As some of you may know, many of the faculty members have been patiently working alongside me over the summer to open up discussions about the nature of pedagogy at Cooper Union. I think what has been the most important part of this process is the exposure it has offered between disciplines, between ideological camps, and moreover, it has set up opportunities for building bridges between courses, deadlines and projects.

During this process, I learned much about the power of words, and how they may serve us in their precision, and in the care with which we use them. In any architectural project, there is a delicate balance between the physicality of architecture on the one hand, and the words that come to engage a work of architecture on the other, the sum total of which may encapsulate “building ideas”—that is, that forms contain ideas inasmuch as ideas may come in many forms. I am reminded of Foucault’s short essays in Ceci n’est pas une pipe, his playful yet revealing text on Magritte’s painting, and the ambiguous ways in which meaning is rendered – and indeed, the slippery relationship between words and images.

I also learned during this process that, beyond precision, words also require a tolerance, much like a construction joint, if you will: a reveal, a space for mistakes, but also a way in which perfection may be cast even when things do not completely align. What is maybe worse than imprecision is the idea that someone might use the rigidity of terms, or their proposed meanings to construct adversity where there is none. And herein lies a delicate balance I would like to create for this semester: the ability to create debates though our differences, but also to build a space of convergence, of tolerance and of difference such that these necessary frictions can be absorbed by the collegiality of opposing views.

Indeed, as the faculty set out to craft their individual positions, their collective drive towards consensus, and my appeal to them to attempt to draw out a larger narrative for the school at large, I also stumbled across several other realizations.

First, in acknowledging the omnipresence of images and information, the result of the access we have to the Internet—the omnipresence of the hotspot access we have to Wi-Fi if you like—I see these discussions as an opportunity to develop a “cold spot,” a respite for us to think about our project, rather than be pulverized by everything around the clock. From this may emerge a school of thought, and indeed, in this day and age where geography, location, culture and language matter less and less, I think that a school of thought is even more powerful, because it is the one irreducible thing that belongs to this place that no one else has access to in an intimate and immediate way.

Despite this, or maybe precisely because of this, we have all also had to confront our own history at Cooper Union; in all its diversity and intensity, it has had a rich set of characters, debates and biases over the years, but they have been anything but monolithic. To this end, what might be the most dangerous aspect of this proposition is if it is misinterpreted—or misused—to “essentialize” what someone thinks Cooper is, or has been. We are at a critical crossroad now, and the time has come to delve deeply not only in the way we teach, but the way we learn. Part of that teaching process is to bring a certain expertise to the table, but part of the learning process that is its counterpart is to leave room for risk, even if that opens you up to failure. There is nothing more noble than a productive failure in this context. No, it is not an F, as such, but rather the audacity to take on an impossible project, to research it inside out, and to demonstrate the depth of discoveries we make through iteration as the basis for our advancement.

It is here, where we may get beyond essentialization, to leave room for discovery, to become, to transform, and to imagine that we can yet project forth without the necessity of the certainties we inherit from legacies, histories, or conventions. This is not a repudiation of history, nor of our culture, but simply the acknowledgment that part of the learning process requires the gradients of “ignorance”, if only to leave room for the intellectual transformation.

Mutsurō Sasaki is an expert of shell structures and a pioneer in the field of computational morphogenesis in structural engineering. His research focuses on the development of design techniques using structural optimizations and form findings based on the mathematical principle of structural mechanics. He has developed the sensitivity analysis method for free-curved shell structures that defines optimum structural solutions within complex design criteria. His research-based practice extends the analytical works of Antonio Gaudi, Heinz Isler, and Frei Otto into the field of computational designs that has helped shape the contemporary architectural scene in Japan and abroad.

It is my pleasure to bring you all together to launch the new academic year. It is great to see the familiar faces of returning students and faculty, but it’s also a moment of welcoming to the new students—our first year students, transfers, our one-semester guests as well as our new faculty, all of whom promise to bring transformations to the conversation at Cooper. I want to thank Monica Shapiro and Robyn Fitzsimmons for helping to get us launched, with what is a good deal of work over the summer and a marathon session for the registration process.

Our new faculty include Benjamin Aranda, Michael Morris, and Stephanie Lin who are teaching in the first year, Sean Canty in the second year and Maria Gonzalez Pendas in the third year, Powell Draper for Structures IV, John Maass for Construction Management, and Lauren Kogod who is returning to teach thesis in a slightly revised format. I look forward to collaborating with them all closely.

We are looking forward to a great line-up of events this fall. As part of our ongoing collaboration with the Architectural League of New York, we will be hosting Alejandro Aravena on the 22nd of September, followed by Giancarlo Mazzanti, Solano Benitez, and Tatiana Bilbao towards the end of the semester.

This lecture series will be paralleled by our own in-house series, with Mutsuro Sasaki, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Mark West. The student lecture series is also being formed currently, so be on the lookout for some other significant names to this line-up!

More strategically, I have also asked a few architects and scholars to make impromptu visits for talks. On October 25th Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis will speak about their book, Manual of Section. Though this is especially interesting for the third year studio, I think their encounter with analytical drawings should offer critical content for the entire student body. Vicente Guallart and Marcelo Spina will also be joining us for a roundtable of joint presentations in the middle of the semester; both significant advocates of contemporary ways of working, Guallart led the IAAC for many years, while Spina has been teaching in SCI-Arc and running his practice PATTERNS in collaborations with Georgina Huljich.

In tandem with this, our exhibition series as organized with Steven Hillyer, will feature the work of Matsuro Sasaki, who will also lecture on September 19th. In a similar vein, LTL will also be presenting their work on the Manual of Section through an exhibition. In October, we will be opening up the Houghton Gallery to the Spanish Biennale, as it makes its debut in the United States.

Meanwhile, we will also be having a series of pop-up events in the third floor gallery, organized by Lauren Kogod and the thesis students. The thesis projects will offer the opportunity for the entire school to participate in its formation as a public process, as a dialogue amongst students and faculty alike and as a commitment to the discursive nature that surrounds the architectural discipline.

For the first time, the School of Architecture is also transforming some of its pedagogical plans, most concretely in the third year, where we will be expanding the Analysis Studio to include a trip to the very location of the buildings being analyzed—this as an opportunity to envision how these buildings, beyond their architectural description, contain a life that is the result of cultural, social and economic forces that are not readily available to the eye on formal readings. This year, we have selected Mexico City as a trial run and we are lucky to have Maria Gonzalez Pendas, a scholar on the work of Felix Candela, who has written a good deal on the relationship between his work, and the relationship between labor, material availability, and the structural speculations that are part of that work. She has been central to the preparation of this trip, and the expansion of the semester. I have asked the third year students to consider sharing their findings in Mexico City in the form of a lecture for the entire school, upon their return.