During the era of Modernism, architects led the charge in addressing housing shortage – devising innovative formal, technical, and organizational strategies for mass housing at a time of rapid urbanization and post-war global crisis.  In America, as the problems endemic to modern public housing grew and state sponsorship declined, architects dis-engaged from social housing, turning the subject into a question of policy.

Over the past 20 years, as the desirability of living in cities has rapidly increased, housing affordability has become the most common issue confronting cities globally.  At a time when the traditional governmental mechanisms for funding the production and maintenance of quality affordable housing have largely been dismantled, architects have re-engaged - seeking innovative alternatives for developing and designing affordable housing.  A series of new paradigms have emerged: micro-housing, communal or co-housing, and re-positioning existing public housing.  These diverse approaches share an engagement all aspects of housing production – from financing through design and execution.  For our next event the AIA Global Dialogues will reflect on designers today are taking action to create the next generation of affordable housing.

The past decade has seen a renaissance in the design and construction of the public spaces in New York and other major cities, producing vital new plazas, parks, pedestrian streets, and waterfront areas. While the proliferation of these spaces has visibly enhanced the experience of urban social and cultural life, has this growth in the designed public realm also successfully expanded opportunities for political assembly, speech and dissent? 

"Spaces of Action: Designing and Using the Public Realm for Change" is the first event in our 2018 series "ACTION_".  The conversation for this panel will examine how design of public spaces can foster inviting and inclusive cultural gathering and healthy social life within cities while also opening new potentials for political gathering and speech; how designers may anticipate this range of potentials and better enlist public participation in public spaces development; and, finally, how the life of city spaces is enhanced through their public appropriation as spaces of action?  We'd be excited to have your voice as part of this discussion. 
 

For the 5th annual AIA-NY Global Dialogues Leaning Out event, we are pleased to bring you "Displacements_ Women in Academic Leadership Now," a discussion featuring pivotal leaders of several major, elite educational institutions.  At a moment when the fraught relationships of gender and power have been playing out daily in the news in arenas ranging from politics to media and the arts, a transformation has been quietly occurring in architectural academy where many top US programs now have women in key positions of leadership.  As the discipline evolves, how are these leaders preparing the next generation of students to assume the mantle of leadership in practice?