EXHIBITION LECTURE

Jimenez Lai: A Litter of Monsters

Tuesday, March 26

315F and Zoom | 6:30PM

Monsters, in fiction, represent human conditions veering on the edges of the abnormal. Whereas monsters may depict grotesqueness, deformation, or further forms of otherness, they also are parables to galvanize people into acting normally. In this lecture, we will look at a range of stories and architectural projects with these features. Some may call them characters, creatures, or caricatures - but this is a story about monsters, a chance for allegories.

The lectured will be followed by a conversation moderated by Michael Young.

Jimenez Lai was born in Taiwan, came of age in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. Before establishing Bureau Spectacular, Lai lived in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Lai's first book, Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel, was published by Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation. Lai has won various awards, including the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects, the Debut Award at the Lisbon Triennale, and the Designer of the Future at Art Basel. Lai represented Taiwan at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. Lai's work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, SFMOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, and LACMA.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

For In-Person attendance, please register here.

The in-person event is open to current Cooper Union students, faculty, and staff only. The public may attend this event through Zoom. 

ELEANORE PETTERSEN LECTURE

Elizabeth Diller Gives the 2024 Eleanore Pettersen Lecture

Tuesday, April 2

The Great Hall | 6:30PM

The 2024 Eleanore Pettersen Lecture will feature Cooper Union alumna Elizabeth Diller, who is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), a design studio whose practice spans the fields of architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print. She will speak about a variety of DS+R projects.

Diller and co-founding partner, Ric Scofidio, who is also a Cooper alumnus, have been distinguished with Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture, which stated: “Diller + Scofidio have created an alternative form of architectural practice that unites design, performance, and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory and criticism. Their work explores how space functions in our culture and illustrates that architecture, when understood as the physical manifestation of social relationships, is everywhere, not just in buildings.”

DS+R’s built work in the public realm includes two of the largest architecture and planning initiatives in New York City’s recent history: the adaptive reuse of an obsolete, industrial rail infrastructure into the High Line, a 1.5 mile-long public park, and the transformation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ half-century-old campus.

For attendance, please register in advance here.

Registration required. Please note this is first come-first-served, and an RSVP does not guarantee admission.

VISITING LECTURE

Nahyun Hwang: Migrating Commons

Thursday, April 4

315F | 6:30PM

The contemporary landscapes of increasing socio-economic, political, and environmental flux bring the shifting conditions and manifestations of "home" to the fore. Through selected recent projects of N H D M, the lecture will examine emergent notions and spaces of belonging, and explore the possibilities of new agentive futurity and communality in the milieu.

Nahyun Hwang is an architect, educator, and founding principal of N H D M, an NYC-based practice for design and research in architecture and urbanism. The studio pursues an expanded practice of architecture, working across geographies and disciplinary borders and in a wide range of scales and modes of output, often in a direct dialogue with the cultural, political, and ecological complexities of the contemporary built environment. The work of N H D M has been recognized through numerous supports and awards, including the 2023 Architectural League Emerging Voices award, the 2023 and 2019 Graham Foundation Grant, the 2020 Architectural Record Design Vanguard Award, the 2019 DOMUS’ 100+ best architecture firms, the 2018 AIANY New Practices New York award, and multiple AIANY Design Awards.

For in-person attendance, please register in advance here.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration required. 

VISITING LECTURE

Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO: Edges

Tuesday, April 9

315F and Zoom | 6:30PM

AD—WO investigates the methods of spatial valuation that undergird the disciplines of architecture and urban design: how these systems of measurement are entangled with discursive and material regimes of racialization, ecological degradation, and coloniality. They identify and work against specific disciplinary conventions with aims to develop spatial practices that are open and generous. AD-WO experiments with tactics of opacity, occlusion, and abstraction; paying special attention to nonwestern concepts and sites.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

For in-person attendance, please register here. 

This event is free and open to the public. Registration required. 

VISITING LECTURE

Torkwase Dyson: Black Comp — Forming Without the Promise of Stability

Tuesday, April 16

315F and Zoom | 6:30PM

In this lecture Torkwase Dyson will present her working theory, Black Compositional Thought, and the experimental drawing conditions that fuel her practice. She will also discuss the development of abstraction and perception and how they open up questions of space and spaciousness. The lecture will conclude with a presentation of a new body of poems and collages. 

Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973, Chicago, Illinois) describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Examining the history and future of black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by black and brown bodies. In 2021, a solo exhibition of Dyson’s work was on view at Hall Art Foundation, Schloss Derneburg, Germany, and her work was also presented at the 13th Shanghai Biennale.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

For In-Person attendance, please register here.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

BOOK TALK

Lydia Kallipoliti: Histories of Ecological Design; An Unfinished Cyclopedia

Thursday, April 18

Third Floor Lobby and Zoom | 6:30PM

Histories of Ecological Design; An Unfinished Cyclopedia presents conflicting definitions and concepts of architects and designers and the parallel histories of their intellectual positions toward environmental thought from the 19th century to today. To survey the formation of this field, the context is not exclusively examined chronologically, but also in connected worldviews, each rendering evolving perceptions of nature, its relation to culture, and the occupation of the planet by human and non-human subjects. The book showcases that ecological design starts with the reconceptualization of the world as a complex system of flows rather than a discrete compilation of objects, which visual artist and theorist György Kepes has described as one of the fundamental reorientations of the 20th century.

A conversation with Stan Allen and Edward Eigen will follow Lydia Kallipoliti’s book presentation.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

For In-Person attendance, please register here.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

CURRENT WORK

Accessible Schools

Tuesday, April 23

Rose Auditorium | 7:00PM

This event will bring together architects, educators, and advocates to explore the process of creating learning and teaching environments where the broadest range of bodies and minds can thrive. Focusing on educational facilities for K-12 students, the presentations will examine both the physical design of school buildings and the ways in which educators create spaces of learning for young people.

Panelists include Mary Burnham, Lauren Melissa Ellzey, Kayla Hamilton, Kristie Patten, Irina Verona, and Jennifer Carpenter.

The program will close with an audience Q&A moderated by Irina Verona and Jennifer Carpenter.

The event is co-sponsored by the Architectural League of New York and the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. 

Tickets are free for Cooper Union students and faculty with valid ID, and League members. For ticket inquiries, please refer to The Architectural League of New York website. 

EXHIBITION

Jimenez Lai: Hall of Monsters

On View March 6 through March 28

Third Floor Hallway Gallery

This exhibit presents a group of five archetypal monsters—or archi-characters—that visiting faculty member Jimenez Lai has been developing in his practice in recent months. The project is inspired, in part, by John Hejduk’s seminal piece, Victims (1984), which has been analyzed by many subsequent architects as a story about how architecture can be read as characters. Some call them characters, while others call them caricatures, or creatures—but there is something else about the idea of monsters: monsters, in fiction, represent human conditions veering toward the edges of the abnormal. Whereas monsters may depict grotesqueness, deformation, or further forms of otherness, they also are parables that galvanize people to reconsider what is normal. 

The exhibition is thematically related to the Design IV option studio that Lai, the Robert Gwathmey Chair in Architecture and Art, is teaching this semester. In conjunction with the exhibition, he will give a lecture titled A Litter of Monsters on March 26th.

Open to Cooper Union students, faculty, and staff. On view in the Third Floor Hallway Gallery.

SUMMER PROGRAM

Introduction to Architecture Online: Foundation Studies and Portfolio Development

Apply Now | Live Information Session | Send Inquiries Here

Our upcoming summer intensive program features a virtual curriculum accessible to high school and college students worldwide. As an institution that is committed to the pursuit of excellence and learning, we view the various forms of online engagement, digital interface, virtual modeling and representation techniques as an opportunity to advance our outreach efforts and prepare students to apply to a broad range of programs focused on digital design platforms. The pleasure of making and experimentation are fundamental to our discovery of architecture and the innovation of the discipline, as well as a deeply thoughtful form of social and cultural dialogue where relational imaginaries become possible.

Applications are currently open and all potential students are encouraged to apply early.

You may watch our public Live Information Session to get an overview of the program's curriculum, pedagogy, and focus for this year. The video features examples of former participants' work and presentations by faculty and staff.

Please direct all questions and concerns to architecture.summer@cooper.edu.

Image Credits: "Sectioned" by Asialy Bracey Gardella.

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