ArchitectureTalk

Today we are joined by Martien de Vletter who is the associate director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and gathers archival material dedicated to rethinking, remembering, and preserving architectural thoughts and memories. Vletter also talks about decolonizing the archive and transforming it into something more diverse, inclusive, and multifaceted.

Today we are joined by Sumangala Damodaran who teaches in the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, trained economist, dedicated her life to documenting and being a part of leftist oppositional protest movements. Today, Damodaran discusses her protest songs, her songs of sorrow, her singing, the research she has done to connect civilizations, and the diverse impact she has created internationally.

This week, we are joined by Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, who are both principals at AGENCY. Kripa and Mueller recently published their book Fronts: Military Urbanism and the Developing World, which starts our conversation and dives into immigration, migration, and questions the climate change emergency.

To kick off the new year, today we are joined by Neelkanth Chhaya who is a professor in India. Chhaya discusses forms and contingence of south Asian aesthetic theory, he is an open-minded and inquisitor thinker, and examines the ideas and interests and cross-references them.

Cornell University’s Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History, Dominick LaCapra discusses the constitutive role of transference in our relationship to history, historiography, animals and architecture. We discuss transference’s relationship with empathy and connecting with Others, and when it ‘crosses the line’ and becomes pathological. Topics include the architecture of Auschwitz, the skyscraper versus adobe, and the possibility of a non-anthropocentric ecological future.