On The Ground

Two Screens
Tony Salem Musleh
M.Arch I ’26

“Two screens are too much distraction,” Tim said to us last semester.
Yet both are already full in the current one.
Drawings for studio; Drawings for career fair
Deadlines for studio; Deadline for career fair
Procrastination on one screen; Procrastination on the other.
Indeed, two screens are too much distraction.

Training Wheels
Susan Sontag
M.Arch I ’27

Professional Practice teaching team is stunned to learn all their students are of age. Regrettably, they had already bought child harnesses in bulk and made laminated hall passes. After realizing this, they thought it was still good measure to keep a strict sign-up sheet and rigorous seating assignments. As dogs need a strong hand, students also need discipline.

Frenchifying BP
Maggie Holm
M.Arch I ’28

After the enthusiastic reception of Anne Lacaton’s “Principles of Optimism” lecture, Building Project teams are making every effort to incorporate winter gardens and generous free space into their housing schemes.

Brand New Deadline
Marusya Bakhrameeva
M.Arch II ’26

February 2. 7th floor.
“50 days till freedom,” says a writing on a whiteboard. Freedom is circled in a different color and has a clarifying leader: “May.” Verified source states that Bimal added the latter correction. Students are counting down to a brand-new deadline in the spring calendar: Final Presentations of M.Arch IIs on March 24 & 25. The faculty tries to remind them that there is life after the red-letter day, and students are required to work even after the final presentation. However, the 50-day countdown is the only thing on our minds; everything after seems light and cheerful until we need to secure future jobs.

Site, in Transit
Shreshtha Goyal
M.Arch II ’27

“I saw Johnson give a lecture at school,” Surry said. “Sounds like history”, Rachaporn exclaimed, as we found ourselves talking about modernism as something both distant and unfinished. Three weeks into the second semester, it already feels like we’re two years in, time compressed by deadlines, readings, and questions that refuse to settle. What is a site? Is it your body or intuition, your memory or theory? Is it your home, your walk to school? Or is a site a period in time, something you enter briefly, knowing it will never look the same again? We debated this in research, circling definitions, resisting certainty. The site begins before arrival and lingers after departure, shaped as much by who we are as by where we stand. So far, it feels like the discovery of coexisting contradictions has emerged as a subtle undercurrent this semester.

On Hold
Layna Chen
M.E.D

The M.E.D Working Group has been putting together their annual lecture. Last semester’s ambitions to have relaxing weekly dinners have been put on hold due to time constraints.

Back to Work
Alberto Martínez García
Ph.D

Izzy Kornblatt (Ph.D ‘28) opened an amazing exhibition at the main gallery of our school about Denise Scott Brown’s photography archive. The opening event in Hastings also allowed us to hear a lecture from our former program director, Joan Ockman. Furthermore, the Canadian Centre for Architecture event, which the school hosted in January, gave us a better understanding of the work of students and recent scholars from other Ph.D programs in architecture on the East Coast.

1/8
ANGE LONG publicly reminds everyone of the value of having an airport project in one’s portfolio, turning the Advanced Studio lottery completely upside down at the last minute. Despite long being considered the least popular studio, AMINA BLACKSHER’s Ibiza airport studio starts the semester with a full slate of students who ranked it first choice.

1/8
As co-critic with ELIZABETH GRAZIOLO, GEORGE KNIGHT assures us that, despite being the classical studio, they will be “designing for our grandchildren, not our grandparents.”

1/8
Building Project 2026 kicked off with a visit to the hilly site where students are asked to design the keystone co-housing residence that will bring four years of BP at the Friends Center Howard St campus to a close.

1/15
LIAM NOLAN opens “DESIGN-A-THON: Experiments in Participatory Television” in the North Gallery, featuring a guest appearance from Centerbrook founder CHAD FLOYD, who from 1977 to 1980 teamed up with former dean CHARLES MOORE to use television as a tool for participatory design.

1/19
The New York Times exposes Snøhetta as aggressively anti-union, devastating pro-labor lovers of huge, sloping, landscaped roofs.

1/22
SURRY SCHLABS praises FAH KEERASUNTONPONG’s assignment: “It smells like modern art.”

1/25
WINTER STORM BENJAMIN blankets New Haven under a foot of snow. Some students go sledding while others walk three miles in the snow uphill both ways to get to school, since, as Provost SCOTT STROBEL writes, Yale never fully closes.

1/30
The work sample deadline for the Career Fair confirms one of YSoA students’ key competencies: the ability to criticize and perpetuate a toxic culture in the same breath.

2/02
As Rudolph Hall cracks down on smoking, YSoA turns toward BYU for guidance as they toy with implementing a chastity policy.