The book talks and lectures below are held at The Skyscraper Museum starting at 6pm and are free of charge, except when noted. The gallery and exhibition are open for viewing shortly before the programs start. To assure admittance, guests must either use the RSVP form on this site or send an email to [email protected] with the name of the program you would like to attend.
Please be aware that reservation priority is given to Members and employees of Corporate Members of The Skyscraper Museum. Not a member? Become a Museum member today!
Programs are a mix of online and in-person, so consult each entry. All in-person lectures are also live streamed. Past programs are posted on our website and YouTube channel.
Modern Chinese Architecture: 180 Years tells the dramatic story of the transformation of Chinese architecture from a predominantly modular, timber-frame, single-story building system with ceramic tile roofs of anonymous, local craftsmen to skyscrapers designed by internationally acclaimed architects, from temple markets and itinerant peddlers to megamalls, and from open air stages to auditoriums and stadiums with cutting-edge acoustics.
In 1965, the 47-story and 623ft/190m Place Victoria in Montreal’s financial district, also known as the Stock Exchange Tower or Tour de la Bourse, surpassed Chicago’s 1000 Lake Shore Plaza as the world’s tallest concrete skyscraper. Designed and built from 1960-1965 by Italian architect Luigi Moretti and Italian structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, along with a team of professionals based in both Montreal and in Italy, the project brought together expertise from both sides of the Atlantic. In her talk, based on research for her dissertation, Katie Filek will detail the use of concrete in the tower and discuss how the project was the product of highly localized conditions of costs, materials, and labour in Montreal that relied on the specialized knowledge of Montreal-based architects and engineers for its realization.
In The Architecture of Urbanity (Princeton University Press, 2024) leading architect Vishaan Chakrabarti asks, how can housing design be part of the solution to our global problems rather than exacerbate our existing challenges? He argues that “connective design”— a conscious attempt by a designer to forge deeper bonds across society at every scale—can help heal some of our larger social issues like global warming, social and racial division, the geography of rising fascism, and land use battles.
The Museum’s online series The Modern Concrete Skyscraper continues with a look back into the early 20th century with a talk by structural engineer and historian Tyler Sprague on the unique development of concrete skyscrapers in the Pacific Northwest. In the early 1900s, as Seattle grew into a significant urban center for the region, its early high-rises were made of imported structural steel. At the same time, however, advances in reinforced-concrete construction that came about through the increased production of a local, high quality cement in the North Cascades created a low-cost, high-performance building material that Northwest architects and engineers began to apply to high-rise design.
New York City experienced explosive growth between the 1880s and the 1930s, when nearly a million buildings, dozens of bridges and tunnels, hundreds of miles of subway lines, and thousands of miles of streets were erected to meet the needs of an ever-swelling population. The new book Building the Metropolis: Architecture, Construction, and Labor in New York City, 1880–1935 (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by historian Alexander Wood offers a revelatory look at this era of urban development by asking, “Who built New York, and how?”
In her new book, Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car, Nicole Gelinas presents a gripping account of how the automobile has failed New York City and how mass transit and a revitalized streetscape are vital to the city’s post-pandemic recovery. In a history that spans a century, Gelinas outlines how New Yorkers spent the first half of the twentieth century trying and failing to adapt its urban density to fit the private automobile, then, in the past fifty years, how advocates have been resisting and reversing those mistakes. Moving beyond the now-standard characterization of “Saint Jane” Jacobs versus the villain Robert Moses, Gelinas looks closely at the planners and protestors that both preceded and followed their actions and advocacy.
The programs of The Skyscraper Museum are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
The programs of The Skyscraper Museum are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.