David Gissen, architect, historian and theorist, gives the Mumford Lecture entitled "The Architecture and Urbanism of Disability.”
David Gissen, the renowned architect, historian, and theorist, will deliver this year's Lewis Mumford Lecture at The City College of New York on Thurs., March 28, 2024. His talk begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture's Sciame Auditorium and is entitled "The Architecture and Urbanism of Disability.”
Gissen is an author and designer based in New York City. For the lecture he draws upon his book "The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities and Landscapes Beyond Access” (2023), which explains the conceptual underpinnings of accessible design and its limitations. The pursuit of architectural access and urban accessibility have defined, if not over-defined, the politics of disabled people's engagements with the built environment. As a complement to the pursuit of equal access, Gissen proposes a more comprehensive way in which disabled people can reimagine their cities and the buildings within them. This latter agenda includes disability critiques of property and development, infrastructural management, public space, and commemoration, as well as the possibility of an “anti-eugenic” urbanism.
Gissen also wrote “Subnature” (2009) and “Manhattan Atmospheres” (2013). He held several distinguished faculty appointments, including Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale University; Dean's Visiting Professor at Columbia University, GSAPP, and University Professor at the Academy of Art in Vienna, Austria. He is currently Professor of Architecture and Urban History at Parsons School of Design/The New School.
The lecture is in keeping with the theme of the spring 2024 Sciame lecture series, “Access and Beyond: Architecture and Disability.” The topic answers the call for disability justice in our time via architects, designers, and scholars inspired by critical disability studies and who situate disability, ability, and access in pointed, specific critiques of design, culture, and power.
Practitioners are invited to probe assumptions embedded in universal design, to center belonging in design practice, to critique technology in relation to inclusion, and to apprehend the rich contribution of difference in the sensorial experiences of places.
Live captioning and ASL interpretation will be available upon request. For access requests or questions, please contact, ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu .
About the Mumford Lecture Each spring, the Spitzer School of Architecture and its Urban Design Program present the Lewis Mumford Lecture and seminar. Named for writer, architecture critic, and urbanist Lewis Mumford, who attended City College, the series invites the world’s most distinguished urbanists to speak freely and publicly about the future of cities and the social purposes of architecture. This series was initiated by the late Michael Sorkin, distinguished professor of architecture and director of the Urban Design Program at the Spitzer School, and curated by him for eleven years.
Previous Lewis Mumford Lecturers:
2004 Jane Jacobs
2005 Mike Davis
2006 Enrique Peñalosa
2007 Amartya Sen
2008 David Harvey
2009 Paul Auster
2011 Richard Sennett
2012 Janette Sadik-Khan
2013 Marshall Berman
2014 Theaster Gates
2015 Rebecca Solnit
2022 Yasmeen Lari
2023 Emily Badger
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Thea Klapwald
e:
tklapwald@ccny.cuny.edu