Forum Lecture: Spirals and Yuizarix

Monday, January 19, 2026 from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

In-person event
The Pit, Architecture Building, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

Google Calendar Apple Calendar Office Calendar

2025-2026 Forum Lecture Series

Speakers: Cruz Garcia, Nathalie Frankowski, and Ema Yuizarix, WAI Architecture Think Tank, Iowa State University, USA

Free and open to the public

Presented by the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism

In this loudreading performance, WAI Architecture Think Tank assembles an audiovisual collage of ancestral knowledge, networks of solidarity, biographical notes, fields of action, educational platforms, anti-colonial counterpropaganda, anti-hegemonic publishing, and subversive storytelling.

A black book cover with the title “A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education,” surrounded by illustrated leaves.

Gallery space filled with green plants and black sculptural forms, with wall-mounted text, images, and banners

WAI Architecture Think Tank is a planetary studio practicing by questioning the political, historical, and material legacy and imperatives of architecture and urbanism through a panoramic and critical approach.

Founded in Brussels in 2008 by Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia (now joined by daughter Ema Yuizarix), WAI is one of their several platforms of public engagement that include Beijing-based anti-profit art space Intelligentsia Gallery, and the free and alternative education platform and trade-school Loudreaders.

Cruz Garcia is a Puerto Rican designer, artist, curator, educator, author, and theorist. Nathalie Frankowski is a French designer, artist, curator, educator, author, and poet.

Currently, they are Associate Professors at the School of Architecture at Iowa State University. They are former faculty of the Master of Science in Advanced Architecture Design at Columbia University GSAPP.

Their work has been featured in the Chicago Architecture Biennale and exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou Metz, Neues Museum Nuremberg, Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology Lisbon. They are authors of influential publications, including Universal Principles of Architecture, A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education, Narrative Architecture, Pure Hardcore Icons, and more.

Digitally collaged landscape with terraced mining pit, colorful evaporation ponds, and black smoke rising into the sky.

A geometric architectural structure with mesh walls enclosing tropical vegetation, set in a hilly forested landscape.

In search of critical forms of architectural pedagogy, Garcia and Frankowski are deeply invested in the development of new curricula and pedagogical experiments, searching for diverse forms of public engagement with architecture, as well as a decolonization and anti-racist reconstruction of the role of architecture in the construction of new worlds.