Back to: Advance BIM Studio
Type of Course: ARCH 51000 Advanced Studio (Advanced BIM Studio)
Meetings: M/TH 2:00-5:50pm
Office Hours: M/TH 1:00-2:00pm (or by appointment) Rm#319
Instructor: Professor Mi-T. Chang
Semester/Year: Fall 2026
Website Url: www.ssaonlinecourse.com go to COURSES
Reimagining the Shabazz Center: Memory, Transformation, and the Architecture of Continuity
Overview
“Buildings are always tearing themselves apart and putting themselves back together… They learn, they adapt, they change with us.” —Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn
Buildings that endure across generations become repositories of layered meaning—structures that evolve as communities reinterpret them, reshape them, and breathe new life into their foundations. In reimagining The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, we embrace this dynamic relationship between past and future. The former Audubon Ballroom is not simply reused; it is re‑imagined, transformed into a renewed cultural landscape where history anchors possibility and architecture becomes a medium for collective reinvention.
Across cultures, hybrid mythologies remind us that combining disparate elements can produce forms that feel both familiar and startlingly new. The reimagined Shabazz Center embodies this hybrid condition: a convergence of preserved historic fabric, contemporary interventions, and evolving community narratives. It is an architecture where memory is active, where the marks of history invite new marks to be made, and where reuse becomes a form of cultural authorship. This studio will explore adaptive reuse as a multi-scalar design practice, capable of addressing issues from material conservation to neighborhood identity. Students will begin by researching the cultural, political, and economic history of the site—the 1912 Audubon Ballroom, designed by Thomas W. Lamb, later transformed by tragedy into a global symbol of civil rights struggle. Its partial preservation and rebirth as the Shabazz Center reflect decades of activism, negotiation, and community resilience. This reimagining is not limited to renovation alone, but opens the door to inventive spatial, programmatic, and cultural transformations that rethink what the Center can become with the possibilities of new structure or new facade adaptations.
We will investigate the building’s provenance, the preservation efforts led by Dr. Betty Shabazz, and the Center’s evolving role as a living institution. Students will develop critiques of the site’s current condition and propose new visions for its future—architectural, programmatic, and symbolic. While the studio centers on architectural design, our work will remain deeply contextual, engaging questions of cultural memory, development, displacement, and community empowerment.
The studio will interview involved in the Center’s ongoing transformation and visit other adaptive reuse projects across New York City. Through these engagements, students will explore how architecture can both honor history and imagine new futures—creating spaces that reuse the past while re‑imagining what a place can become.
Methodology & Software Stack
This studio will be executed in collaborative design teams using Autodesk Revit (BIM) as the primary platform to author, coordinate, and realize your spatial vision. As Revit is proven to be the architecture industry standard, this studio focuses heavily on hands-on team collaboration within BIM. While not a replacement for a dedicated BIM course, it provides a practical, project-based approach to mastering an array of BIM tools and leading-edge AI workflows to boost productivity.
Secondary Tools: Teams may integrate Autodesk Forma, AutoCAD, Rhinoceros, and Twinmotion into their workflow for supplementary drafting, complex geometric modeling, and rendering.