Conference: Transitioning Worlds

April 20 – April 21, 2026

Transitioning Worlds: A conference organized by Natasha Sandmeier

The fourth program in our AUD60 Celebration

Transitioning Worlds is a two-day conference hosted by UCLA AUD, reflecting on the changing global conditions that shape architecture and the evolving pedagogies, practices, and technologies through which AUD continues to engage them.

The conference includes a full day of thematic sessions, gathering panels of designers, instigators, and thought leaders to take up and debate the ground shifting beneath us all (Monday, April 20). On Day Two (Tuesday, April 21), we reconvene with a morning workshop and an afternoon student session, interrogating the insights and proposals from Monday's sessions and forecasting what we imagine next.

Please bookmark this page and revisit for updates; we will announce a full roster of presenters in March 2026.

Transitioning Worlds celebrates sixty years of architectural experimentation at UCLA AUD, bringing together faculty, alumni and guests to explore how design responds to a world in flux. As climate, technology, governance, and urban life undergo fundamental transformation, the roles of architects and designers have never been more critical. These transitions demand new forms of thinking, designing, and visualizing our world. The symposium examines how architecture engages these shifts through four lenses: experimental practices that push disciplinary boundaries, educational models that inform design research and prepare future designers, building as both intellectual and material pursuit, and Los Angeles as a laboratory for urban futures.

Across lightning presentations and facilitated discussions, the event traces the trajectory of ideas that have defined AUD's intellectual culture while projecting into architecture's next chapter. Transitioning Worlds positions design as an active force in shaping planetary change, celebrating six decades of disciplinary risk while collectively imagining what architecture must become. The symposium is both retrospective and projective, honoring the bold thinking that has defined the department while speculating on what comes next.

The full program includes:

DAY 1: MONDAY, APRIL 20

9:00 am 
Welcome

9:30 -11:00 am
Session 1 | EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICES
Speculation is central to architectural thinking as a method of inquiry. This session considers how architects construct alternative realities to question existing systems and imagine new spatial, material, and environmental futures.

11-11:30 am
Moderated Q&A

11:30 am
Break

11:45 am - 1:00 pm
Session 2 | DESIGNING EDUCATION
Revisiting the role of architectural education in an age of accelerating change, this session asks what forms of knowledge, collaboration, and critical practice will define the next generations of design learning? How can schools remain experimental while addressing social, environmental and disciplinary transformation?

1:00 pm
Lunch

2:30 - 4:00 pm
Session 3 | ARCHITECTURE WITH CAPITAL B
Building remains architecture’s enduring medium, yet its materials, logics, and economies are rapidly transforming. This session examines construction as both intellectual and material pursuits: how making, precision, and performance define architecture’s future relevance.

4:00 - 4:30 pm
Moderated Q&A

4:30 - 4:45 pm
Break

4:45 - 6:00 pm
Session 4 | LA LABORATORY
Los Angeles has long been both subject and instrument of design research at AUD. This session explores the city as a site of inquiry where questions of infrastructure, ecology and collective futures converge.

6:00 pm
Closing Reflections & Reception

DAY 2: TUESDAY, APRIL 21

9:30 am
Welcome Back

10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Morning Workshop

12:00 pm
Lunch

1:00 - 3:00 pm
Student Session | Next Worlds