From the first day of classes, spaces across the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning are charged with creative energy, critical inquiry, and the exchange of ideas. As the semester gets underway, explore what’s ahead so you can make the most of every opportunity, including guest lectures, special exhibitions, and recently-introduced expanded and cross-disciplinary course offerings.
Department of City and Regional Planning
CRPConnect! will bring the planning community together for a symposium October 22–24 in Ithaca. Organized by faculty and student leaders, as well as the new Cornell Planning Alumni Organization, this event celebrates 90 years of research and practice within the department. Participants will include planning alumni from across the United States, as well as China, India, Ghana, Italy, and beyond. A series of roundtable plenaries, workshops, and panels will explore planning practice, investigate critical challenges, and chart a path forward for the department and the field at large.
For students and faculty, the semester also brings timely workshops, classes, and field trips. Professor Victoria Beard will lead a workshop in partnership with Slum Dwellers International and its community movement in Nairobi, Kenya. Students will also continue CRP’s long tradition of rigorous and creative engagement in urban design and planning work in Cleveland with Senior Lecturer Mitch Glass and the t-RUST Lab. All first-year master’s students will travel to New York City for the department’s annual fall field trip, supported by the Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities. The trip will focus on climate adaptation work by public, private, and community planners in the city.
Department of Architecture
Continuing to bring renowned architects to campus, the department welcomes Rubacha Featured Speaker Jeanne Gang, founder and leader of Studio Gang, for a talk on October 14. Gensler Visiting Critic Katie Swenson, a senior principal at MASS whose work explores how architecture can advance human dignity, ecological health, and social equity, will deliver a public lecture on September 10. The department will also host a special event to honor the career and achievements of Professor Emeritus Donald Greenberg. He will be joined on stage by faculty guests for a conversation on October 8 to discuss his professional trajectory, as well as the themes, challenges, and opportunities he sees for design education and practice and their relationship to computing — from computer graphics and representation to AI.
Swenson will also teach an option studio with Architecture Assistant Professor Jennifer Newsom exploring places where legacies of the Civil Rights Movement remain present and consequential. Coursework includes travel to communities in the Southeast US to examine how narratives are folded across people, places, and times, and how public memory is shaped through design. This semester’s work on the Collegetown initiative is organized around two interconnected courses — an option studio led by Architecture Associate Professor Lily Chi and a real estate special topics course led by Associate Professor Suzanne Lanyi Charles, CRP and Real Estate. Students will collaborate on interdisciplinary teams to build on substantial work already undertaken by the City of Ithaca, community organizations, residents, business owners, the college, and the university. The initiative integrates critical thinking and community participation across design, public policy, and the real estate market to develop long-term strategies that enhance Collegetown’s vitality, resilience, and livability.
Also joining the department with a tenure-track assistant professor appointment are Manuel Bouzas Barcala, Rocío Crosetto Brizzio, Emma Silverblatt, and Zhicheng Xu. In addition, Brizzio has been named the Judith Kinnard Early Career Design Fellow for this academic year.
Department of Art
An exhibition showcasing members of the faculty will be presented at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, on view from November 1 through March 7. Organized by Curatorial Assistant Annie Abernathy, participants will select a work from the museum’s permanent collection to pair with their own contribution, demonstrating how many other makers, collections, and encounters exist alongside an artist’s own practice. First- and second-year M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts students will also share their work with the broader community through an evening of individual artist talks on September 8. These presentations will introduce their studio practices, research interests, and developing bodies of work.
American interdisciplinary artist and critical theorist Katherine Behar will serve as the fall 2026 Teiger Mentor in the Arts, offering a public lecture and engaging with students through teaching and studio visits. Mark Anthony Brown Jr. will extend his tenure as the Strauch Early Career Fellow in Art. The department also welcomes new and returning visiting critics Matt Bollinger and Christine Elfman, as well as new instructor Pauline Shongov.
Department of Design Tech
The department has moved into a renovated dome studio space in Sibley Hall and welcomes new tenure-track faculty members Amira Abdel-Rahman (Ithaca; joint appointment with Cornell Duffield Engineering’s Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) and Max Kreminski (NYC; joint appointment with Cornell Tech), as well as Joe Ferdinando and Kobe Phillips, who join as visiting faculty in Ithaca.
Design Tech Associate Professor Jose Sanchez has been named faculty director of the Backslash initiative at Cornell Tech and will launch a one-year pilot to transform the former Maker Lab space on the New York City campus into a public-facing lab geared toward design, art, and technology. In Ithaca, Design Tech Volumes 02 kicks off production, and students across Cornell are invited to enroll in a new university-wide course titled AI, Design, and Creativity (DESIGN4197/DESIGN6197), co-taught by Design Tech Innovation Fellow Daniel Leithinger and Visiting Lecturer Joe Ferdinando.
Paul Rubacha Department of Real Estate
New faculty joining the department this semester include Stephanie Wright, who will lead the Real Estate NYC Immersion for Baker M.P.S. RE students; J. Allen Smith, who will teach Real Estate: Art Form or Asset — Design, Development and Decision Making in NYC; and Richard Baker, who will lead the Real Estate Bootcamp in Ithaca on October 3 and 4. Baker’s two-day course is open to all AAP students.
Every week, every semester, the Cornell Real Estate Distinguished Speaker Series attracts global industry leaders to campus to share insights and discuss important issues in the field. Students enroll in the class for credit, and special sessions are open to the greater Cornell community. This semester, students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend a talk on November 11 with Rob Schiffer, Executive Vice President, Development, at SL Green Realty Corp.
Students are invited to attend the 44th Annual Cornell Real Estate Conference (CREC), held on November 6 at The Times Center in New York City. This year’s event features industry thought leaders who will provide insight into ever-changing trends, ongoing disruption, and the future of the real estate industry.
Gensler Family AAP NYC Center
Leading 95 students and seven studios, instructors will ground their classes in local New York City conditions. Faculty include John Cerrone (SHoP), who is offering a new Building Tech class; Nitsan Bartov (Henning Larsen) with a new theory class; Dominic Cort, who is devising a new visual representation class; and Benedict Clouette, who is leading a new urban design theory class. Vishaan Chakrabarti (principal, PAU) returns as the semester’s Baird Visiting Critic.
After a sold-out pilot season, architect Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. ’54) and critic Cynthia Davidson will host the second Island Editions conversation series, beginning this fall. Speakers are still being confirmed, with plans to livestream the talks in Milstein Hall for the Ithaca audience. AAP NYC will also partner with Architecture Associate Professor Billie Faircloth and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability to present a collaborative event on September 25, part of Climate Week NYC 2026.
Cornell in Rome
Two projects that expand community engagement and applied learning opportunities in Rome will be supported by AAP Engagement Impact Grants this semester. The first, Other Rome: Community-Based Learning through Creative Counter-Mapping, is a new community-based learning initiative that creates a methodological bridge between two Rome Program courses — Contemporary Rome Seminar (led by Visiting Critic Anna Gorchakovskaya) and Italian Cinema (led by Visiting Lecturer Carolina Ciampaglia) — to help students develop alternative, experience-based ways of understanding the city. Running across Fall 2026 and Spring 2027, the project combines site-specific fieldwork, film-based spatial analysis, and collaborative “counter-mapping” to explore Rome beyond its canonical center. The second is Resistant Layers, proposed by artist and researcher Liana Miuccio, a visual research and photography project that places women’s resistance in ancient Rome in dialogue with contemporary activism addressing gender-based violence in Italy. Through photography and archival inquiry, the project creates a compelling visual exchange between two “archives” of the city: portraits and sculptures of Roman women preserved in museums, and the layered, weathered street posters of women found on Rome’s walls.
Among the program’s excursions, an extensive field trip to Puglia will offer students a rich, place-based immersion in architecture and art across the region. The itinerary includes lectures and site visits in Lecce, Castel del Monte, Alberobello, Ostuni, Otranto, and Taranto. The trip will also include Matera, renowned for the Sassi — an extraordinary rock-cut city and a powerful case study in adaptive reuse and the complexities of heritage and contemporary intervention.
Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities
The center will host five visiting Reflective Practitioners from African cities throughout the semester as part of their Just and Equitable Cities initiative. They will engage with the college in various ways, including guest lectures and participation in the new City and Regional Planning workshop, Data & African Informal Settlements. Additionally, they will help evaluate and plan the next summer internship opportunities in Accra, Ghana; Harare, Zimbabwe; and Nairobi, Kenya.
In September, center guests include a Reflective Practitioner from Slum Dwellers International (SDI): Joseph Muturi, SDI President. In October, four more Reflective Practitioners will visit AAP: Kimani Joseph, Executive Director of SDI-Kenya; Patience Matsangaise, Executive Director of Dialogue on Shelter in Harare; Braimah Farouk, Executive Director for People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements in Accra; and Austin Ablo, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Ghana, who will visit campus to participate in the CRPConnect! symposium via a panel on the coproduction of research and practice between universities and civil society.
And stay tuned! The Good City podcast will release the first episodes of Season 2: Cities Under Pressure.
Dome Renewal
The dome renovation project in Sibley Hall, which includes the addition of a 112-seat, circular auditorium; open, light-filled studios and workspaces; a collaborative commons with study alcoves and meeting areas for the entire AAP community; and new, centrally located homes for the cross-disciplinary Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities and the multicollege Department of Design Tech, is now complete. Also, get ready for the iconic Green Dragon Cafe to reopen in its original central location on Sibley’s lower level, ready with a refreshed look to serve up the food and beverages you count on to fuel the work of the semester. Welcome back, everyone!
Lectures and Exhibitions Calendar
Select Lectures
9/8: M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts Student Artist Talks (ART)
9/10: Gensler Visiting Critic Lecture: Katie Swenson (ARCH)
9/14: Carson Chan (ROME)
9/17: Kianja Strobert (ROME)
9/23: Mario Carpo (DT)
9/25: Preston H. Thomas Memorial Lectures: Michael Govan (ARCH)
9/30: NYC Institutions Lecture Panel with Matthew Niederhauser (ONX), Salome Asega (New Museum / New Inc), and Michael Connor (Rhizome) (DT / Cornell Tech)
10/5: Mark Morris (ROME)
10/6: Catherine Taylor, Senior Lecturer and Codirector of the M.F.A. in Image Text program and ITI Press (ART)
10/7: Heinrich M. Jaeger (DT)
10/8: Tom Emerson, Aula Magna, Roma Tre University (ROME, in collaboration with partner institutions)
10/8: Donald Greenberg: Past, Present, and Future of Computing and Architecture (ARCH)
10/14: Rubacha Featured Speakers Lecture: Jeanne Gang, founder and leader of Studio Gang (ARCH)
10/22–10/24: CRPConnect! Symposium (CRP)
10/27: Yashua Klos (ART)
11/5: Preston H. Thomas Memorial Lectures: Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, Founders of LANZA (ARCH)
11/11: Virginia San Fratello (DT)
11/11: Rob Schiffer, Executive Vice President, Development, SL Green Realty Corp. (RE)
11/19: Teiger Mentor in the Arts: Katherine Behar — Working Knowledge (ART)
11/23: Enrico Hernández and Valentino Hernández (ROME)
Select Exhibitions
8/31–9/17: Lilian Shtereva (M.F.A. ’27), taskscapes
9/21–10/8: Kathleen Hawkes (B.F.A. ’07), The Cherry Blossoms You Missed
10/12–10/23: M.F.A. Group Exhibition
10/19–11/12: Art Visiting Critic Kyle Bellucci Johanson, Andre Keichian, Nyeema Morgan, Nate Young, Yun Hsiang Wang (M.F.A. ’26), Cristhian Varela (M.F.A. ’27), To Be For Forbears
11/16–11/30: Students of Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Distinguished Alumni Memorial Professor in Architecture Mark Cruvellier, Structural Systems Fall 2026
11/30–12/10: B.F.A. Senior Thesis Exhibitions
Additional lectures, exhibitions, and events are added throughout the semester. Stay up to date on all that AAP has planned this fall.
