Pratt Sessions presents a series of conversations between notable practitioners and thinkers. It is a distributed symposium that is curated and yet open-ended. Based on an ongoing lecture series at Pratt Institute's Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program, each Session brings together two participants as a means of instigating discourse and dissolving and/or reinforcing the artifice of geographically-based discourse networks. Participants are carefully paired together based on the content of their work and the region in which they reside and/or practice. Participants frame their work around a disciplinary provocation in short, non-standard lecture presentations, and engage in an in-depth dialogue. Pratt Sessions is intended as a book series, each volume featuring six conversations, which originally took place over the course of two academic semesters. The six sessions are divided in two areas of focus, exploring and examining how new mediums and new contexts can be defined, redefined, and understood within the realm of architectural design. AUTHORS: David Erdman is Chair of Pratt Institute's Graduate Architecture Urban Design program. He was previously Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, and has taught at UCLA's Graduate Department of Architecture and Urban Design, and held visiting Professorships at Rice University, University of California Berkeley, and University of Michigan. Original Copy is the editor of the Pratt Sessions book series. Specialising in editorial, curatorial, and research projects within architecture, Original Copy aims to generate new productive content and open conversation, focusing on architectural discourse beyond the mere presentation of built work. SELLING POINTS: Based on an ongoing lecture series at Pratt Institute's Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program, the Pratt Sessions publication presents conversations between notable practitioners and thinkers and serves as a distributed symposium that is curated yet open-ended; exploring current manifestations and future potentials in discourse and the profession Pratt Sessions presents conversations with notable names in architecture, discussions that unpack their work in non-standard ways, revealing new insight to familiar terms circulated in the discipline and profession The range of practitioners and thinkers that engage in critically exploring these topics allows the Pratt Session series to develop and present evolving disciplinary arguments as different voices from different regions and praxes come together within the book 160 colour images
