The original and full post was published on the school's blog

​Dennis Poon began his lecture from the very beginning of his career in regards to Thornton Tomasetti: as a waiter, serving a customer who would connect him to the firm. Humble, energetic and encouraging, Dennis gave Martin's and Loukia's studios an intriguing lecture about the basic and not-so-basic structures the of mega skyscrapers, an essential topic for our vertical housing studio.

From multi-axis elevators to super columns, massive damping systems to vortex shedding, Dennis gave the studios a detailed overview of important concepts that go into the planning and execution of some of the world's largest, tallest, and in other ways innovative architectural structures. The audiences went into the most detail about the Shanghai Tower, learning about concepts such as the importance of its aerodynamic wind-tunnel studies, how its twisting facade was possible, and the tower's ability to recapture the air circulation between its curtain walls.

The original and full post was published on the school's blog

​Martin Stigsgaard, Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture, challenged his second year Masters of Architecture students with a housing project for 25,000 people at the site of the Baruch Houses, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Their proposals are both responsive to the NYC 20% affordable housing initiative, and to the flood zone threat on the East River. Three groups of four to five team members explored unique approaches and thoroughly developed their iterations of the project. On October 29th, midterm reviews took place at SSA to continue this conversation about verticality and urban density. The studio was honored to have highly esteemed reviewers in attendance to give constructive feedback on the progress. The guests included: John Cetra, Kenneth King, Julio Salcedo, Arnault Biou, Susanne Milne, Brad Horn, Cesare Birignani, Taewook Cha, and Eirini Tsachrelia.

The original and full post was published on the school's blog

​DIDI PEI of Pei Partnership Architects came to speak extensively about Kenneth King and Kellogg Wong's book Vertical City: A Solution For Sustainable Living which is a proposal for a new way of life, based on an amalgamation of input from experts in their field: architects, urban designers, engineers, microbiologists, transportation and sustainability experts. From the discussion, the Vertical City concept would be an autonomous system that would eliminate urban sprawl, thus creating an highly efficient, comfortable standard for a life of the near future. The site of this new city typology is speculated to be in China, a country whose urban population has increased 30% in only 40 years, a number that is predicted to continue blooming exponentially. The studios and Didi discussed the social, economic, and technical implications of realistically creating this model, in China and other regions of the world.