Events

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This colloquium will bring together three distinguished professionals -- Felipe Correa, Mariana Mogilevich, and Paola Viganò -- to explore the relationship between the visual and political domains of urban design. It is convened to celebrate the urban design community at the Spitzer School of Architecture and further the legacy of the late Michael Sorkin (1948-2020), former Distinguished Professor of Architecture and director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design.

This event is free and open to the public, with registration required.

“The Visual and the Political” is an expansion on theoretical and practical agendas that emerged from the inaugural Michael Sorkin Visiting Distinguished Lectureship, which has been held by Marina Correia in 2025.

Drawings can be understood as visual arguments, both fictional and political modes of communication that support the creation of alternative realities. Sorkin’s criticism was never divorced from a tangible imaginative process. The colloquium will speculate on tactics of approximation between drawing -- understood as the aesthetic and visual domains of architecture -- and urban advocacy or the assembling of political and cultural expression with ethical agendas that defend publicness and shared spatialities.

We wish to thank the donors to the Sorkin Legacy Fund and the Michael Sorkin Visiting Distinguished Lecturer Fund for helping us to further the legacy of Michael Sorkin.

Following this event, prospective students are invited to visit the Urban Design studio. Separate registration is required.

Speakers

Felipe Correa is Founder and Managing Partner of Somatic Collaborative, a New York–based design practice working across the Americas, Asia, and Europe. His work focuses on the transformation of cities through projects at the intersection of design, policy, and economic development. He is the author of Beyond the City, Mexico City: Between Geometry and Geography, A Line in the Andes, and São Paulo: A Graphic Biography, with a forthcoming book titled Collective Living and the Architectural Imaginary. Formerly Chair of Architecture at the University of Virginia, Correa is currently Director of the Urban Prosperity Institute in New York City.

Mariana Mogilevich is a writer and editor, and sometimes a curator and educator. She has been researching and producing public projects on the makings and meanings of urban environments for almost twenty years. As editor-in-chief of Urban Omnibus, a publication of the Architectural League of New York, she has created and edited a special series interrogating physical infrastructures of criminal justice and spatial practices of remediation in New York City, and commissioned hundreds of editorial features from artists, designers, scholars, and writers. Mariana is the author of The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York (University of Minnesota Press).

Paola Viganò architect and urbanist, is Full Professor in Urban Theory and Urban Design at the EPFL, where she directs the Habitat Research Center and the Lab-U and at IUAV Venice. She received the Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme in 2013, the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the UCLouvain in 2016 in the frame of “Utopia for our Time,” the Flemish Culture Award for Architecture in 2017, and the Golden medal to the career of Milano Triennale in 2018. Together with Bernardo Secchi, she founded Studio (1990-2014) working on numerous projects and visions in Europe. Since 2015, StudioPaolaViganò works on the ecological and social transition of cities, landscapes, and territories designing urban and territorial projects and realizing public spaces in Europe.

Marina Correia is a practicing architect and professor of design, history, and theory. She holds an architecture degree from City College of New York, a Master in Architecture from Harvard GSD, and a PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from the University of Sao Paulo. She established her practice -- Atelier of Architecture and Urban Design -- in 2013, which has been dedicated to public architecture, exhibition design, interior design, and non-profit partnerships in the United States, Brazil, and Europe. She has taught at CCNY, Columbia University, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Harvard GSD, RISD, Pratt Institute, and Cal Poly.

For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu.

Sciame Auditorium (Room 107) 141 Convent Avenue New York, NY 10031

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