Anya Sirota is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary
cultural production and its relationship to architecture and urbanism. Sirota is principal of the award-winning design studio Akoaki and director of the Detroit-based Michigan Architecture Prep program. She holds a Master in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a B.A. in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University.

In the aftermath of Modernism’s perceived urban failures, a cadre of architects is becoming increasingly aware that a building might not always be the best solution to a spatial problem. The lecture will explore how certain practices are reinventing the architectural profession, replacing the model of the heroic visionary with a more collaborative, experimental, and interdisciplinary approach to work in the built environment.

This is the fourth in a six-lecture series. The subject is Architecture: Shaping Buildings; Shaping Us. The next lecture series will start March 8, 2018. The title is Behavioral and Social Sciences: Real World Applications.