Barnard + Columbia Architecture rings in 2026 by meeting the moment

The opening reception of Barnard + Columbia Architecture’s New Year Show featured the projects students worked on throughout the Fall 2025 semester, which took them across the city and around the globe in their pursuit of blending design and climate justice — an effort to meet the moment in a time of escalating climate urgency. 

Photo by Vernon Demir/The Barnard Bulletin

By Roxana Rassooly 

February 13, 2026

On the evening of Wednesday, January 28, the Louise McCagg Gallery on the fifth floor of the Diana Center was packed. The monthslong projects of the architecture students were on display, and there were people everywhere — from the students themselves, to instructors, to industry professionals. I was able to talk to the budding designers about their work and sources of inspiration, which were, unsurprisingly, as remarkable as the students themselves. 

Among a wide array of classes in the architecture department, the Advanced Architectural Research & Design class focused on using design skills to address a climate concern affecting the local population. In this class, one of the last in the major, seniors travel somewhere internationally for a week to work on their projects; this year, they went to Montiglio Monferrato in Northern Italy near Turin. 

Twyla Frid Lotenberg (BC ’26) worked with fellow student Shaun Ray Ong (CC ’26) in collaboration with a local architecture firm in Italy to develop their project. Lotenberg explained their project: “We created a self-sufficient community center … that has consistency in a community, not just in the case of disaster, but in the case of the aftermath when you think of climate change. So it has educational resources, medical resources, food growing, water treatment, and power production.” 

Their on-site focus was largely on photography. Lotenberg noted, “It’s hard to kind of capture a site that you’re never going to see again during this time process.” Once they returned from Italy, the design process mainly consisted of 3D modeling softwares, drawing, and laser cutters.

When asked how this project reflected her design ethos, Lotenberg shared that she focuses on sustainability and modeling climate futures. She shared the questions that guided this project, as well as her other works: “How do we think through smaller, more rural communities? How do they exist, and live, and thrive through the ever more unpredictable futures and climate?” Lotenberg’s area of interest, her goal with this project, and the questions she posed all felt incredibly timely, as the architecture department focuses not only on teaching essential design skills and principles but also on their real-world value and application. 

Photo by Vernon Demir/The Barnard Bulletin

Another student from Advanced Architectural Research & Design, Alma Ramirez (CC ’26), spoke about how her project began by making observations locally to consider how climate change and flooding in particular may affect New Yorkers. Ramirez emphasized the importance of spending time among the community around her site, located in a commune in Piedmont called Camerana, near Turin. She shared how she and her partner spoke to locals and learned that one of the issues their community faced was population decline. 

She explained, “We were thinking: how can we address the flooding issue, because it is connected to a river nearby, which is called the Bormida River, but also address the issue of the population.” They settled on addressing these issues through a trade school that would preserve the local crafts of the area — in Camerana, they are known for their use of stone, brick, and terracotta tiles. 

Expanding on their approach, she shared that they planned to address the flooding by designing mobile modular structures that respond to varying water levels, which could be deconstructed and reconstructed depending on need. Keeping with local craft preservation, materiality became a key focus for Ramirez’s team — “for our modular structures, we took this technique that we saw throughout Italy, which was kind of a patchwork technique,” she explained. “There might be a building made entirely out of stone, but then it would have a corner piece made out of brick, just to patch it up. So, we kind of took that idea into our modular structure.” 

However, their work posed a unique set of challenges, particularly in how the structures would be used by the community while negotiating space constraints. Ramirez explained, “It’s meant to house workshops where people need to move around and use tools and collaborate with one another. So, thinking about how space works was definitely a challenge for us.” As they tackled these spatial challenges, they were also working to build structures that could mitigate damage from rapid flooding.

Designing for these community needs was not an easy task, though it ultimately informed what they hope a spectator takes from their work. In discussing how her perspective has changed since starting her course of study, Ramirez shared, “When I first entered the architecture program, I thought architecture was mainly about designing a space, and that it just needs to look pretty or feel good.” Now however, her belief has evolved, “Architecture, it involves the people that you’re designing for, that community. You really need to take into account the site context, the history of the space. And all of these can be constraints as well.” Ramirez’s work displayed a similar sensitivity to the distinctive hurdles of today that Lotenberg’s did. Rather than focusing solely on aesthetics, she prioritized functionality, particularly as the events of climate change become more pronounced. 

Photo by Vernon Demir/The Barnard Bulletin

Lowell Cerbone (CC ’26) provided insight on the projects the class worked on before traveling to Italy. For their first project, each student studied, traced, and mapped a specific pollutant by whatever means they wanted. Each project in this course builds on the one before it, so Cerbone described his experience working on the second project. In line with the environmental stewardship and climate work the class seems to focus on, his group worked on designing flooding infrastructure for a local housing project, Baruch Houses. 

For Cerbone, these projects illustrate the two main things that he hopes people glean from his work: “I hope a viewer of our work realizes the potential for design to be a solution in climate change and fighting other environmental issues.” Next, he also emphasized “that rural areas should be a topic of investigation. Often they’re overlooked in the design world, but I think rural areas are just as important in preparing for climate change,” as they are just as susceptible to its risks. Like his peers, Cerbone’s focus on solution oriented design was impressive. It was evident that the principles of climate justice and equity are a guiding force for him, as they are for the architecture department as a whole. 

Barnard + Columbia Architecture’s New Year Show and its environmental focus offered fascinating insight into how students are applying their unique skills to address concerns that affect all of us. Across the board, there was a focus on designing for people often overlooked in creative processes, and a desire to use architectural skill to address structural and societal challenges. Their projects were about more than their visual appeal, as they all communicated a unique design voice and highlighted individual perspectives on the most effective and impactful ways of addressing climate change in the current moment. The New Year Show provided insight into how Barnard + Columbia Architecture harnessed their creativity to meet the moment. In doing so, they responded to critical climate and social challenges through design, inspiring us all to consider how we may use our own skills to do the same.