A Look Back as We Move Forward

Since the 1960s, The Cooper Union’s School of Architecture has embraced publishing as an extension of architectural education. Through books, journals, pamphlets, portfolios, and exhibitions, the school has disseminated its projects and pedagogy beyond the institution, inviting debate and exchange across the discipline.

Education of an Architect: A Point of View, an exhibition of student work presented at The Museum of Modern Art in 1971/72, was a defining moment for the school. Its companion publication extended the exhibition’s reach, documenting a formative moment in the school’s pedagogy. Education of an Architect (Rizzoli, 1988), a subsequent volume covering work produced between 1972 and 1985, portrayed architectural education not simply as a curriculum but as an evolving intellectual project. Together, the two publications brought Cooper Union’s methods, exercises, and ideas into a broader conversation about how architects are educated.

This exhibition traces publishing as a form of exchange between studio and public, teacher and student, exhibition and book, and institution and discipline. It presents the school’s publications not simply as records of architectural education, but as active participants in its intellectual life—vehicles through which Cooper Union has shared, challenged, and expanded the possibilities of architectural thought. It is also the context for launching new publications and digital platforms by the school: the books Thesis 2025, Sue Ferguson Gussow: Retrospective, a follow up catalog to the 2023 exhibition of Gussow’s work that took place in the Houghton Gallery, and the first two issues of Foundation, a student-led journal formed under the guidance of faculty member Matt Shaw and advisor Chris Dierks that documents the intellectual and cultural life of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Accompanying the journal, also mentored by Shaw and Dierks, is the new digital platform CMU.place, a collaborative website designed by Cooper Union’s art and architecture students. The exhibition also includes the Exhibitions Collection database, which features over 200 exhibitions produced by the School of Architecture since the 1960s, and is now online and available to the public.

Open to the general public
Tuesday – Friday, 2 pm – 7 pm
Saturday & Sunday, 12 pm – 7 pm