AFTERTASTE is a series of lectures and roundtable conversations dedicated to the critical review of interior design. The symposium is intended as an expansive meditation on the concept of the interior environment and its constituent elements.

The Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design was established in 2001 in memory of designer Michael Kalil. The mission of the Endowment is twofold: to foster the understanding of the design intersections between nature and technology and to support a heightened sense of responsibility for increasing the sustainability of built environments. Each year the Endowment awards three Memorial Fellowship Project Grants and sponsors a visit/lecture by an annual Kalil Fellow.

EMPOWERHOUSE is a community-based approach to building affordable, net-zero housing that addresses all aspects of domestic life. The Empowerhouse team brought together students from Parsons The New School for Design, Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy at The New School and Stevens Institute of Technology to design and construct a solar-powered house that was exhibited on the National Mall as part of the U.S. Department of Energy 2011 Solar Decathlon.

For this studio in the BFA Architectural Design program, students created new urban infrastructural models to generate sustainable design scenarios at the scale of the urban block. They worked in Harlem Park, a neighborhood in West Baltimore, Maryland in collaboration with the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) ecologists, planners from the Baltimore Office of Sustainability, the Parks and People Foundation, and Harlem Park residents.

Parsons students traveled to Thailand to work with students and faculty from Chulalongkorn University on an urban design project connecting cultural and social institutions with a municipal boat transportation network along the San Saeb Canal in Bangkok.