Spring 2023 Lectures and Events

LECTURES    
Spring 2023 All School Assembly Wednesday, January 18 at 2:00PM in The Great Hall and through Zoom Convocation
José Aragüez: Spatial Infrastructure Tuesday, January 24 at 6:30PM in The Cooper Union Library [Watch Here] Book Launch
Neeraj Bhatia: Forming Life in Common Thursday, January 26 at 6:30PM through Zoom Architectures of Transition
ASSEMBLE:ELBMESSA Tuesday, January 31 at 7:00PM in The Great Hall Current Work
Roundtable Discussion: Drawing Conversations Thursday, February 2 at 6:30PM in The Cooper Union Library [Watch Here] Visiting Lecture
Anabel Ford: Ancient Maya Settlement Patterns and Traditional Maya Housing — Interpreting Population and Land Use Wednesday, February 8 at 12:00Noon through Zoom [Watch Here] Architectures of Transition
Raymond Craib — Libertarian Noir: Exit Strategies and New Enclosures (1960 to the Present) Tuesday, February 28 at 12:00Noon in 315F and Zoom [Watch Here] Architectures of Transition
raumlaborberlin Wednesday, March 1 at 12:00Noon through Zoom Current Work
Brittany Utting and Daniel Jacobs: Time Machines for a Future Climate Thursday, March 23 at 6:30PM in 315F [Watch Here] Architectures of Transition
Takaharu and Yui Tezuka: Timeless — Finding Kronos Friday, March 24 at 6:30PM in The Rose Auditorium [Watch Here] Student Lecture Series
Tony Fry: The Other Architecture — Accelerationism, Defuturing and Contra-practice Thursday, March 30 at 6:30PM in 315F and through Zoom [Register Here] Workshop Pt. 1
Order!: The Spatial Ideologies of Carbon Modernity Symposium Saturday, April 1 at 10:00AM to 6:00PM in The Rose Auditorium [In-Person Registration] and through Zoom [Register Here] Architectures of Transition 
Tony Fry: The Other Architecture, Part 2: Remaking a Future with a Future Tuesday, April 6 at 6:30PM through Zoom [Register Here] Workshop Pt. 2
51N4E Tuesday, April 11 at 7:00PM in The Great Hall [Register Here] Current Work
The Alternative Building Industry Collective, Building Coalitions for a Just Transition Thursday, April 13 at 7:00PM in The Rose Auditorium [Watch Here] Public Forum
Workshop in Generative Art, Architecture & Engineering, Part 1  Friday, April 21 in The Civics Projects Lab Keynote Lecture
Workshop in Generative Art, Architecture & Engineering, Part 2 Saturday, April 22 at 10:00AM to 6:00PM in The Civics Projects Lab Symposium & Workshop
What Black is This, You Say?  Wednesday, April 26 at 7:00PM in The Great Hall Symposium
Athar Lina Initiative: Heritage as a Community Resource Tuesday, May 2 at 12:00 Noon through Zoom [Register Here] Current Work

 

EXHIBITIONS  
Confronting Carbon Form March 7 through April 23 in the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery. Exhibition Opening: March 7 at 6:30 PM.
Vkhutemas Events

February 7, Jean-Louis Cohen in conversation with Anna Bokov [POSTPONED]

January 25, Vkhutemas: Laboratory of the Avant-Garde 1920-1930 [EXHIBITION POSTPONED]

 

The Architectures of Transition Lecture Series

Humanity has reached an ecological brink and against this daunting horizon, architecture’s environmental response, focused largely on building technology and techno-optimism, has failed. The climate crisis is intensifying unabated, in part because architecture, as both a discipline and a practice, continues to replicate the spatial, cultural, and material patterns that constitute an energy-intensive way of life.  

This year’s lecture series, curated by Elisa Iturbe, interrogates architecture’s alliance with the project of carbon modernity, from the early moments of industrialization to today’s advanced stages of fossil capitalism. At stake is architecture’s role in broad civilizational transition—unquestionable and problematic in the context of our last energy transition into fossil fuels, yet indeterminate and full of possibility in relation to the transitions to come.  

Together, these lectures and discussions will bring space and form into dialogue with energy and power, reframing the causal landscape of the climate crisis and reimagining our vocabulary of alternatives.  

The Eleanore Pettersen Lecture Series

The Eleanore Pettersen Lecture, established through a generous gift to The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, is dedicated to the voices of women in architecture as a lasting tribute to Ms. Pettersen's significant impact in the world of architecture and her love of The Cooper Union. Pettersen, who had worked as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright and would later design the post-White House home of Richard M. Nixon, was one of the first women to be licensed as an architect in New Jersey, and developed a successful practice there that spanned over fifty years.

Lectures in this series have been given by Toshiko Mori (2005), Phyllis Lambert (2006), Elizabeth Wright Ingraham (2008), Billie Tsien (2009), Francine Houben (2011), Sarah Wigglesworth (2013), and Farshid Moussavi (2014), Mabel Wilson (2020), Lesley Lokko + Sumayya Vally (2021), Samia Henni (2022). 

The Fariba Tehrani Lecture 

The Fariba Tehrani Lecture was initiated in honor of Biba Tehrani, whose decades-long commitment to education has served as a radical alternative to the very models of conventional pedagogies of which she is both beneficiary and victim. Her commitment to discursive interaction, speech, and oratory makes this endowment an apt tribute for her contributions to generations of students.

The YC Foundation Lecture

The YC Foundation, Inc., New York, makes grants for lectures in Architecture that inspire young architects to leadership through the experiences and stories of the lecturers.

Student Lecture Series 2022-23

This year, the Student Lecture Series has invited the student body to nominate potential speakers based on their varied interests. This is an opportunity to bring a diverse list of speakers and topics that we are interested in as a student collective.

In Conversation Series

The primary purpose of the In Conversation Lecture Series (IC) is to engender discussion of timely issues and ideas among Cooper faculty and students. There is a time and place for the expert monologue, but IC is neither. A few times a semester, IC stages a dialogue between invited faculty members, through a process mediated by the active inquiry of a student audience. This translates to quick faculty presentations followed by a meaty question-and-answer based discussion led by student organizers and the audience. 

Current Work

Current Work is a lecture series co-sponsored with The Architectural League of New York featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art. The spring 2021 Current Work series examines some of the inherited histories, conventions, fabrics, and systems - often taken for granted - that constitute and shape the built environment. How might we reconsider the ways we engage with and construct the places that surround us? Speakers will address issues including transforming architectural pedagogy; protecting threatened historic sites; conserving resources by adapting existing buildings and reusing materials; and reimagining and regenerating places scarred by racism, neglect, and environmental emergencies.

  • 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.