Please note that University event policies apply. In-person attendance is currently available for registered Princeton University ID holders only and face coverings are required. In-person attendance is contingent on University guidelines for indoor events — updates will be posted as necessary.

Click here to attend the discussion on September 29 in Betts Auditorium. You must have your PUID and follow University guidelines.

Click here to attend via Zoom, open to both PUID and non-PUID holders. 

September 29 at 12pm ET 

Architecture, Customs and Return in Lagos

Adedoyin Teriba, Vassar, with PIIRS/Princeton Mellon Fellow Chukwuemeka V. Chukwuemeka

As Princeton University and cities across the U.S. “return” to a pre-pandemic normal, the Fall 2021 edition of the Princeton-Mellon Research Forum on the Urban Environment asks the question, what does it mean to return? Under whose terms? As we reacquaint ourselves with in person learning and scholarly dialogs, our aim is to use this time to reflect on not only the events of the past 18 months, but the ways that this period has encouraged us to reframe the questions and categories that we use to discuss cities and the built environment. With the loss of millions of lives globally, a true return to normal is unattainable, and our individual and collective grief points to the impossibilities of return and/or its challenges. Yet, return can also mean remediation, both for communities, societies, and our environment. At the same time, return allows us to challenge the implicitly normative ideas of the future that undergird remediation projects. The framework opens up questions about whose ideas of the past and future dictate what constitutes a return.