Carnegie Mellon Architecture

Making Alive! Reworlding Cities: Decommodified · Regenerative · Pluriversal Symposium Wednesday, March 11 Morning Panel Session: Ownership - Decommodified and Cooperative Site: 20th floor of Frick Building, 437 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Guest speakers: Susanne Schindler, Neeraj Bhatia, Randall Taylor Poets: Sten Carlson, Adrea Cha Faculty participants: Jared Abraham, Jonathan Kline, William Martin This session was guided by methods surrounding how cities might move from ownership toward stewardship—shifting cultural norms, legal frameworks, and property regimes to support collective responsibility and care. It asked: What mechanisms—cooperatives, CLTs, nonprofit ownership, temporary use, adaptive reuse—could mobilize vacant or underused buildings into shared urban assets?

Making Alive! Reworlding Cities: Decommodified · Regenerative · Pluriversal Symposium Wednesday, March 11, 9:00 A.M. Walking Tour of Downtown with Bruce Chan, Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership

Making Alive! Reworlding Cities: Decommodified · Regenerative · Pluriversal Symposium (Tuesday - Thursday, March 10-12, 2026) Hosted by Carnegie Mellon’s Remaking Cities Institute, in collaboration with Sarosh Anklesaria and Tuliza Sindi, this symposium brought together scholars, designers, activists, and community partners to reflect on how cities are being reshaped under conditions of financialization, ecological crisis, and uneven post-industrial change. Anchored in Pittsburgh yet attentive to broader systemic dynamics, the program considered both large-scale urban infrastructures and everyday architectures of collective life. Through dialogue, site-based inquiry, and cross-disciplinary exchange, participants explored how ownership, governance, material cycles, and shared stewardship are negotiated in practice. Rather than offering fixed solutions, the conversations invited sustained reflection on the ontologies of cities—how they are understood, structured, and inhabited—and on the possibilities of reworlding urbanism through relationality, repair, and collective responsibility. Tuesday, March 10 Keynote Opening Conversation: Cities - Pluriversal and Alive; between David Bollier and Arturo Escobar, facilitated by Sarosh Anklesaria, Stefan Gruber, and Tuliza Sindi The keynote conversation was guided by the question of how a pluriversal understanding of the world changes how we conceive, design, and govern cities. It asked: What urban places, institutions and practices of commoning might help defend shared wealth from enclosure and make cities more “alive” in social, ecological, and political terms?

2026 Graduate Commencement Speaker: Suzy (Zekun) Li, PhD-BPD ’25

2026 Undergraduate Commencement Speaker: Aayush Saxena, B.Arch ’26

In this edition of the newsletter, we take a deep dive into the Remaking Cities Institute, one of the major research platforms within CM–A. We also share photos from this year’s Spring Carnival pavilion and an announcement about the spring award winners. Read at the link in our bio! Photos: In March 2026, the Remaking Cities Institute convened the three-day symposium Making Alive! Reworlding Cities: Decommodified · Regenerative · Pluriversal across multiple sites in Pittsburgh. Chaired and organized by Stefan Gruber, Sarosh Anklesaria, and Tuliza Sindi, the gathering brought together scholars, designers, activists, students, and community partners to ask a timely question: what might it mean to make cities alive? Moving beyond urban models organized around extraction, speculation, and endless growth, the symposium explored cities as living constellations of relationships—between people, institutions, ecologies, materials, and forms of knowledge.

We are pleased to announce T. Andrew Stone’s public lecture as our Joseph F. Thomas Visiting Professor for 2024-26, where he’ll share with us the work he’s produced throughout his time here at CM-A. Afterwards, please join him at the launch of his exhibition, Please Touch, in the CFA Great Hall. The lecture and corresponding exhibition aims to redefine accessibility as a core design principle, center making and material craft as critical design practices, embrace the multisensory nature of architecture to expand who it serves, and build partnerships with diverse users to create more inclusive environments. When: Thursday, April 23 Time: 5:30-7:00pm. Where: Kresge Theater, CFA

From the final hours of Build Week, all the way to the CMU 2026 Spring Carnival Opening Ceremony, it has been a pleasure to share each moment with you all! To further connect and learn more about my architecture projects and life as a CMU student follow my instagram @amaia_oroz___06 HAPPY CARNIVAL 🎡

This edition of the newsletter celebrates the community and work of Carnegie Mellon Architecture. Head of School Omar Khan reflects on how architectural education — let alone celebrations of architecture education — can matter amidst global unrest. We also share videos and photography from school celebrations this spring, including the PJ Dick Innovation Fund Faculty Grants Program showcase and the “x-change” publication launch and welcome back celebration. Read at the link in our bio!

On Friday, January 23, the CM—A community gathered at the new research facility at 6555 Penn Avenue to celebrate the second year of the PJ Dick Innovation Fund Faculty Grants Program. Established in 2023 by PJ Dick Trumbull Lindy Group, the Faculty Grants Program will award a total of $400,000 over four years beginning in 2024. Now in its third year, the program supports the pedagogical mission of the school through faculty research and teaching innovations and the diverse work of faculty in creative practice, professional practice, artistic practice, funded research, participatory design, design build, curation, scholarship, critical and digital humanities, and more. Faculty recipients of the PJ Dick Innovation Fund grants have proposed projects and courses that address the school’s three pedagogical challenges of climate change, social justice and artificial intelligence. The showcase in January not only celebrated the exciting work completed during the second cycle of the program, but it was the first event hosted by CM—A in its new research space at 6555 Penn Avenue, near Bakery Square in Pittsburgh’s East End.

We’re excited to share that applications for the 2026 UDream Program are NOW OPEN! This 22-week, zero-cost, post-graduate experience is designed to support promising graduates of architecture, urban design and urban planning programs who are from under-resourced backgrounds. The program connects fellows with mentorship, professional development, and leading architecture firms across Pittsburgh while building a strong cohort of peers and professionals. If you know a recent graduate or someone nearing the end of their degree program, please be sure to share this opportunity with them!

Delighted to share this symposium: Hosted by Carnegie Mellon — Architecture’s Public Programs and The Remaking Cities Institute, the Making Alive! symposium brings together scholars, designers, activists, and community partners to reflect on how cities are being reshaped amid financialization, ecological crisis, and uneven post-industrial change. The program opens on TUESDAY 3/10 with a keynote conversation between Arturo Escobar and commons scholar David Bollier, followed by an incredible line-up of guest speakers in conversation with CMU School of Architecture faculty. <see poster for details> Through site-based discussions across Pittsburgh, we will explore how questions of ownership, infrastructure, urban metabolism, and collective agency shape the possibilities for more decommodified, regenerative, and pluriversal urban futures. Organized with Stefan Gruber, Sarosh Anklesaria and Tuliza Sindi. With Neeraj Bhatia, Randall Taylor, Jesse LeCavalier, Clare Lyster, Karen Abrams, Lola Ben Alon, Gideon Kossoff, Adrienne Economos Miller, Tei Carpenter, Gilly Karjevsky, Cassim Shepard, Susanne Schindler, and Jonathan Kline, William Martin, Jared Abraham, Christine Mondor, Rich Nisa, Joshua Lee, Dana Cupkova, Tommy Yang, Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee, Nida Rehman, Maryam Karimi, Jeffrey Carpenter, Bricolage Production Company @bricolagepgh @cmusoa ; Community Forge @commforgepgh ; Construction Junction @cjreuse ; City of Asylum @cityofasylumpittsburgh ;