Surfacing
About This Event
Surfacing is the 2026 doctoral symposium organized by students in the PhD program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Harvard GSD. This year, scholars were invited to reflect on histories of surface-making and surface-breaking.
Surfacing begins from the assertion that discourses and practices of the surface contour the relationship between humans and their biogeophysical surrounds. As anthropologist Timothy Ingold has argued, the very notion of dwelling upon a solid globe, upon “the surface of the earth,” casts nature as fundamentally separate from human existence and thus, implicitly, as an object of intervention. We follow Ingold’s move to put the figures of globality and environment under conceptual pressure by critically engaging with the historical-material production and maintenance of surfaces and the political, social, ecological, and economic stakes involved in these processes.
Scaling between the granular and planetary, the symposium explores how surfaces have been operationalized and governed within regimes of property formation; how their capacities for inscription or storage have re-shaped spatial or epistemic possibilities; how they have been deployed in service of modernizing infrastructures built for environmental management and the circulation of capital; and how they emerge, at various points, as sites of political, ideological, and aesthetic contestation.
Symposium Schedule
Friday, April 24
Stubbins 112
1:00–1:30 p.m.
Welcome & Opening Remarks
- Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD
- Antoine Picon, Director of Doctoral Programs, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, Harvard GSD
- Charlie Gaillard, Anny Li, and Miranda Shugars, Harvard GSD
1:30–3:00 p.m.
Panel 1: Power and Poverty
- Ifrah Asif, Carnegie Mellon University
“The Making and Unmaking of Historic Surfaces in Androon Shehr Lahore” - Samuel Maddox, Harvard GSD
“Patchwork Prairies, Tangled Tenure” - Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, Yale University
“Resurfacing the Sacred: The Architecture of Debt in Guåhan-Guam”
3:00–3:30 p.m.
Break
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Keynote Panel: Surfacing the Earth
- Gretchen Heefner, Chair and Professor of History, Northeastern University
- Deborah Coen, Professor of History & History of Science & Medicine, Yale University
- Lucia Allais, Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Buell Center, Columbia University
Saturday, April 25
Stubbins 112
9:00–9:30 a.m.
Introduction
- Edward Eigen, Senior Lecturer in the History of Landscape and Architecture, Harvard GSD
9:30–11:00 a.m.
Panel 2: Model and Materiality
- Monica Hutton, University of Toronto
“Coated Contemporaries: Chemosynthesis to Synthetic Chemicals” - Klaus Platzgummer, Architectural Association
“Archives in the Absence of Paper: The United Nations Headquarters and Microfilm, 1947-1968” - Sonia Sobrino Ralston, Harvard GSD
“‘To A Better Understanding of the World of Plants:’ Forests as Exhibition Surfaces in Vancouver, Canada” - John May (Respondent), Associate Professor of Architecture, Architecture Thesis Director Co-Director, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
11:00–11:30 a.m.
Break
11:30 a.m.–1:15 p.m.
Flows and Facades
- Zoë Cope, Princeton University & McGill University
“Surface Tension: Anatomical Skin and its Representation in Early Modern Printed Books” - Matthew Kennedy, Harvard GSD
“Landing the Big Ship: Architecture, Environment, and Political Economy in the Construction of Mercado de la Merced” - Asya Ece Uzmay, Cornell University
“Managing a River in Flux: Floating Mills, Muds, and Sediments” - Edmond Drenogllava, University of Cincinnati
“Waiter, a slice of utopia on the wall, please!” - Mohsen Mostafavi (Respondent), Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard GSD
1:15–1:30 p.m.
Conclusion
Charlie Gaillard, Anny Li, and Miranda Shugars, Harvard GSD
Reception to Follow
About Cambridge Talks
Cambridge Talks is an annual symposium organized by the PhD students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Participants were invited through an open call for papers.
Surfacing is generously supported by the GSD’s Advanced Studies Program, the Dean’s Office, the GSAS Graduate Student Council, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and the Harvard Culture Lab. The symposium is organized by Charlie Gaillard, Anny Li, and Miranda Shugars and advised by Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the GSD. The graphic identity for the symposium was designed by Willis Kingery.
Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.
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