This roundtable will explore the underpinnings of contemporary architecture, taking as its premise two operative modes of the medium's ascribed functions, and finding the link between them. The first is the intrinsic, entailing the activity and dynamics of creating infrastructure. The second is the extrinsic, focusing on perception and the phenomenology of the object and space. This latter mode proclaims that human habitation is in fact guided by the senses, whereas the former champions activity and commerce as the defining aspects of our interaction with architecture. Between these two poles, architectural activity can be cross-examined as it goes about building homes, museums, reflective spaces, and cities. Several of the panelists are non-architects who study the influence of architecture on a variety of fields, from psychology, to religion, to urban sociology.

Donald Albrecht is an independent curator and author of Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies. He is Adjunct Professor at the Cooper-Hewitt Program in Decorative Arts and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

David Howes is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal, and the Director of the Concordia Sensoria Research Team. He is the author of Sensual Relations, the editor of numerous books, including Empire of the Senses, and a contributor to Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism.

Sanjoy Mazumdar is Professor in the Department of Planning, Policy, and Design at the University of California, Irvine. He is trained in architecture, planning, and social science. His work has been published in many journals and books. He has received the Environmental Design Research Association's Career Award (2006), the California American Planning Association's Outstanding Planning Achievement Academic Award (2007), the Fellow of Design Research Society (2007), among others.

Julio Salcedo was born in Madrid and studied architecture at Rice University and Harvard's Graduate School of Design under Rafael Moneo and Enric Miralles, among others. Salcedo has taught architecture design and theory courses both at undergraduate and graduate levels at several universities, including Harvard School of Design, Syracuse University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University. He has contributed to various periodicals in the U.S. and Spain, including Pasajes, Praxis, and Arquitectura. Salcedo was awarded the Young Architects Forum Award from the Architectural League and the first prize in the international competition for the redevelopment Hamar, Norway (in association w/ Marc Brossa). Salcedo's practice—Scalar Architecture—engages in interdisciplinary modes of architectural design and practice, particularly as they apply to landscape and urban design.

Jerome A. Winer is the editor of The Annual of Psychoanalysis, and a co-editor of the book, Psychoanalysis and Architecture. A professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, he is also a Training and Supervising Analyst and Past Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is a past president of the American College of Psychoanalysts.

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