The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture was founded at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (New York City) in 1983. In recent years, the Center has convened conversations among overlapping constituencies, including academics, students, professionals, and the general public. Its current project addresses the topic of Architecture and Land in the Americas, in its historical significance and contemporary relevance. The Center’s director, Lucia Allais (b. London, 1974), is a historian and critic of architecture whose work focuses on the relation between architecture, politics, and technology in the modern period and on the global stage.

AD—WO (Partners: Jen Wood b. Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, 1984, & Emanuel Admassu, b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1983), is an art and architecture practice based in New York City, and by extension, between Melbourne and Addis Ababa. The practice aims to establish an operational terrain between architecture’s content and container: equally committed to designing buildings and reimagining their sociopolitical contexts. Founded in 2015, AD—WO has undertaken projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Germany, and the United States. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Architekturmueum der TU Munchen, and Art Omi. AD—WO’s work is part of the permanent collection at the High Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Marya Demetra Kanakis is a Greek-American architect and editor. Spanning ecology, urbanism, media theory, and curation, her explorations critique ecologies of cities as a coexistence between humans and machines revealing new representations of nature through technology. From designing healthcare clinics, to completing urban design research for SOM, to working on sustainable housing projects for Kanye West – Marya’s work transcends scales of typical practice, revolving around her interests in science, technology, botany, books, and art. Her recent research, Grafted Natures: The Ecology of a Blurred Species proposes repositioning authorship in the anthropocene. She writes on the history of mankind as told through parallel histories of grafting (botanical and medical) exposing centuries of authorship in reconstructing nature – and translating this to the design of a book. Similar themes carry into formats of other work, such as video installations of 3d-scanned genetically modified crops. Current research interrogates new methods of publication design and bookmaking, culminating into proposals for new models of publishing houses. Her methodology for all projects involves spatializing bibliographies and extracting these logics into new associations. After completing her studies at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Marya returned to IIT to teach a studio on the topic of health and urbanism. Her work has been featured at exhibitions in Cambridge, Chicago, Venice, Milan, Rome, Mexico City, and Munich.