March 28-29, 2025
114 Avery Hall, Columbia GSAPP
The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture’s biennial Dissertation Colloquium brings together a select group of doctoral students from diverse institutional and disciplinary backgrounds working on dissertation topics related to the history, theory, and criticism of architecture and the built environment in the Americas. The Colloquium has been held for over a quarter-century, and its purpose is to provide a forum for discussing significant new work by emerging scholars.
For in-person attendance (general public welcome), please RSVP here. If you do not have an active Columbia ID card, please RSVP by March 28 at 5pm. You will receive an email from CU Public Safety containing a QR code, which you will be asked to present along with a matching ID, at campus gates (116th St and Broadway or Amsterdam Ave only). Please allow extra time to pass through campus security. If you submitted an RSVP before March 28 but have not received a QR code, please email [email protected] to request a same-day security pass as soon as possible.
Accessibility: At the southeast corner of Dodge Hall (along the 116th St walk inside the campus gates), there is a wheelchair-accessible lift; please use the wall-mounted phone or call (212) 854-2797 for use, then travel from Dodge Hall to Fayerweather Hall, entering at the south door to find the inside elevator and taking this to the lowest floor. Then follow signs for the BDC held in Avery Hall room 114.
Keynote Lecture
Brian Goldstein (Swarthmore)
"'In the Life of a Building Our Moment is Brief': J. Max Bond, Jr.'s Long View”
Architect J. Max Bond, Jr. (1935-2009) shaped a career centered on the needs and desires for freedom, self-determination, and the chance for communities to make a world in their own image. His experiments with grassroots participation, flexible designs shaped by residents, and expertise embodied in construction labor, remain highly relevant to the present day. Goldstein’s lecture, focused on projects Bond and his collaborators designed in Harlem, Mississippi, and Atlanta between the 1960s and 1980s, will explore Bond’s understanding of the architect as only one player in the long life of a building. “In the life of a building,” Bond once wrote, “our moment is brief.”
Graphic design by Morcos Key
