20th Anniversary — The Future of Cities, Design and Community Education

Moderator:
Jason Schupbach, Dean of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University
Jason Schupbach is the Dean of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University. He was formerly the Director of the Design School at Arizona State University, and the Director of Design and Creative Placemaking Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served in multiple other government and foundation positions.  He has written extensively on the role of arts and design in making better communities, and his writing has been featured as a Best Idea of the Day by the Aspen Institute.

Speakers:
Anya Sirota, Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives & Associate Professor of Architecture
Anya Sirota is an architectural designer, Associate Professor, Associate Dean of Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and founding principal of Akoaki. Her work, situated at the intersection of architecture and urban design, explores how a distinct synthesis of aesthetics, social enterprise, and cultural programming can offer contemporary and multi-disciplinary strategies for urban transformation. Her ongoing research and design efforts have received international recognition with recent projects featured at the Vitra Design Museum, the Brussels Design Museum, the Centro Pecci Prato, the Saint Etienne Design Biennale, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She is the recipient of the Architectural League Prize (2018), the ACSA Faculty Design Award (2016), the SXSW Eco Place by Design Award (2015), and the R+D Award from Architect Magazine (2013), and other honors. Sirota regularly contributes to international lectures, panels, workshops, and expositions addressing socially driven architectural practice and its impact on cities.

Sirota earned her Master in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the Araldo Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University.

Marc Norman, Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair in Real Estate Development & Investment, and Associate Dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University
Marc Norman is the Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair in Real Estate Development & Investment, and Associate Dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University. A renowned urban planner and a veteran in the field of community development and finance, Norman also is the founder of Ideas and Action, a consulting firm. Before joining NYU in July 2022, he was an Associate Professor of Practice at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, where he also served as Faculty Director of the Weiser Center for Real Estate at the University’s Ross School of Business. A former Loeb Fellow, Norman also has extensive experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors and has worked collaboratively to develop or finance over 2,000 units of housing totaling more than $400 million in total development costs.

Quilian Riano, Dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture
Quilian Riano is the Dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, working across the school’s architecture, landscape, urban design, planning, and management programs. Quilian also serves as the Vice President for Architecture of the Architectural League of New York.

Quilian founded and leads DSGN AGNC, a design studio exploring new forms of cooperative design, processes, and engagements through architecture, urbanism, landscapes and art. Quilian and DSGN AGNC’s design work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Queens Museum of Art, Harvard University, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, The New Museum, the Center for Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, among others. For this work, Quilian has won awards from the Vilcek Foundation, the American Society of Landscape Architects, Harvard University, The Boston Society of Architects, and the University of Florida and received fellowships from the Design Trust for Public Space, Institute for Public Architecture, and the J. Max Bond Center for the Just City at CUNY, among others.

Quilian has also been involved in practices/collectives seeking to transform architecture and education such as being an initiator and core member of Dark Matter University, a BIPOC-led democratic network committed to creating new forms of knowledge and knowledge production, institutions, collectivity, practice, design, and community culture. Quilian has also been a member, part of the executive committee, and served on the board of The Architecture Lobby, an international organization of architectural workers, planners, and designers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline. Finally, Quilian worked in the first few key years of Architecture 2030, a nonprofit that seeks to make the building sector central to solutions to the climate crisis, as well as the director of the 2030 Palette project.

Over the last few decades, Quilian has taught undergraduate and graduate studios in architecture, urban design, art, and transdisciplinary design at Harvard University, Columbia University, Carleton University, Parsons The New School of Design, The Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, and Kent State University. Quilian is an initiator and core member of Dark Matter University, a democratic network committed to creating new forms of knowledge and knowledge production, institutions, collectivity, practice, design, and community culture.