Spring 2024 Lectures and Events


LECTURES    
Spring 2024 All School Assembly Wednesday, January 17 at 2:00PM in The Great Hall Convocation
Making the Inclusive Museum Friday, January 26 at 7:00PM in The Great Hall [Tickets Here] Current Work
Tony Vidler — A Celebration Saturday, January 27 at 4:30PM in The Great Hall [Register Here] Memorial
Kersten Geers: Architecture and Everything Tuesday, January 30 at 6:30PM in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium and Zoom [Watch here] The Ornamental Metal Institute of New York Lecture
Peter Trummer: The City as a Technical Being — On the Mode of Existence of Architecture  Thursday, February 8 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom  [Watch here] Book Talk
Boonserm Premthada: Making Sense — Non-Human Centered Architecture Thursday, February 15 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom [Watch here] Student Lecture Series
Rafi Segal: Architecture as Dialogue Tuesday, February 20 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom [Watch here] Student Lecture Series
Jimenez Lai, Timotheus Vermeulen and Irena Haiduk: Monsters Beyond the Screens (A Post Zoom Meditation) Wednesday, February 21 at 3:30PM in 315F and Zoom (Watch here) In-Class Lecture 
Architecture Career Night Thursday, March 7 at 6:00PM in the Third Floor Lobby School of Architecture Event
Raphael Hefti: How to Deal with Salutary Failures  Tuesday, March 12 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom [Watch here] Visiting Lecture
Revisiting Branch Libraries  Wednesday, March 13 at 7:00PM in the Rose Auditorium [Watch here] Current Work 
Architecture Community Dinner Thursday, March 14 at 6:30PM in the Third Floor Lobby School of Architecture Event
Jimenez Lai: A Litter of Monsters Tuesday, March 26 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom [Watch here] Robert Gwathmey Chair Lecture
Elizabeth Diller Tuesday, April 2 at 6:30PM in The Great Hall Eleanore Pettersen Lecture 
Nahyun Hwang: Migrating Commons Thursday, April 4 at 6:30PM in 315F  [In-Person Only] Visiting Lecture
Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO: Edges Tuesday, April 9 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom Visiting Lecture
Lisa Switkin: Immersion Thursday, April 11 at 6:30PM in 315F and Zoom Student Lecture Series
Torkwase Dyson: Forming Without the Promise of Stability Tuesday, April 16 at 6:30PM in the Rose Auditorium and Zoom Visiting Lecture 
Lydia Kallipoliti: Histories of Ecological Design — An Unfinished Cyclopedia Thursday, April 18 at 6:30PM in the Third Floor Lobby, 3rd Floor Hallway Gallery and Zoom Book Launch and Reception
Accessible Schools Tuesday, April 23 at 7:00PM in the Rose Auditorium [Watch here] Current Work

 

EXHIBITIONS  
Anthony Vidler: Origins of Study Thursday, January 25 — Wednesday, February 14 in the Third Floor Hallway Gallery. 
Jimenez Lai: Hall of Monsters Monday, March 4 — Thursday, March 28 in the Third Floor Hallway Gallery. 
Lydia Kallipoliti: Histories of Ecological Design — An Unfinished Cyclopedia Thursday, April 4 — Sunday, April 28 in the Third Floor Hallway Gallery. 

 

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 2023-24

Architecture fundamentally inhabits the public realm, disrupts our perception and stages our individual experiences, necessitating a candid confrontation with the human senses. We are interested in the loud, the silent, the iridescent, the invisible, the fragrant, the bitter, the firm, the soft, the unstable, the serene, the irritating, the claustrophobic, and the romantic. This lecture series explores architecture as a mediator between us and the world—a sensorial landscape that, through stimulation and deprival, captures emotion, memory and experience.

The Student Lecture Series is endowed by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

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.

  • 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.