To facilitate exchange and collaboration among its alumni, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) has launched the GSAPP Incubator, a co-working space for the school’s graduates.

The incubator, directed by Assistant Professor David Benjamin, has precedent in GSAPP’s Studio-X, the Soho salon and exhibition space active from 2008–2014 (Studio-X’s global branches are alive and well).

Thirty individuals in 11 member groups will work on design projects and criticism across disciplines. The GSAPP Incubator shares space on the Lower East Side with NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator. Consequently, members will have the opportunity to forge partnerships with members of the museum and art worlds.

The inaugural member groups’ practices, studios, and partnerships range in focus from virtual reality to “urban acupuncture,” emergency response, textile design, and resiliency.

A(n) Office, founded by Marcelo López-Dinardi and V. Mitch McEwen, was picked by the US Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale to design for a seven acre property in Detroit. Eight graduates participate in [giving copy editors headaches as] member group : a workshop that “[examines] the spaces and modes of architectural practice that have emerged under the banner of  ‘alternative’ – spaces which ostensibly operate in opposition to the institutions that surround them.” Consortia, founded in 2014 by Christopher Barley, crafted digital strategy for the Chicago Architecture Biennial while Dong-Ping Wong and his group, “FAMILY + PLAYLAB + POOL,” are building a floating, water-filtering pool, the world’s first.