ABSTRACT
Michelangelo Sabatino, who had just been appointed director of the PhD program in architecture at IIT in Chicago,* discussed the changes that he implemented at the beginning of his tenure; he refocused the doctoral program toward a broad range of issues, both historic and contemporary, concerning the metropolis in general and Chicago in particular. Sabatino discussed a methods class where discipline-specific experts from various fields analyze the city, which is defined by factors inclusive of but hardly limited by architecture. He is convinced that this perspective would allow future scholars to begin to unpack the complexities of the contemporary metropolis. Sabatino explained his intentions to expand the work undertaken in the PhD program, affirming the urgency for doctoral research to move outside the bounds of academia to contribute to the redefinition of practice and/or policymaking.
