The Architectural League cordially invites its members and friends to its 142nd Annual Meeting. The meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST).

Andrés Jaque, dean of Columbia University GSAPP, will deliver the Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address following the official election of officers and directors and brief remarks from League President Mario Gooden and League Executive Director Rosalie Genevro. A reception will conclude the evening.

Prior to the program, Stephen Cassell of Architecture Research Office will lead a tour of CBST’s renovated spaces located in the lower floors of 130 West 30th Street, a landmarked pre-war building designed by League founder Cass Gilbert. The tour will conclude with a welcome by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, the spiritual leader of CBST.

About the Annual Election of Officers and Directors

League members in good standing will receive an email with a link to cast their private ballot.

About Andrés Jaque

An architect, researcher, and curator, Andrés Jaque is dean and professor at Columbia University GSAPP and founder of the New York- and Madrid-based architecture practice Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN). He received his PhD in Architecture from the Technical University of Madrid and is the recipient of the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts, the Silver Lion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Dionisio Hernández Gil Prize, among other recognitions.

Established in 2003, OFFPOLINN works at the intersection of research, architectural design, and activism. Notable recent projects include the Ocean Space for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art Collection in Venice; the Babyn Yar Museum of Memory and Oblivion in Kiev; and the Colegio Reggio in Madrid. Jaque’s work is exhibited and collected internationally. His performance-based works include Being Silica (Performa 2021 Biennial), IKEA Disobedients (MoMA, 2012), and Superpowers of Ten (multiple venues, 2016–2019). His publications include Superpowers of Scale (2020), PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society (2013), and numerous other books, articles, and essays. Jaque was the chief curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale and co-curator of Manifesta 12 Palermo.

About the Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address

The Annual Meeting Address is a commissioned lecture by a leading figure in architectural practice, education, or theory who brings a distinctive point of view to the question of what can—and should—animate architectural discourse and production now. Previous presenters have included J. Meejin Yoon, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University; Renée Cheng, Dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington; Sarah Whiting, Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University; and Milton S. F. Curry, Della & Harry MacDonald Dean of the University of Southern California School of Architecture.

In 2020, the Architectural League renamed the Annual Meeting Address in honor of the distinguished architect and educator, and longtime friend of the League, Henry Nichols Cobb, who passed away earlier that year. Harry Cobb was a leader of the firm now known as Pei Cobb Freed & Partners for more than 50 years. Throughout his career in practice, he also taught, including serving as studio professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1980 to 1985. The Architectural League awarded its President’s Medal to Henry Cobb in 2015 for “the truly consequential work he has created as designer, educator, thinker, writer, and leader.” The Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address is inspired by all that Harry Cobb brought to architecture, and by a desire to constantly reconsider and renew the commitments and aspirations of the discipline.

About Congregation Beit Simchat Torah

Founded in 1973, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah is the world’s largest LGBTQ Jewish congregation. In its own words, CBST “champions a Judaism that rejoices in diversity, denounces social injustice wherever it exists, and strives for human rights for all people.”

In 2016, the congregation moved from the West Village to a newly renovated 17,000-square-foot space in a 1928 Cass Gilbert-designed commercial building on West 30th Street. The renovation, executed by Architecture Research Office over the course of nine years, converted a pair of furriers’ shops into a luminous community space with a sanctuary, chapel, administrative offices, and social spaces. In the words of ARO, the new space “embodies the community’s core values through an architecture of accessibility, transparency, and warmth.”