Brutal Realities: Construction, Climate, Housing

Join us for the launch of. Architecture today must confront three interrelated and brutal realities: the climate crisis, the housing crisis, and the extractive and expensive systems of construction that exacerbate both. In assembling a diverse cast of characters to address these challenges under the rubric of Newer Brutalism, guest editor Emmett Zeifman reminds us that “naming something provokes debate over the definition of terms, sustaining critical discourse and advancing architecture toward a conscious relationship to its history, limits, and potentials.” To mark the launch—and continue the debate—Zeifman and Log editor Cynthia Davidson will moderate a conversation on the ethics and aesthetics of architecture’s collective response to our brutal present, with panelists Neeraj Bhatia (THE OPEN WORKSHOP), Aaron Forrest and Yasmin Vobis (Ultramoderne), and Neyran Turan (NEMESTUDIO).

Neeraj Bhatia is founder of THE OPEN WORKSHOP and author of New Investigations in Collective Form. He is a full professor at CCA, where he is co-director of The Urban Works Agency.

Cynthia Davidson is cofounder and executive director of the nonprofit Anyone Corporation, and editor of and the Writing Architecture Series (MIT Press). She teaches at Princeton and Cornell.

Aaron Forrest and Yasmin Vobis are principals of Ultramoderne, and authors of Heterogeneous Constructions (Birkhauser, 2024). They teach at Berkeley.

Neyran Turan  is co-principal of NEMESTUDIO, and author of Architecture as Measure (Actar, 2020). She teaches at Berkeley.

Emmett Zeifman is principal of NOUNS and editor of Log 64: Toward a Newer Brutalism. He teaches at Stanford and CCA.

Host or Publisher California College of the Arts