Come celebrate the launch of 2NDFL, and experience an evening of rapid-fire thesis presentations, sharp dispatches, and critical conversations that explore the shifting contours of design, culture, and society.

The evening’s program will feature a conversation on writing with writers and faculty members Jennifer Kabat and Jennifer Krasinski, remarks by Molly Heintz and Alex de Looz, and hosting duties performed by Eric Schwartau. Reception and launch with food by Tziki to follow!

Featured presentations:

Dylan Bohm — The Dangerousness of the 12-Inch-Tall Politician: On Documentation, Mediation, and Creative Action

Jyothi Hiremath — Belonging Beyond Borders: How Design Shapes Immigrant Communities

Yikang Li — WHAM! in China: Competing Agendas in Cultural Diplomacy

Christa May — They Have You by the Ovaries: The Commodification of Reproductive Biology

Ailsa Petrie — Mediated Intimacy: The Origins and Explosion of ASMR

Ben Rejali — Collect and Destroy: The Politics of Iranian Postage Stamp Design

Kale Seikkula — Lost in Space: Disorientation in the Digital Age

Hannah Tatarelli — The Fragmented Sublime: A Journey through Sentient Landscapes

2NDFL is a real place. It’s where we’ve spent the past nine months researching, writing, reading, questioning, and debating. Just one step above the street, it’s not quite ground-level and not quite the ivory tower either. It’s somewhere in between—between reporting and research, between the world outside and the theory that tries to explain it.

This floor has shaped how we think and how we communicate. It’s where ideas travel—up from the street and down from the clouds—toward clarity, consequence, and context. It’s where we pull theory into conversation with lived experience, and where stories take the form of articles, interviews, portfolios, and podcasts.

2nd Floor isn’t just a name; it’s a perspective. It’s a place for second thoughts, second opinions, and second drafts. It’s not gossip, and it’s not a dissertation—it’s everything in between.

A floor is where meaning begins. It’s the first move that transforms the earth under our feet into something intentional—something measured, defined, and designed. A floor gives rise to buildings, to cities, to the ways we inhabit and shape our world. It’s also a verb—to be floored is to be moved, surprised, shifted. In that spirit, this publication hopes to do both: to ground you and to move you.

Welcome to the 2NDFL.