Peter Ballman, AR'08 is a principal of Ballman Khapalova, an architecture practice based in Ithaca and New York City. Through this practice Peter works at a variety of scales, from infrastructure to urban playgrounds, always seeking to integrate intuitive and imaginative design methods with a rigorous approach to drawing, building and planning. He has worked as a designer at Barkow Leibinger in Berlin, as well as Senior Project Manager at Sciame Construction in NYC, working closely on the coordination and construction of the The Shed at Hudson Yards. His primary interests are in integrating the study of culture with building techniques and typologies across the history of architecture, and with the development of an intuitive design methodology drawing on a multitude of disciplines and techniques.

Joan Waltemath, born in 1953, grew up on the Great Plains where her German ancestors settled in the late 19th century. Her early experiences in nature and looking at native geometries inform her subsequent abstract paintings and guide their complex use of materials. As her multifaceted 2 dimensional surfaces unfold in time, their spatial voids constructed of harmonic progressions emerge to facilitate an interaction with her audience and allow for a reflective response from sustained engagement.

This event will run in conjunction with The Waltemath Foundation exhibition which is accessible online.

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

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

Feifei Zhou is a Chinese-born artist and architect. She holds an MA in architecture from the Royal College of Art in London and was a guest researcher at Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA). Her work explores spatial, cultural, and ecological impacts of the industrialized built environment. She co-edited the digital publication Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene with Anna Tsing, Jennifer Deger and Alder Keleman Saxena, which was published in October 2020. She currently lives and works between London and China. 

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

Following the completion of the fall 2020 Thesis projects by the graduate students of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and in keeping with the annual tradition of presenting their work to the public, the School of Architecture is pleased to announce the exhibition A World of Many Worlds. Presented as a website online, a reception including presentations and responses, and as a physical installation, this exhibition synthesizes nine individual thesis projects, referencing the worlds in which they were created and those they aspire to build as a communal endeavor.

As the Foundation Building is currently closed to the public, the students will be exhibiting their work in the building’s exterior windows along Third Avenue, between 7th and 8th Streets. Each student is creating an installation in a single bay of windows. These individual atmospheres will collectively represent diverse project themes and methods of execution, while sharing the school’s work with the public.

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

This exhibition is free and accessible to the public.

This exhibition was organized and curated in a collaboration between the School of Architecture Archive and the Communications Office of The Cooper Union.

David Heymann, AR'85, FAIA, is an architect, author, and the Harwell Hamilton Harris Regents Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas. His focus is the complex relationship of constructions and landscapes. Heymann is the author of My Beautiful City Austin and, with Stephen Fox, John S. Chase - the Chase Residence. He is a contributing writer for Places Journal; his essay Landscape Is Our Sex received the 2012 Bradford Williams Medal. Heymann’s architectural work has been recognized with various design honors, including selection for Emerging Voices by the Architecture League of New York. He is an AIA/ACSA Distinguished Teaching Professor, and has received numerous teaching awards, including recognition by DesignIntelligence in 2017 and 2018. Heymann holds degrees from the Cooper Union and Harvard’s GSD.

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

Lesley Lokko trained as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture and holds a PhD in Architecture from the same institution. She was the founder and director of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg from 2014 - 2019. She recently resigned from her position as Dean of Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture, CCNY, and is now engaged in building the African Futures Institute, an independent postgraduate school of architecture and events space in Accra, Ghana. In 2021, she will hold visiting professorships at The Cooper Union, University of Virginia and Yale University. 

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.