BOOK LAUNCH

Architects Draw

Thursday, November 16

Library Atrium and Zoom | 6:30PM

Please join the School of Architecture in celebrating the updated reprint of Architects Draw, authored by Professor Emerita Sue Ferguson Gussow. This publication chronicles the unique pedagogy of freehand drawing that Gussow developed over decades at The Cooper Union, a pedagogy that has influenced aspiring architects of varying drawing abilities to explore the possibilities of architecture through drawing. Originally released by Princeton Architectural Press in 2008, the book is being reprinted by the Architectural Publisher B, with The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture as co-publisher. The revised edition includes new student and professional work in the chapters Dirty Drawing and Drawing in Practice, respectively, and as recently as the 2022-23 academic year.

Architects Draw includes more than twenty exercises that explore the most unexpected subjects to train the architect’s eye, hand, and mind—bell peppers and seashells as housing; paper bags to reveal architectural planes; shoes to define volume and void; frames and windows to consider problems of measurement and scale; and trees to explore gesture and the interpenetration of form and space—and is illustrated with more than two hundred inspirational student drawings and examples from postgraduate architectural practices.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

This event is free and open to the public.

VISITING LECTURE

Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers, Dream the Combine: Afterimages

Tuesday, November 14

315F and Zoom | 6:30PM

Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers are conceptual artists and architects working across scales in installation, architecture, sculpture, film, drawing, movement, and social practice. In 2013, they co-founded Dream The Combine in Minneapolis, MN. The duo move between the Midwest and Ithaca, NY, where they are faculty at Cornell University. Jennifer and Tom have produced numerous site-specific works that explore metaphor, perceptual uncertainties, and the boundary between real and illusory space. They consider these as frameworks for vision and movement that complicate the relationship between body, space, image, and environment. The scale of their work and the industrial materials they use (steel, glass, construction textiles) link their work to infrastructures that order our reality. They question the rigidity of visual, spatial, and social systems by making structures meant to bring people together through visceral experience. Their work serves as a critique of what we take for granted and often reveals histories latent in place.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

The in-person event is open to current Cooper Union Students, Faculty, and Staff only. The Public may attend this event through Zoom.

VISITING LECTURE

Dongwoo Yim, PRAUD: What remains after all?; Topology & Typology, a Language of Contemporary Architecture

Wednesday, November 15

Library Atrium and Zoom | 6:30PM

The contemporary project has been trying to answer the postmodern question of how to move beyond modernism through a thread of architectural styles that tried to respond to deficiencies from the modern promise and contextual changes. Yet, the question remains, should this ongoing struggle to move beyond modernism be a stylistic battle? Has the present architectural practice ever left the modernist tendencies, and is there a structure for a contemporary language in architecture?

In the face of the rapid transformations of Seoul's built environment, Dongwoo poses a simple question: “What remains after all as a built form?” In Seoul, these transformations are often propelled by a series of accessories attached to buildings. These accessories, mostly applied by users, are more temporal, lighter, and more flexible than elements of architecture and define/or change functions of the building. So, if we acknowledge that the use of architecture can change at any time in the near future, what then is the role of an architect?

Topology & Typology is PRAUD’s argument on this manner as language for “Contemporism.” It fundamentally seeks for a holistic integration of elements, systems, and forms of architecture that not only goes beyond Modernism but also reflects adaptation of architecture in time. 

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

The in-person event is open to current Cooper Union Students, Faculty, and Staff only. The Public may attend this event through Zoom.

SCREENING

THE MAKING OF AN AVANT-GARDE: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies 1967-1984

Tuesday, November 21

315F | 6:30PM

A FILM WRITTEN, PRODUCED, AND DIRECTED BY DIANA AGREST

The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, founded in 1967 with close ties to the Museum of Modern Art, made New York the global center for architectural debate and critically redefined architectural discourse in the United States and beyond. A place of immense energy and effervescence, its founders and participants were young and hardly known at the time but would ultimately shape architectural practice and theory for decades. Agrest's film documents and explores the Institute's fertile beginnings and enduring significance as a locus for the avant-garde. The film, presents the creation and existence of the IAUS in the architectural, cultural, and political climate of the time, from the anti War riots, the Women's Movement to the Paris May 68 revolution and the crime ridden and bankrupt New York City, through rich and abundant footage portraying the period.

The story is told through Diana Agrest's own archival footage that brings to life the spirit of the place, and which is the only footage of the IAUS in existence, and the voice of people- through twenty five new interviews- that were active participants and leaders telling compelling stories about the place and about their own personal experiences, stories by the most renowned architects today, that were never made public before.

The film features Peter Eisenman, Diana Agrest, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, Emilio Ambasz, Anthony Vidler, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Deborah Berke, Suzanne Stephens, Bernard Tschumi, Joan Ockman, who were active participants of the IAUS among others, as well as views from outside such as Mark Wigley, Paul Lewis, Lucia Allais. 

The screening is open to current Cooper Union Students, Faculty, and Staff only.

EXHIBITION

Exhibitions Collection: 1971 - 1999

On View October 29 through November 30

Third Floor Hallway Gallery

For over five decades, the School of Architecture’s exhibition program has bridged pedagogy and public service by enriching The Cooper Union’s curriculum and New York City’s arts and design communities. This diverse, influential program encompasses over 250 exhibitions and attendant publications featuring the work of celebrated architects, artists, and designers, as well as Cooper’s faculty and students. 

Exhibitions Collection: 1971 – 1999 showcases original and reproduced records documenting the school’s exhibitions. Drawn from the Exhibitions Collection held by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive, this material illuminates three decades of work, beginning with Education of an Architect: A Point of View—a pivotal exhibition and publication of student projects shown at MoMA in 1971–72. This is the second of three Third Floor Hallway Gallery exhibitions drawn from the collection. The first, shown in the spring of 2023, surveyed the program via exhibition posters from the 1970s to the present; the third, scheduled for the 2024­–25 academic year, will highlight collection records from 2000 ­– 2024. 

The exhibition is open to current Cooper Union Students, Faculty, and Staff only.

ARCHLOG

Remembering Tony Candido

Posted: Friday, November 3

Tony Candido’s colleagues, friends, and former students reflect on his singular trajectory within the disciplines of art and architecture and the immeasurable wisdom and guidance he imparted on those he encountered throughout his life.

Toshiko Mori—I was very lucky to have had an opportunity to teach with Tony. He was an honest and clear critic who had the capacity to see into the true state of students’ thoughts. He had an uncanny ability to observe and bring about the essence of everything. The morning of the day he died, I happened to bring out a painting of his that he had given me. I noted that there were no false notes and every stroke was in the right place, balancing each other, black and white. Tony must have been trying to tell me something: that he was crossing over, but do not forget.

NEWS

Anthony Vidler — In Memoriam

Posted: Friday, October 20

Dear Members of the Cooper Union Community:

It is with a heavy heart that I write bearing the somber news of the passing of Professor and former Dean of the School of Architecture Anthony Vidler. The Cooper Union joins the field of Architecture in grieving the loss of a most brilliant intellect and tirelessly creative spirit. We are deeply saddened by the departure of a cherished friend justly celebrated for his boundless generosity, wit, and unquenchable optimism.

From 2001 to 2013, Tony took on the formidable role of Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture following in the footsteps of John Hejduk‘s remarkable twenty-five-year tenure. In Tony, we found a wholly devoted advocate for the discipline as well as the profession of architecture, an unwavering intellect, and a fervent believer in the potential of architecture to impact culture, society, and the shaping of history. His profound understanding of and appreciation for the School's culture and ethos predated his arrival as Dean and was subsequently demonstrated by his nuanced ability to honor our history without being constrained by it.

NEWS

ANTHONY CANDIDO 1924 - 2023

Posted: Friday, October 27

It is with great sadness that the School of Architecture announces the death of former faculty member Anthony Candido, who taught at The Cooper Union for over forty years. During those decades, Tony taught numerous design studios and seminars, including thirty-three Design III studios in close collaboration with his colleague and friend, the late Richard Henderson, from the fall of 1983 through the spring of 2000. He retired from teaching in 2015. Prior to his arrival at Cooper Union in 1959, Tony taught architecture at Cornell University; University of California, Berkeley; and The City College of New York.

Tony’s trajectory in the disciplines of architecture and art was singular and significant. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from IIT in 1954 under the directorship of Mies van der Rohe and studied city planning under Ludwig Hilberseimer. He made the first design for Konrad Wachsmann’s Air Force hangar’s longitudinal elevation under Wachsmann’s direct supervision. He was an architectural designer with I.M. Pei from 1954–57, where, among other projects, designed a single support 180-foot diameter steel and glass structure for Roosevelt Field—a first. Tony was also a major contributor to the design of the U.S. Pavilion for Expo ‘70 and he went to Osaka, Japan in 1969 to supervise its construction, before leaving the practice of architecture to focus solely on his work as an artist.

ARCHLOG

School of Architecture Faculty Remember Tony Vidler

Posted: Friday, October 27

As The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture mourns the passing of Anthony Vidler, colleagues and friends at The Cooper Union share their remembrances of him, his profound impact on the discipline and history of architecture, and his decades-long role as a transformative educator.

Nader Tehrani—Tony’s presence is synonymous with architecture itself: his writing in Oppositions forming a critical foundation for an entire generation, his research transforming our reading of the Enlightenment, and his subsequent books, such as The Architectural Uncanny, revealing a protean capacity to speak across ages and architectural debates. His insatiable curiosity never ceased and continued through his scholarship to his last moments. Mine is a tribute to the person behind that scholarship—a ‘former dean’ of formidable warmth, a person who expanded the meaning of a true ally. Possibly more comfortable as the éminence grise, Tony offered his wisdom with delicate generosity, imposing himself only gently, knowing when to recede to allow a new generation to emerge. He was infinitely forgiving, allowing mistakes without rash judgment. A disciplined parliamentarian, he helped rebuild our governance through robust debate, embracing discourse as a collective enterprise. A gracious diplomat, his intellect served as his best guide, knowing that humor was often the best weapon when gravity did not suffice. In an era thoroughly lacking in decorum, Tony gave us a sense of history and perspective. And when all else failed, he was always there for a scotch, humbly acknowledging that not all problems had a solution. Architecture has lost a great friend and ally; I know I speak for all of us when I say that I will miss Tony immensely!

EXHIBITION

Sue Ferguson Gussow: Retrospective

Thursday, October 12 through Friday, November 17

Arthur A. Houghton Gallery

This fall The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture celebrates the work of Sue Ferguson Gussow, a figurative painter, faculty member, and 1956 School of Art graduate. Gussow has been teaching at Cooper since 1970, and in the School of Architecture since 1975, when then dean John Hejduk asked her to teach architecture students freehand drawing, particularly from the figure, skills Hejduk felt they lacked at the time. Gussow developed her approach to teaching architects how to draw over decades, and in 1981 became the first woman appointed as a full-time faculty member in the School of Architecture. She has been Professor Emerita since 2003.

The eighty-six works in the exhibition, most of them figurative, span from 1955 when Gussow was a Cooper art student to works completed in 2023. Her subjects range from family members, friends, colleagues, and former students to dresses, dolls, and floral studies. Each work holds an underlying narrative that not only captures a subject’s likeness, but also their essence or spirit.

Gallery Hours

October 12 – November 17, 2023 

Tuesday – Friday, 2 pm – 7 pm

Saturday & Sunday, 12 pm – 7 pm

Closed Monday

Free and open to the public.

VIDEO ARCHIVE

Watch Our Public Lectures and Events Anytime

Vimeo | On Demand

The School of Architecture records, archives and publishes videos of public programs to open access and accommodate asynchronous learning and research for audiences in different time zones. You may visit our Vimeo channel for access to all our video content.

You may also use Cooper website's search bar to look for a particular lecture title or a lecturer's name to find embedded videos of their events with us, if any are available, along with other pertinent event and bio information.

If you recently missed a lecture or event you wanted to see, make sure to check out the Lecture and Events Lists. Links to earlier semester event lists are found on the right as a column of buttons for each respective semester.

Our public programs are free and recorded for access anytime.