Visiting Lecture | Sean Lally: Snags, Glitches and Unintended Consequences

Tuesday, November 17, 2026, 6:30 - 8:30pm

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Sean Lally

Image: Courtesy of Sean Lally.

This event will be conducted in-person in Room 315F and through Zoom. 

For in-person attendance, please register in advance here. 
For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

Architects love to be right. Yet, exploring a design world living with the glitches, snags, and unintended consequences of our ambitions might better serve not only the world we belong to but our own discipline.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Michael Young.

Lally is the author of The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come (Lars Müller), and editor of Energies: New Material Boundaries: Architectural Design. Lally is the recipient of the Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize in landscape architecture from the American Academy in Rome and the Young Architects Award from the Architectural League of New York. Lally’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the 17th Venice Architectural Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Istanbul Design Biennale.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Located at 7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues

  • 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.