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Tommy Schaperkotter

Assistant Professor Adjunct

Tommy Schaperkotter is an architect, builder, and educator dedicated to transdisciplinary research, design, and construction. He is a co-founder and principal of KLEI Architecture, a full-service architecture practice specializing in craftsmanship and climate stewardship. The firm combines experience in construction, furniture-making, and design-build delivery with expertise in thermal modeling, material analysis, and other methods of ecological inquiry. 
 
In academia, Schaperkotter has taught at numerous institutions and currently holds adjunct teaching positions at Columbia University GSAPP as well as The Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, where he helped establish the Building Design Collaborative. The BDC is an initiative and class that brings together architecture and engineering students who create proposals for projects located in the New York Metropolitan Area.
 
Schaperkotter received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master in Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he was a co-recipient of the Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize and the AIA / ACSA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Award.

Schaperkotter's CV can be viewed here.

  • 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.