Please join the School of Architecture for the launch of four recent Thesis publications, from 2018 – 2021. These books, which celebrate undergraduate Thesis projects completed by graduating Cooper Union students, are part of an eight-year tradition dating back to 2014. Each year since then a group of student editors has collaborated with Thesis faculty and the Architecture Archive to create a lasting document of their final, pre-professional, individually initiated design studio work. The last four publications present projects by seventy-nine students working under the guidance of twelve faculty members and thirty-six Thesis advisors. Three of these books were completed remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The themes explored in these publications include Memory and Metaphor, Urban Narratives, Future Modes of Living, and Heritage and Global Patrimony. A number of projects ask questions such as Whose city is this? and How do we look beyond the surface? Covering a broad range of issues and topics, these projects include a proposal for a framework of buoyant elements that address climate change and rising tides; a paradoxical architecture drawn from the sites of New England’s decayed textile industry; possible futures for Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway; a rethinking of American death practices; an architectural reading of the contested philanthropy of the Sackler empire; a critique of and proposal for Amazon workamping environments; and ways of inhabiting New York City’s interconnected, neglected rooftops.

Held in the Third Floor Lobby. Open to 2018 – 2021 architecture graduates as well as School of Architecture students, faculty, and staff.