This presentation will be conducted in-person and through Zoom. Zoom account registration is required, please register in advance here.

This is a roundtable discussion curated by Hina Jamelle and Daisy Ames. The invited speakers include Brian Phillips, Scott Erdy, Laia Mogas-Soldevila, and Nader Tehrani who are contributors to Under Pressure, a book edited by Hina Jamelle about instigation and design in urban housing. This book gathers and contextualizes relevant conversations in urban housing unfolding today across architecture through four topics: Learning from History, Changing Domesticities, Housing Finance and Policy, and Design and Material Innovation. The result is a multi-disciplinary amalgam of research and design intelligence from thought leaders in the fields of architecture, real estate, economics, policy, material design, and finance. The discussion will be moderated by Daisy Ames, coordinator of the Housing Studio sequence at The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and speakers will engage in the themes of this year’s studio design prompts of hybridity and invisibility.

Hina Jamelle teaches final year Graduate Option Studios and directs the Graduate Program’s Urban Housing Studios at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. She has held the Visiting Schaffer Practice Professorship at the University of Michigan. Jamelle is the co-director of the New York and Shanghai based architectural firm Contemporary Architecture Practice and has co-edited issues of Architectural Design AD titled IMPACT (2020) as well as Elegance (2007).  Hina Jamelle’s UNDER PRESSURE on Urban Housing was published in 2021. Founded in 1999, Contemporary Architecture Practice [CAP] is known for futuristic designs using digital techniques and the latest technologies for the design and manufacturing of architecture. Projects include commissions by The Museum of Modern Art [New York]; Reebok Shanghai, Lijia Smart Park, Chongqing, Wenjin Hotels, Beijing, NJCTTQ Pharmaceuticals, Nanjing, AMEC Technologies, Nanchang [China]; Samsung, Seoul [South Korea]; and IWI Orthodontics Clinic, Tokyo [Japan]. Contemporary Architecture Practice’s projects have been exhibited extensively at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the London, Beijing, and Shanghai Biennales; and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, among others. They also have been featured in more than 250 major publications around the world. Co-Directors Rahim and Jamelle have won the Architectural Record Design Vanguard Award and were featured in Phaidon’s 10x10x2 as one of the world’s top 100 emerging architects. Their project, IWI Orthodontics in Tokyo, Japan was featured in Phaidon’s ROOM 100 as one of the most creative interior design projects of the century. In 2015 she was recognized as 50 Under 50 Innovators of the 21st Century by a distinguished jury.

Daisy Ames, Assoc. AIA, is the founding principal of Studio Ames LLC, an architectural design and research office based in New York City. Ames’ research focuses on the spatial implications of social, economic, and political shifts within cities, and how these intersecting forces affect contemporary models of living. Ames received her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, and the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University and received her Master of Architecture I from Yale School of Architecture. She is currently a member of the faculty at Yale School of Architecture and Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture teaching analysis and housing studios and seminars.

Brian Phillips is founding principal and creative director of ISA, a design and research office based in Philadelphia. Brian earned his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania where is currently a Lecturer. He was awarded a 2011 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and was named an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York in 2015. ISA has won over 50 local, regional, and national design citations, including the Philadelphia AIA Silver and Gold Medals, and five AIA National Housing Awards. The firm’s work has been featured in Architect, Architectural Record, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and on NPR.

Scott Erdy’s work pursues a methodology where form embodies purpose, and sense of place is revealed through the careful intersection of program, site and culture. Since establishing Erdy McHenry Architecture with David McHenry, Scott’s design work has received many accolades from the local and national press as well as his peers and has received more than 30 state, local and national awards. His design for St. Aloysius Church was recognized by ArchDaily as one of the Top 100 Architectural Projects in the US and as one of the Five Best Churches of the World by WorldBuild365. Beginning with the September 2001 cover story of Architectural Record featuring the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, and most recently the July 2013 cover of highlighting the Cornell Teaching Dairy Barn, Ithaca New York, Scott’s work has been recognized for the embodiment of both its cultural significance and utilitarian beauty.

His award-winning projects celebrate place, program and cultural relevancy while exploiting the conceptual potential of practicality and constructability. The strength of Scott’s work is its ability to translate normative programs into architecture of poetic beauty and cultural significance. Scott received his undergraduate degree from the Ohio State University and his master’s degree from Syracuse, where he studied under the stalwart modernist Werner Seligmann. He currently teaches a Graduate Housing Studio at the University of Pennsylvania and lectures widely on his work.

Laia Mogas-Soldevila is an Architect and Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design interested in novel material practices. She holds an interdisciplinary doctorate within Tufts Biomedical Engineering and has worked and taught at MIT and Cornell University. Her team and solo work have been published in science and design journals and shared in cross-field venues such as MRS, IASS, eCAADe, Biofabricate, and ACADIA, and at the MoMa, the Copper Hewitt Design Museum, the New Lab, the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Since 2008, she co-directs DumoLab. 

Nader Tehrani is the Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in New York. He was previously a professor of architecture at MIT, where he served as the Head of the Department from 2010-2014. He is also Principal of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry. 

For his contributions to architecture as an art, Nader Tehrani is the recipient of the 2020 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which he was also elected as a Member in 2021, the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in The United States.

The in-person lecture is open to Cooper Union students, faculty, and staff in room 215F only. This event is accessible to the public through Zoom.