Lydia Kallipoliti delivers Columbia GSAPP’s Open House lecture (with a response by Dean Andrés Jaque). Kallipoliti is an internationally recognized architect, engineer, scholar, and educator dedicated to exploring and influencing how architecture operates ecologically and environmentally, through work that critically interrogates how design, science, technology, and politics interact. Her scholarship has specifically addressed theories of waste and material flows, as well as closed and self-reliant systems and urban environments.

Employing her concept of “immersive scholarship,” Kallipoliti’s work often takes the form of exhibitions or interactive digital platforms that allow her to engage with a wide audience. This expanded practice includes her design and research think tank ANAcycle, through which she produces curatorial projects, installations, and publications that draw from, and expand on accumulated knowledge.

In addition to her articles and research papers that have been published in numerous journals, magazines, and books, Kallipoliti is the author of The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What is the Power of Shit (Lars Muller Publishers, 2018) and Histories of Ecological Design: An Unfinished Cyclopedia (Actar Publishers, 2024). She is the recipient of awards recognizing both her writing and design, and her work has been exhibited widely, including presentations at the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Shenzhen Biennial, the London Design Museum, and others. Prior to joining Columbia, Kallipoliti was Associate Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union in New York, where she also served as a Senior Associate at the Institute for Sustainable Design, and as the Feltman Chair in Lighting.