Spring 2025 Conversations
The Conversations in Practice series brings nationally and internationally recognized architects, academics, and allied professionals to NJIT to discuss their current work and developments in the professions of architecture and design. All events are held at 5:30pm in-person in the Weston Hall Gallery, 2nd Floor and are free and open to the public. AIA CEU credits available.
February 20 Anda French, AIA French 2D
Anda French, AIA is an architect, educator, and co-founder with Jenny French of French 2D, an internationally recognized Boston-based studio. French 2D’s work centers collaboration across multiple scales, from participatory events and installations to urban-scale textiles and buildings for collective living. French 2D has been recognized by numerous awards and publications, including a Progressive Architecture Award from Architect Magazine, and a Design Vanguard award from Architectural Record. French 2D was nominated for the 2024 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize and was a Finalist for the Architectural Review’s 2023 Emerging Award. Their work has been featured in publications such as Domus, AZURE, PLOT, Metropolis, Dwell, and The Architect’s Newspaper. French 2D’s work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Venice Architecture Biennale, in the solo show “House Clothes” at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and in the upcoming 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Anda has been a Visiting Lecturer at the Princeton University School of Architecture since 2020, and was the 2022 President of the Boston Society of Architects/AIA.
March 6 Miguel Quismondo, AIA MQ Architecture
Born and raised in Spain, Miguel attended the Polytechnic School in Madrid, where he graduated with a degree in architecture. His will to extend his understanding of architecture led him to travel to the United States, where he has developed his career, first working for corporate America (Perkins+Will) and later collaborating with award-winning architect Alberto Campo Baeza in the design and construction of the Olnick Spanu House. With 25 years of practical experience in the fields of design, construction and development, Miguel has continued his education; he holds a Master’s degree in Real Estate Development from Columbia University, and another in Construction Management from NYU and recently taught architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His deep respect for craft and meticulous attention to detail help him create elegant works that celebrate simplicity and resolve complexity with a resonating satisfaction for design aficionados and clients alike.
March 13 Adam Frampton Only-If
Adam Frampton is an architect and Principal of Only If, a New York City-based design practice for architecture and urbanism, which he founded in 2013. Only If has been recognized as part of the Design Vanguard (2022), Domus’s 50 Best Architecture Firms in the World (2020), Next Progressives (2019), and as part of the AIA's New Practices New York (2018). Frampton is a Design Critic at Harvard GSD and has also taught at Cornell, Rice, Columbia GSAPP, Parsons, Syracuse, and the University of Kentucky. His work has been exhibited in the 12th, 14th, 16th, and 17th Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, the M+ Hong Kong, the Lisbon Triennale, the Rotterdam, Shenzhen, Seoul, and Sao Paolo Biennales, Storefront, the Center for Architecture, and the Van Alen. Previously, he worked as an Associate at OMA Rotterdam and Hong Kong from 2006 to 2013. He holds an M.Arch from Princeton University.
March 27 John Hulme, Hulme Productions
John Hulme is a writer/filmmaker from Highland Park, NJ. He is the co-author of five books, including The Seems, a trilogy of fantasy novels from Bloomsbury Children’s Books. He also co-created the original radio drama, Vanishing Point (NPR/XM Radio), which was later adapted into an online role playing game for Microsoft. Hulme directed the award-winning documentaries Unknown Soldier: Searching For a Father (HBO) and Blood, Sweat & Tears: A Basketball Exorcism, as well as the Highland Park African American History Project — an oral history of his hometown's black community. The Project’s first documentary, Blacked Out, won the Best Youth Film award at the 2018 Harlem International Film Festival. He is currently working on Free Tyree, a film about a wrongfully incarcerated man in Pennsylvania (Tyree Wallace was finally released in November after serving 26 years). Hulme's first feature length horror script, Bagman (Lionsgate) premiered in theaters on 2024, and his True Crime/Horror podcast, No Man's Land, is available on all platforms. He is currently adapting No Man’s Land into a novel for Dutton Books. Hulme works extensively with the American Civil Liberties Union, the NJ Prison Justice Watch and the Latino Action Network Foundation, and is an instructor at Rutgers University, where he teaches Documentary Filmmaking.
April 10 Petia Morozov DENSE magazine
As an inaugural fellow at Newark Design Collaborative, an initiative of NJIT’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, I am committed to undoing systems of oppression and co-shaping systems of equitable decision-making and participatory design practices that lead to community-led visions of Newark’s social, economic and ecological futures. This fellowship coincides with a personal and professional transition back to Newark, the city that shaped me as a socially-driven designer. It is in the largest city of America's most densely populated state where I am honored and excited to facilitate vibrant exchange about the future of Newark – between NJIT and the city's many diverse communities. This fellowship leverages the rich and bountiful network of change makers I've had the pleasure of collaborating within my role as Director of DENSE, a nonprofit publishing and public projects studio, bookshop and community space, coming to Newark, NJ in fall 2025.
April 17 LOT-EK
LOT-EK is a team of architects, thinkers, and makers. We come together around our love for people, the objects we make, and the ones we dismiss. We focus on upcycling. We make sustainable, soulful architecture through the transformation of industrial infrastructural objects and systems. We work with the ordinary. LOT-EK’s projects range from installations with artists; through houses for families; through cultural projects for communities, institutions, and museums. Our practice has developed work from our hometown of New York around the world, from Queensland, Australia, through Huangshan, China to Johannesburg, South Africa. LOT-EK’s team is a tight knit group of designers—we each bring our voice, sensibility, and heritage to our common project. LOT-EK’s founding partners are Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano—we live and work in New York; grew up in Naples, Italy; have been practicing together since 1993; and teach at Columbia University GSAPP. LOT-EK’s work has received awards and accolades—from the Emerging Voices from the Architecture League to The New York American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor Awards, and it is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. LOT-EK’s second monograph, in collaboration with Thomas de Monchaux, is O+O: Objects + Operations, published by The Monacelli Press.
WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND, a full-length documentary by filmmaker Thomas Piper on the work and story of our studio, premiered in 2023.
