A 2011 exhibition curated by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture,

Columbia University Avery Hall, 100 Level

The refrain “Everything has changed” echoed throughout public life in the wake of September 11, 2001. International attention focused on the symbolic architectural response at Ground Zero, which became the center of a wide-raging public discussion that affected architecture in New York more broadly during the ensuing decade. By displaying excerpts from procedures such as design review, civic forums, and marketing alongside the photographic portraits of eleven representative architectural projects around a forty-eight foot long communal table in Columbia University’s Avery Hall café, Public Matters: New York Architecture after 9/11 invited audiences to reconsider architecture’s role as a matter of public concern during a period of dramatic historical change. The exhibition was introduced by a selection of materials documenting the public discussions surrounding the Ground Zero site assembled by Columbia’s Center on Organizational Innovation.