s capacities and complicities? 

Image: The Atelier Populaire workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, May 1968. Photograph by Phillippe Vermès.

James Graham’s essay “A Bridle of Wires: Constructivism and the Nationalities Policy in the Early USSR” has been published in a special collection in Architectural Histories that brings together scholars working on Eastern European topics at a moment of geopolitical crisis.

Image: The ‘Steppe City’ of Elista, Russia, as illustrated in USSR in Construction, 1 (1930).

Irene Cheng and Neeraj Bhatia: "The Form of Politics/The Politics of Form"

David Gissen: "The Architecture of Disability"

Markus Miessen: "Agonistic Assemblies -- On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality"

Nerea Calvillo presents Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series, Lydia Kallipoliti presents The Architecture of Closed Worlds.

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series, Elise Hunchuck, Marco Ferrari, & Jingru Cyan Cheng present Sky River and Other Atmospheres.

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series,Andrew Shanken presents The Everyday Life of Memorials.

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series, María González Pendás presents Concrete Bodies, Magic Shells, and the Labor Archives of American Coloniality.

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series, Nerea Calvillo presents Aeropolis.

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series, Mark Wasiuta presents Air Manifest.

As part of the Spring 2023 HTX Lecture Series, Enrique Gualberto Ramirez presents The Map and the Tennis Ball: Voyages in Aerostatic Flight.

Beth Rose Middleton Manning will present a lecture as part of the Fall 2022 HTX Lecture Series.

Maura Lucking will present a lecture as part of the Fall 2022 HTX Lecture Series.

As part of the Spring 2022 HTX Lecture Series, Peter Christensen presents Architecture in Full Circle: From Mine to Scrapyard.

As part of the Spring 2022 HTX Lecture Series, Diana Martinez presents Sparkling Skin, Clean Hands: A Concrete Architecture for Decolonization.

As part of the Spring 2022 HTX Lecture Series, Jane Mah Hutton presents Arresting Decay: Tropical Hardwood Lives and Afterlives.

"Building Integration," an essay by Michael Abrahamson and James Graham on Gunnar Birkerts' work at the historically Black college of Tougaloo, has been published in Radical Pedagogies (MIT Press), edited by Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, and Anna-Maria Meister.

Images: Gunnar Birkerts, design for Tougaloo College, Jackson, Mississippi, 1965

As part of the Spring 2022 HTX Lecture Series, Andrew Alden presents a Walking Tour of Oakland Quarries and Building Stones.

Decommodifying Ownership, a cluster of courses proposed by James Graham, Janette Kim, and Brendon Levitt, has been awarded a course development prize by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University.

Image: Carlos Garcia and Yue Liu, project diagram for the Reframing Property studio taught by Janette Kim, fall 2021.

The Materialities of Architectural Discourse explores the new mediums and platforms through which architectural theory is happening today—particularly emerging ones that might call into question some of the ways that theory and discourse have familiarly been materialized.

Lecture by Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research.

Rafico Ruiz and Desiree Valadares will present a lecture as part of the Spring 2021 HTX Lecture Series, which fall under the theme Spaces of Extraction.

Tao Leigh Goffe will present a lecture as part of the Spring 2021 HTX Lecture Series, which fall under the theme Spaces of Extraction.

Dalal Alsayer and Neeraj Bhatia will present a lecture as part of the Spring 2021 HTX Lecture Series, which fall under the theme Spaces of Extraction.

Giovanna M. Bassi-Cendra will present a lecture as part of the Spring 2021 HTX Lecture Series, which fall under the theme Spaces of Extraction.

Sarah Lopez, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will give the opening keynote lecture for Make. Act. Resist: A Teach-in on Borders and Migration.