The 2019 IIT ARCC PhD Symposium: Buildings, Cities, and Performance was held on the IIT Chicago campus on November 15 & 16, 2019. The symposium brought together PhD candidates from 14 universities across North America and Internationally.  In addition to 21 paper presentations, and 45 registered attendees, the symposium featured three keynote speeches by Professor Andreas Wagner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; Professor Larry Bank, Georgia Institute of Technology and former NSF director, and Professor Elizabeth Grant, Virginia Tech University.  The symposium also included a panel discussion on the status of architectural research and PhD programs. The panel was moderated by Professor Michelangelo Sabatino, Director of PhD Program in Architecture, IIT, and included Professors Peng Du, IIT; Elizabeth Grant; Hazem Rashed-Ali, UTSA and ARCC president, and Andreas Wagner.  Selected papers from the symposium will be featured in the upcoming issue of Prometheus, The Journal of the PhD Program in Architecture, IIT.

ARCC would like to express our thanks and appreciation to Dean Reed Kroloff, Dean of the IIT College of Architecture, Professors Michelangelo Sabatino and Rahman Azari, and the IIT PhD candidates Mehdi Ashayeri and Ezgi Bay for all their efforts in making this a very successful and highly impactful event.  It has been our pleasure to contribute to the event.

The symposium represents the first example of one of ARCC’s new  benefits, which we are providing to our member institutions, through which ARCC can collaborate and provide support to member institutions in organizing focused events (workshops, symposia, etc.) that are of interest to the member institution and fall within ARCC’s mission. Member institutions interested in organizing such events should contact ARCC President: Hazem Rashed-Ali at: hazem.rashedal@utsa.edu.

Images by Lijian Ma.