COOPERMADE WOMEN OF IMPACT

COOPERMADE WOMEN OF IMPACT

3D-printed supermodels of modular structures with an integrated wind turbine-powered facade.

Photo Credit: Karen Bausman + Associates

Karen Bausman AR’82 

BausmanKaren Bausman + Associates, founded soon after Karen Bausman graduated from The Cooper Union, has been rooted in her study of nature and what it teaches us about structures. That underlying fascination with natural “architectures” can be seen both in her built work and her teaching: as faculty at Columbia from 1990-2004, she created digital design techniques based on her studies of forms in nature. She has been the Eliot Noyes Visiting Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale.

Bausman received the Progressive Architecture Award for Performance Theater for Los Angeles, and Hamlin Library and Chapel was featured in the Architecture magazine Awards Issue. These breakthrough commissions, among others, pushed the boundaries of structural and visual innovation, and formed the basis of “Karen Bausman: Supermodels,” a solo exhibition of her building designs and working methods at Harvard. 

In 2005, 2010 and 2012 her firm was awarded multi-year Design Excellence contracts as part of New York City’s ambitious effort to bring new ideas, technology, and environmental soundness to the design of city-financed buildings and other structures in New York. Her expertise is currently being applied to numerous large-scale coastal building projects at waterfront sites in the Bronx and Manhattan. She is currently developing architectural projects to open New York’s waterfront for public use with boathouses, pavilions, and other structures related to recreation. These would be modular, easily manufactured via 3-D printing, quickly erected or moved, and most impressively, generate their own wind-powered energy via turbines integrated into their facades. At the same time, the structures would symbolize energy production of offshore wind turbines at sea, which Bausman says is ”a near-future issue of socio-ecological urgency.”  

Recipient of the Rome Prize, Karen Bausman has twice been awarded Fellowships in Architecture from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has also received Design Arts Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In 2009, Bausman was inducted into The Cooper Union Hall of Fame. 

  • 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.