Colloquium: Why Design Matters

Thursday, Sep 10, 2026

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Sciame Auditorium (Room 107)
141 Convent Avenue
New York, NY 10031

Please RSVP here.

This in-person colloquium is part of the exhibition and event series celebrating 25 years of the CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) European Prize for Urban Public Space, "Design Matters: In Favor of Urban Public Space".

How can design respond to urgent challenges without reinforcing existing inequalities? What does it mean to design for resilience in a rapidly changing world? How can diverse voices shape the outcomes of design processes? What responsibilities do designers hold in shaping these futures? How might design move beyond problem-solving to become a tool for collective imagination and transformation?

Introduction: Prof. Fabian Llonch

Moderator: Prof. Julio Salcedo-Fernandez, Director, Graduate Program in Urban Design

Panelists (15-minute presentations):

Maria Buhigas, Chief Architect of the City of Barcelona

Josep Ricart, Principal, Harquitectes

Mimi Hoang, Architect and Principal, nARCHITECTS, New York

Panelists (left to right) Maria Buhigas, Josep Ricart, Mimi Hoang

Julio Salcedo-Fernandez (he/him) is an architect, urban designer, and educator whose work bridges architecture and urbanism across multiple scales. He is Director of the Master of Urban Planning and Urban Design (MUPUD) program at the City College of New York's Spitzer School of Architecture, where he teaches and leads interdisciplinary design initiatives focused on the future of cities. Alongside his academic work, he maintains an active design practice and has published and lectured on topics including urban resilience, adaptive reuse, and the relationship between infrastructure, ecology, and the built environment. He recently participated in New York City's Urban Resource Recovery Working Group.

Suggested Reading: Salcedo Fernandez, Julio. 2026. "Historic Urban Manufacturing Territories as Metropolitan Metabolic Infrastructure: Balancing Circular Economy, Environmental Justice, and Healthy Cities" Land 15, no. 8: 1496.

Josep Ricart (he/him) is founding partner at Harquitectes. HARQUITECTES is an architecture studio founded in 2000 by David Lorente, Josep Ricart, Xavier Ros and Roger Tudó. They combine their professional activity with teaching, in Polytechnic University of Catalonia Faculty of Architecture (ETSAV and ETSAB), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. They have been invited to Porto Academy, Architectural Association School of architecture, Barlett school, University of Texas at Austin, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, École d’Architecture Paris-Villemin, and Umeå School of Architecture, among other institutions. They have received several national and international awards and their work has been widely published and exhibited.

Suggested Reading: Harquitectes. Textos y conversaciones. Puente Editores.

Mimi Hoang, FAIA, NOMA (she/her), co-founded nARCHITECTS with Eric Bunge with a belief in architecture as an agent of positive change that connects people and environments in unexpected ways. Her work across civic and private realms fosters engagement and is guided by an ambition to respond to changes in contemporary life – be it climate, housing, or affordability crises. Born in the tropics of Vietnam, she brings a global outlook and an obsession with greening buildings to the firm’s ethos. Mimi received her M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and her B.Sc. from M.I.T.  Architectural Record recently recognized her with a Women in Architecture Design Leadership Award. nARCHITECTS received a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and an American Academy of Arts and Letters in Architecture Award.

Suggested Reading: Canales, Fernanda. My House, Your City: Privacy in a Shared World. Barcelona: Puente Editores, 2024.

All colloquia are free, open to the public, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact sadean@ccny.cuny.edu .