Please join us for a seminar with Theodossis Issaias and Alyssa Velazquez. Theo and Alyssa will share their long-term situated research project after school, a collaborative practice of architecture, writing, and curation that explores how public education has been shaped, organized, and contested across the city of Pittsburgh.

Alyssa Velazquez is an assistant curator at Carnegie Museum of Art whose work has been featured in Sinister Wisdom, Material Intelligence, and Burnaway. Past residencies include Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices 2024, City Books Writer-in-Residence, and as a Freshworks Artist at Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh. Alyssa was awarded the 2026 Center for Craft Curatorial Fellowship and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Architect and educator, Theodossis Issaias serves as Curator of the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Professor of Practice at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture. His research focuses on architecture at the intersection of human rights, conflict, and the provision of shelter. Theo is co-founder of FATURA Collaborative - a research and design practice working across ecology, territory, and the domestic, in collaboration with geographers, legal scholars, and community organizations. FATURA's work has been presented at the Venice Biennale and the Benaki Museum, among others.

GIDEST seminars are devoted to discussion of pre-circulated materials. The materials for this event can be found here on the GIDEST site for attendees to read in advance.

This event is part of the bi-weekly GIDEST Seminars presented by the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought.