A World of Many Worlds: Opening Reception and Project Presentation

Wednesday, February 17, 2021, 6:30 - 8:30pm

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

In conjunction with the exhibition A World of Many Worlds, which celebrates graduate Thesis projects from the 2019-20 Master of Architecture II class, and in keeping with annual tradition, The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture will present this work by outgoing graduate students to the incoming graduate class. The presentations will be followed by a conversation among Cooper Union students, faculty, alumni, and invited guests. 

Though it marks the end of the 2019-20 academic year, this event begins a new dialogue with the incoming graduate class—this exhibit will be one of their first encounters with the School’s academic and social culture. For a one-year program, this tradition has proven critical to its continuity, and despite the ongoing pandemic, this event will ensure that the incoming class has access to this experience.

This diverse group of local and international students—representing nine individual perspectives—has explored Thesis topics ranging from disciplinary constructions of context, the queering of space, and cultural appropriation to memory and destruction, the relativity of bodies, and the disruption of normative perceptions. 

Presenting students: Sally Chen, Yingxiao Chen, Giedre Darskute, Nien Ying Lin, Jamie Lindsey, Austin McInnis, Roni Schanin, Doosung Shin, and Qicheng Wu.

Respondents: Virginia Black (feminist architecture collaborative), Marina Otero Verzier (Het Nieuwe Instituut), and Sumayya Vally (Counterspace).

Opening remarks: Dean Nader Tehrani, the School of Architecture Archive director Steven Hillyer, and Graduate Thesis faculty Nora Akawi and Anthony Vidler.

To learn more about the exhibition A World of Many Worlds, please click here.

In conjunction with the presentation of this work, an Anti-Racism in Thesis Workshop will take place on Saturday, February 27, 2021 from 10:00am to 4:00pm. This event will continue ongoing work at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture to decolonialize the curriculum and advance an anti-racist pedagogy at the school. To learn more about this event, please click here.

This event has been made possible by generous support from The Cooper Union Grant Program. 

This exhibition and reception is free and accessible to the public. 

View the full Spring 2021 Lectures and Events List.

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