The Aronson Galleries were the setting for a series of intensive design events focusing on threats to local, regional and global infrastructures. The project-based working exhibition-performance-colloquium INFRASTRUCTURE SLAM was conceived by Robert Kirkbride, Ph.D., Interim Director + Associate Professor of Product Design, to promote learning transactions and serendipitous encounters among students and faculty across The New School. WATERTABLES, a special 4-course dinner for thirty guests from across and beyond Parsons and The New School.  The setting included student-produced tables, tableware and recent water-centered thesis projects.

The following night, students from Parsons, Lang, and Jazz and a handful of critics gathered in Aronson Gallery for the INFRASTRUCTURE SLAM, a 24-hour project-based working event/exhibition.  Building on the concept of the first CATASTROPHE SLAM, held in March 2009, this event promotes serendipitous learning encounters among students and faculty across New School divisions.  The gallery was essentially a blank slate, with walls lined with brown craft paper, for 24 hours of demarcation and declamation.

The exhibit following featured results from the dinner event, the 24-hour design slam, and artifacts from the new transdisciplinary University Lecture course, Intersections: Fuel + Ornament.