BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:759@ssa.ccny.cuny.edu DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260226T173000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260226T190000 DTSTAMP:20260126T233708Z URL:https://ssa.ccny.cuny.edu/events/spring-2026-sciame-lecture-series-ric hard-fadok/ SUMMARY:Spring 2026 Sciame Lecture Series: Richard Fadok DESCRIPTION:Please RSVP\nThis in-person lecture is part of the Spring 2026 Sciame Lecture Series\, "The Elephant in the Room: Locating Animal Lives i n Buildings\, Cities\, and Landscapes."\n\nRichard Fadok (he/him/his) is a n assistant professor of anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Techno logy. A multispecies ethnographer and anthropologist of design\, his resea rch asks how the built environment shapes ordinary relations of violence\, care\, and justice between humans and other animals. He is currently work ing on a multi-sited ethnography about the environmental politics of bird- window collisions and bird-safe design in the United States. Alongside his anthropological research\, he is the founder and director of Smash the Cr ash\, a university and community initiative to end bird-window collisions in Rochester\, New York.\n\n"Ghosts in the Glass: An Architectural Hauntol ogy of Bird-Window Collisions in the United States": Ornithologists curren tly estimate that upwards of one billion birds die every year in the Unite d States from window collisions. A human-driven source of avian mortality second only to habitat loss\, this “conservation crisis” has literally mortified the built environment\, laminating the urban landscape with car casses and other signs of death that are\, to those who witness them\, hor rific and haunting. In this talk\, I linger with the haunted materialities of glass to illuminate how architecture entangles multispecies modes of l iving and dying in the North American city. Once celebrated by Le Corbusie r as “the fundamental material of modern architecture\,” glass today h as come to bear the moral load of anthropogenic injury and violence. Drawi ng on multi-sited fieldwork with scientists\, architects\, bureaucrats\, a nd residents\, I ethnographically trace how specters of animal life pervad e expert and everyday notions of beauty\, dwelling\, and belonging. A haun tology of bird-window collisions provides an analytical lens through which to conceptualize architecture as both a world-making and an un-making aff air.\n\nSuggested Reading: Dobraszczyk\, Paul\, and Joyce Hwang. "Animal A rchitecture." In conversation with Richard Fadok. Places Journal\, July 20 25.\n\n"The Elephant in the Room: Locating Animal Lives in Buildings\, Cit ies\, and Landscapes" takes its title from the expression “the elephant in the room\,” which originates in the Russian author Ivan Krylov’s 18 14 fable “The Inquisitive Man.” In the story\, a visitor to a natural history museum becomes so enthralled with countless “birds and beasts” that he overlooks the largest of them all: a colossal elephant. As the ex pression gained currency\, any reference to real animals gave way to metap horical ones. The spring 2026 Sciame lecture series takes the idiom litera lly by addressing the common failure to notice all animals in the built en vironment. In the lecture series\, scholars\, designers\, thinkers\, and a ctivists cast light on imagining\, designing\, and sharing buildings\, cit ies\, and landscapes with other species.\n\nMaking space for animals in th e built environment often requires diverting attention away from our human perspective and desires\, thus troubling our own anthropocentrism and cla ims about human exceptionalism. More often than not\, the built environmen t creates antagonistic\, if not deadly\, conditions for animals. Balloonin g construction campaigns\, invasive resource extraction for building mater ials\, and hermetically sealed structures have all decimated animal habita ts and killed countless animals. Given the planetary threats of diminishin g biodiversity\, the climate crisis\, and health emergencies\, recentering animal lives and human-animal relationships in the built environment is c ritical to the survival of all animal life.\n\nAll lectures are free\, ope n to the public\, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Archi tecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning\, ASL interpretation\, or a ccess requests\, please contact ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu.\n\nThis lecture ser ies is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous sup port of Frank Sciame ’74\, CEO of Sciame Construction. CATEGORIES:Events,Lectures,Sciame Lectures LOCATION:Sciame Auditorium (Room 107)\, 141 Convent Avenue\, New York\, NY\ , 10031\, United States GEO:40.8177595;-73.95047339999996 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=141 Convent Avenue\, New Yo rk\, NY\, 10031\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Sciame Auditori um (Room 107):geo:40.8177595,-73.95047339999996 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR