The Architecture of Disability

David Gissen is a 2021-22 GIDEST Faculty Fellow who works at the intersection of architecture, history, and experimental design. In this seminar, David will explore a methodological question, raised in a recent book and exhibition project: How can those of us with significant impairments produce knowledge through our disabilities rather than despite them?

David is Professor of Architecture and Urban History at the Parsons School of Design. He was Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale University (2019 – 2020); University Professor (2019-20) at the Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria; and former Professor at the California College of the Arts (CCA) where he was based for twelve years. David is the author of five books and over seventy published essays. His books include a materialist study of architecture and the modern urban environment, Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments (Princeton Architecture Press, 2009) and a history of New York City told through the design of the city’s air, Manhattan Atmospheres (University of Minnesota Press, 2014).