Video: Dean Anthony Vidler ACSA Keynote Address

POSTED ON: June 11, 2012

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has honored Anthony Vidler with a special Centennial Award at their 100th ACSA Annual Meeting in Boston, where Vidler delivered the keynote on March 2, 2012. Anthony Vidler is Dean and Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union, where he has served since 2001.

The Centennial Award was created by the ACSA Board of Directors in recognition of Dean Vidler's wide ranging contributions to architectural education. Says Judith Kinnard, FAIA, ACSA president: “Anthony Vidler's teaching and scholarship have had a major impact on architectural education.  We invited him to receive this special award during our 100th anniversary and give the keynote lecture because of his extraordinary ability to link current issues in architecture and urbanism to a broad historic trajectory.  His work forces us to question our assumptions as we engage contemporary conditions as designers."

Above is the keynote address Dean Vidler delivered at the ACSA meeting in March. In his talk, he traces a personal intellectual history from his graduate studies at Cambridge to teaching positions at Princeton and eventually the Cooper Union.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.