In conjunction with the exhibitions Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment and Franco Purini: Selected Works, an opening night gallery round table discussion will take place on the subject of spaces of representation in architectural drawing. Entitled Architectural Tropes Across Scales And Geographies, the conversation will include Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy of Design Earth; Italian Architect Franco Purini; Maria Perbellini, Dean of the New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture & Design; and Nader Tehrani, Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. The talk will be moderated by Felipe Correa.

Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy lead the design-research practice Design Earth. Their work examines the geographies of technological systems, such as those of energy, trash, water and agriculture, to open aesthetic and political concerns for architecture and urbanism. Their work is widely recognized, including a Young Architects Prize from Architectural League of New York, and has been exhibited and published extensively. Ghosn and Jazairy hold doctor of design degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Design, where they were founding editors of the journal New Geographies. Ghosn is currently assistant professor of architecture and urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture & Planning, and Jazairy is assistant professor at University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Franco Purini, is an Italian architect, writer and professor. He has been a professor of architecture and urban design at the I.U.A.V. and at the School of Architecture Valle Giulia at La Sapienza University in Rome, where he is currently professor emeritus. Since 1966 he has been in partnership with Laura Thermes, with whom he has shared theoretical investigations and design experimentations concerning the debate on architectural language and complex urban issues, following an approach that combines a strong rational component to figurative suggestions drawn from the classical tradition. For his achievements in the field of his professional and theoretical work, he was elected “Accademico Correspondente” from the Academy of Drawing Arts in Florence and is a member of the Accademia di San Luca. His drawings are dense with lines, references, and textures while his projects echo classic rationalism and tradition, with clear citations by Maurizio Sacripanti and Giovan Battista Piranesi, in terms of metaphysical suggestions.

Felipe Correa is Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Design and Director of the Urban Design Degree Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. A New York-based architect and urbanist, Correa works at the confluence of Architecture, Urbanism and Infrastructure through his design practice, Somatic Collaborative. He recently published Beyond the City: Resource Extraction Urbanism in South America (University of Texas Press), which examines the role of architecture and urban planning in the creation and administration of landscapes of intense resource extraction.

An opening reception for both exhibitions will follow the discussion.