Architecture professor Nora Akawi was recently named the John and Mary Manuck Distinguished Professor of Design, a two-year appointment aimed at raising the visibility of design as a unifying element of architecture, art, and engineering. “I’m humbled by this opportunity to continue amplifying work with colleagues and students from across Cooper around shared interests and concerns,” Akawi says. 

Akawi, who joined The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture as an assistant professor in 2019, focuses her research on erasure and bordering in settler colonialism and works at the intersection of architecture with border studies, cartography, and archive theory. She believes that investigations of border conditions and collective action can begin locally, and she plans to use the Manuck professorship to help students gain insights right on Cooper Square.

“I look forward to deepening our cross-disciplinary engagement with the city through collective study and collaborative design practices, and to do so starting from where we are,” she says. “The streets and buildings surrounding our classrooms and studios at Cooper are home to both past and ongoing movements and organizations who have practiced and constructed shared visions for equitable and dignified living, refusing the extractive and oppressive forces encroaching on their neighborhoods.”

Thanks to a partnership between The Cooper Union and the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Akawi with colleagues Ninad Pandit, Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, and David Johnson, has taught courses and created programs focusing on public urban practices as “alimentary infrastructure”—a term used by activist Winona LaDuke and scholar Deborah Cowen (2020) to describe systems rooted in care that open up paths for collective flourishing. “We look forward to continuing this work and developing its next stage together with colleagues and students in the fields of architecture, art, engineering, and the humanities,” Akawi says.

The endowed professorship, which rotates among Cooper’s three schools, was established by the Manucks to encourage interdisciplinary exchange. The position was previously held by Sam Keene, professor and chair of computer science in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering.