Our Fall 2026 Public Program opens with WALLS, a lecture by Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocío Crosetto Brizzio, and Leandro Piazzi, exploring the wall as both a material condition and an architectural device. Sometimes, walls emerge as a structural necessity; other times, they result from a specific technical requirement or simply from the material possibilities of a territory.
Built by hand, the walls of Balsa Crosetto Piazzi are conceived as critical tools that can effect spatial, typological, cultural, and environmental change across territories. They constitute a collective, interdisciplinary thickness of exploration, in which materials, social actors, technical knowledge, ecological conditions, and available resources intersect.
For them, walls function as architectural elements that can redesign and deconstruct existing realities, opening new narratives and ways of designing architecture.
The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Associate Professor Thomas Kelley.
Free and open to all.
Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 pm
Room 1100 A+DS
845 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60607
Balsa Crosetto Piazzi is an architecture practice based in Argentina and the United States, founded in 2015 by Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocío Crosetto Brizzio, and Leandro Piazzi. Its work explores architecture’s material, social, and environmental dimensions through the intersection of practice, research, and education.
Recent recognitions include Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard 2026, the Architectural League of New York Prize 2025, and a shortlist for the Lisbon Triennale Debut Award 2025. The studio’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and Princeton University.
Figure credits:1. Quincho y Casa en Bialet Massé (local materials), Bialet Massé, Córdoba, Argentina, 2021. Associated with Diego Avendaño. Photo by Marcos Guiponi.
2. Traces, Chicago, United States, 2025. Associated with Giorgis Ortiz. Photo by Marcos Guiponi.