Olalekan Jeyifous: Double Exposure — Protopias and the Public Realm

The Gensler Family AAP NYC Center's Spring lecture series, entitled ar·ti·fi·ci·al·i·ty, brings together speakers who help us explore ideas of construction, environment, craft, and of each other. While debates on AI predominantly focus on metaphors related to cognition and “intelligence” — learning, prediction, generation, etc. — less attention is given to the assumptions on what is artificial (and therefore, what is "natural"). These talks explore these assumptions and how they shape our approach to the built environment.

Curated by Cornall AAP faculty Jesse Le Cavalier (Associate Prof. and Dir. MS. Advanced Urban Design) and Florian Idenburg (Prof. of the Practice, principal Solid Objectives), the Spring lecture series takes place in the Gensler Family AAP NYC Center's new permanent home, on the 4th floor of the Tata Innovation Center (Cornell Tech campus, Roosevelt Island).

Registration required (one registration per attendee).

The series is free and open to the public.

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Olalekan Jeyifous (b. 1977) received a BArch from Cornell University and is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work reimagines the intersections of architecture, community, and the environment through inventive visual storytelling. By merging physical and digital elements with historical and speculative contexts, his practice offers critical reflections on existing systems while imagining alternative ways of relating to one another and the spaces we inhabit. His art has been exhibited at major institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum, and Guggenheim Bilbao, and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and SFMOMA.

In addition to an extensive exhibition history, he has spent over a decade creating large-scale public installations and was co-commissioned to design a monument to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm for New York City’s She Built NYC initiative. His distinctions include the 2024 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design, the 2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, and two NYFA Fellowships. He has also been awarded residencies at MacDowell, The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and he currently serves as the 2026 Brooklyn Botanic Garden Heidi Nitze Fell

INTRODUCTION and Q+A by Jesse LeCavalier

Jesse LeCavalier uses the tools of urban design and architecture to research, theorize, and speculate about infrastructure and logistics. He is the author of The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), and his design work has been recognized by the Sudbury 2050 urban design competition, the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, the Oslo Triennale, and the Seoul Biennale. LeCavalier was the Daniel Rose Visiting Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture (2017–19) and the 2010–11 Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan. His work has appeared in Cabinet, Public Culture, Places, Art Papers, and Harvard Design Magazine. His essay “The Restlessness of Objects” received a 2013 Core77 Design Award.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Gensler Family AAP NYC Center, Tata Innovation Building, Cornell Tech, New York, United States

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