CU @ Lunch with Cooper Union Alumni focuses on the work of recent graduates from the School of Art and the School of Architecture who can speak about the vital issues they face following graduation. This session will feature Caitlin Martusewicz from the School of Architecture, class of 2011.

This event is organized by Assistant Professor Nora Akawi and the students in the Master of Science in Architecture program.

This event has been made possible by generous support from The Cooper Union Grant Program. This event is free and accessible to the public. Please register in advance here.

The work of School of Architecture graduates Jemuel Joseph and Alexis Rivas, both AR’16, has been featured in Archinect, in a piece addressing their unique approach to productizing prefabrication. Co-founders of Cover, a company that designs, manufactures, and installs backyard homes in Los Angeles, Joseph and Rivas challenge the inefficiencies and high costs of conventional construction, questioning whether the prefabrication of homes in factories can be streamlined to increase productivity and reduce costs. The premise of Cover is that the entire manner in which homes are prefabricated needs to be completely reconsidered.

Alexis and Jemuel credit their Cooper Union education for shaping their problem-solving skills. In reflecting on their efforts, Dean Tehrani noted “Alexis and Jemuel demonstrate how their pedagogical challenges involved problems of making that, through their ingenuity, could be scaled up to impact production at the industrial level. In them, I see a conceptual precision - what I like to think is a cornerstone of Cooper culture - that has the ability to impact thinking that can be transposed from the academic realm into practice, indeed changing practice entirely as we know it today.”

Image Credit: © Cover Technologies, Inc.

Assistant Professor Adjunct Anna Bokov has just published Avant-Garde as Method (Park Books, 2020), a groundbreaking study on the early Soviet Union's Higher Art and Technical Studios, known as Vkhutemas. Though ten times the size of the Bauhaus and equally influential, Vkhutemas was -until recently- largely forgotten by art and design history. Bokov’s comprehensive and richly illustrated volume is the definitive reference work on a pioneering school and pedagogy that has had a lasting influence on Modernism.

Professor Anthony Vidler notes of Avant-Garde as Method, “This book will be a revelation to scholars and the general public, positioning Vkhutemas as an equal pedagogical force to the Bauhaus in the shaping of the Modern movement in architecture and design.” The School of Architecture is also pleased to be sharing Bokov’s work via Vkhutemas: Laboratory of the Avant-Garde, 1920 - 1930, an exhibition planned for the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery in early 2022.

This event is free and accessible to the public through Zoom. Please register in advance here.

The architecture of the project, designed by Ballman Khapalova, is documented through the exhibition. The virtual galleries present the spatial language for the project which arose from an analysis of the land and the existing building that, over time, began to resonate not only with Joan’s work but also with the principles and process through which she creates it. Included in this exhibition are paintings from three different periods of her work, each utilizing different techniques for making space with harmonic progressions.

This exhibition highlights the work of School of Architecture graduates Peter Ballman, AR’08 & Dasha Khapalova, AR’07, principals of Ballman Khapalova.

You may watch our public Live Information Session to get an overview of the program's curriculum, pedagogy, and focus for this year. The video features examples of former participants' work and presentations by faculty and staff.

Please direct all questions and concerns to architecture.summer@cooper.edu.

You may register here.

The School of Architecture records, archives and publishes videos of public programs to open access and accommodate asynchronous learning and research for audiences in different time zones. You may visit our Vimeo channel for access to all our video content.

If you recently missed a lecture or event you wanted to see, make sure to check out the Fall 2020 and the Spring 2021 Lecture and Events Lists. Links to earlier semester event lists are found at the bottom of their respective event pages.

For campus-wide COVID-19 updates and resources, please visit The Cooper Union's website.