Drawing Cities + Technologies:
"Drawing Cities + Territories" presents work from UVA that explores urban and territorial strategies for analyzing the systems of the constructed environment. Through projects situated in Vienna, New York City, the Salton Sea, and the Biophilic Region Charlottesville–Albemarle County, the lecture demonstrates how drawing operates as an instrument of inquiry across scales and temporalities. These investigations move beyond representation to reveal spatial, ecological, and infrastructural logics embedded in the urban field. By working between architecture and territory, the projects position analysis itself as a form of design agency.
About the Guests:
Mona El Khafif is an architect, urban designer, and committed educator, currently serving as Associate Professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, where she directs the Urban Design programs. She received her professional degree in architecture (Dipl.-Ing. Architektur) from RWTH Aachen University and her PhD in Urban Design from the Vienna University of Technology. She co-authored the award-winning URBANbuild: Local/Global (2009), published Staged Urbanism (2009, German edition), and recently co-edited Next New York (2022). Her work operates across scales, integrating temporal, typological, and collaborative strategies through both design and writing. These themes converge in her forthcoming book, On Urban Prototyping, which advances her investigation into experimental, site-specific, and participatory approaches to urban design.
Ila Berman, DDes, is the Elwood R. Quesada Professor in Architecture. She was Dean of the School of Architecture, and Edward E. Elson Professor at the University of Virginia from 2016 - 2021. She is an architect, theorist, and curator of architecture and urbanism whose research investigates the relationship between culture and the evolution of contemporary material, technological and spatial practices. She is a featured alumna of Harvard University’s Grounded Visionaries series and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Design, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Fellowships, a Special Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from Tulane University, where she was a Favrot Professor, founding director of the URBANbuild program, and the Associate Dean of the School of Architecture until 2007. She has also held academic administrative appointments as the O’Donovan Director of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, and the Director of the School of Architecture at CCA in San Francisco.