News

The spring 2025 Sciame lecture series, Still Making Space for Gender, centers women and LGBTQIA+ folk in the built environment. While the discourse framing gender morphs and gender identities broaden and become more intersectional, the predicament remains the same. Women and LGBTQIA+folk continue to struggle against exploitation and fight for equal rights and equity opportunities in the United States, with this situation troubling unrelenting claims of exceptionalism at home and abroad. Although gender politics are ever present, achievements are hard-won and sometimes rolled back in the face of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other ingrained expressions of exclusion. Buildings, cities, and landscapes are not only where battles over gender unfurl, but these spaces also foster identities and incite change. In this lecture series, trailblazing women and LGBTQIA + design practitioners, scholars, and activists—working in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design—insist that gender must remain in sharp focus if we are to shape equitable and just built environments.

All lectures are in-person, free, and held at 5:30 pm at the Spitzer School of Architecture (Sciame Auditorium). For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu.

We look forward to seeing you in person!

Thursday, 02/06/2025
The Aesthetics of Being
Sara Zewde

Monday, 02/10/2025
Building Belonging: Equity, Health and Wellbeing in Public Space
Joel Sanders

Thursday, 02/20/2025
Lesbian Bars/Queer Parties: On How We Can Never Afford Them and Why We Need Them Anyway
Jack Jen Gieseking

Thursday, 02/27/2025
Domestic Revolutions, Then and Now
Dolores Hayden

Thursday, 03/13/2025
Rethinking Livability
Aimi Hamraie
Lewis Mumford Lecture

Thursday, 03/20/2025
Toward a Just Public Realm: Gender Equity in the Built Environment
Chelina Odbert

Thursday, 04/03/2025
A Collaborative (Re)turn: Feminist Architectural Historians Join Forces and Get Things Done… Again
Despina Stratigakos

Thursday, 04/10/2025
Film Screening and Panel Discussion: Ada – My Mother the Architect
Yael Melamede, Mary McLeod

This Sciame lecture series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74,
CEO of Sciame Construction.