School of Architecture Announces Spring 2026 Visiting Critics

Tiffany Xu (Boghosian Fellow 2025-2026)

Tiffany XuTiffany Xu will teach the visiting critic studio, “16INOC: Experiments in Light Timber,” which will explore the potential of light timber through the lens of medium specificity.

16” O.C. (16 inches on center) denotes a fundamental unit in light timber framing, a construction system that accounts for 90% of all residential construction in the United States. This system is deeply entwined with histories of ecological management, skilled labor and developments in modern manufacturing. That light timber has persisted as a viable medium of construction from the late Industrial Revolution to the present, with relatively little modification, speaks to its capacity to traverse technological and aesthetic paradigms. Over time, however, it has accumulated conventions and ingrained habits that have drifted from its original experimental and informal foundations.

The studio positions conventions of timber framing—such as typical spacing, methods of layering, and the treatment of framing as a hidden cavity—as codes to be critically examined, tested and reimagined. Design prompts will be derived from literary short stories, with an emphasis on tectonics, material ecology and the translation of narrative into spatial and material languages. Sites of intervention will engage existing structures rather than start from the ground up, and students will study precedents ranging from the renowned to the anonymous.

Xu will give a public lecture on Thursday, Feb. 5, at 5:30 p.m. in the atrium of Slocum Hall.

Gary Bates (Make Make)

Gary BatesGary Bates will teach the visiting critic studio, “Harlem Lane(s): Architecture as Civic Infrastructure,” which reimagines Harlem’s historic Black churches as catalysts for equitable urban transformation. Rather than treating these buildings as static landmarks, the studio positions them as interconnected civic infrastructures—sites where housing, culture, environmental systems and community governance can be reconfigured to resist displacement and support collective wealth building.

Using “synaptic urbanism,” students will study multiple church sites as a network of nodes forming a larger civic system across Harlem. Working in research teams, focused on Culture and Memory, Environment and Infrastructure, Energy and Mobility, and Geopolitics and Governance, students will produce forensic mappings that reveal how systemic inequities shape urban space.

The studio draws on Fernand Braudel’s temporal frameworks and Ralph Ellison’s notion of “ultrasonic semitones” to explore subtle cultural and spatial forces. Design proposals will develop “counter-gravitational” architectures that challenge economic models through cooperative ownership, community land trusts and closed-loop environmental systems.

Emphasizing “territorial intelligence,” the studio treats each site as a living system where water, soil, plants, non-human habitats and human communities interact across scales. By centering Harlem’s churches as sites of spatial, political and economic agency, the studio frames architectural practice as a tool for civic repair and reparative justice.

Bates will give a public lecture on Thursday, March 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the atrium of Slocum Hall.

Herwig Baumgartner (Baumgartner Architects)

Herwig BaumgartnerHerwig Baumgartner will teach the visiting critic studio, “Embedded Volumes,” which investigates the relationship between containers and volumes through the design of a youth-focused Performing Arts Center in an urban context. The studio explores how architecture can support openness, accessibility and transparency while fostering informal indoor and outdoor performance spaces that actively engage the surrounding urban fabric.

Central to the brief is an examination of youth arts programming inspired by Venezuela’s publicly funded music education movement, El Sistema, founded in the mid-1970s by educator, musician and activist José Antonio Abreu. Grounded in the belief that music can be a catalyst for social change, the model has since been adopted globally to provide free music education for young people.

The studio begins with precedent research followed by a focused design warm-up that explores strategies of embedded volumes. Through this exercise, students develop formal and spatial approaches for front-of-house, performance and back-of-house programs before advancing to the comprehensive design of the Performing Arts Center. Throughout the studio, voids are conceived as spaces for circulation and gathering, volumes evolve into performance halls, and courtyards transform into rehearsal spaces integrated within a single architectural container. Students will design within an existing urban condition while engaging the interconnected forces of cultural diversity, context, iconicity, structure, circulation and performance, all of which shape the building’s role and identity within the city.

Baumgartner will give a public lecture on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 5:30 p.m. in the atrium of Slocum Hall.