ARCHITECTURE The Irwin S. Chanin AT COOPER School of Architecture The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art 4:09 -10 The academic year 2009 –20010 was a particularly significant The three exhibitions collectively served as an opportunity We were brought more forcefully to reflect on this tradition, year for The Cooper Union, and equally so for the School for the School of Architecture to reflect on its history and to by the passing this year of two of its major inventors, of Architecture. As the 150th year since the founding of the clarify and articulate a curriculum for the education of Professors Richard Henderson and Raimund Abraham. institution, it was also the 149th year of teaching architecture architects into the twenty first century. In their preparation Richard, who taught at the school for over thirty years, was at Cooper. A timeline included in last year’s edition of we were able to reflect on the extraordinary intersection not only a wise and strong administrator but, more importantly , was further developed and illustrated of tradition, renewal, and innovation represented in the work Architecture At Cooper an innovator in the realm of architectural analysis and one as the prologue for the first of three major exhibitions of the school since its foundation. who placed the analytical process at the center of Cooper’s mounted by the school in the Houghton Gallery, “Architecture From the Nine Square Problem, through Cubes, Topos, approach to design. At a time when the “postmodernists” at Cooper 1859 –2009.” The exhibition chronicled the history Blocks, Bridges, Connections, Communities, Balances, were calling for a return to history in the iconographic and of architecture—and specifically of the architecture of its Walls, Houses, Joints, Skins, to Spheres, Cylinders, Pyramids imitative sense, Richard insisted that analysis was a didactic, buildings—at Cooper from 1859 to the present. The exhibition and Cones, the First Year programs of the School of structural and abstract discipline, at once interpretative and began with an original drawing fragment of the Foundation Architecture have, since 1965, developed the architectonic projective. His Third Year Analysis Studio achieved iconic Building by Frederick Petersen and a piece of a rolled steel ground for the next four years of studio problems. In the status as a launching ground for the architectonic invention rail section that had been assembled to make one of the Second Year, analyses—of Palladio, Borromini, Ledoux, for which Cooper became known. original beams of the building, and continued with blueprints Le Corbusier, Loos, and more contemporary works, together of renovations and additions designed for the building in I first met Raimund in1967, at which moment he revealed with a hundred more individual buildings, classical, modern, the 1890’s by Leopold Eidlitz. These prints had been to me that we had emigrated to the States together, when and contemporary—have explored the complexities of form, discovered by our Archive in the cellar of the Hewitt Building he noticed (as he recounted to me later) that in front of him structure, and use, that constitute the architectural problem. during the summer before its demolition in 2007. The “star” in the Customs shed was a young Englishman with long hair In the Third Year, institutional programs of all scales, from of the show was a series of blueprints of each floor of the unpacking the Corbusier for inspection. museums, libraries, housing, homeless shelters, to urban Oeuvre Complète Foundation Building from 1974, marked up in characteristic When asked what books were in bag by the same customs farms, high lines, expressways and waterworks, have acted his bright colors by John Hejduk with notes by the architect, for inspector who had realized that two architects were coming as matrices for the deeper understanding of assemblies, the client and himself, crowding the plans of each floor of through, Raimund said in true contrariwise manner, “I have accommodations, contexts, and cultures. In the Fourth Year, his proposed renovation. Proust.” Raimund and I have been arguing about this non- urban interventions and comparative analyses of cities have difference ever since. Raimund was one of the most influential The second exhibition was dedicated to the teaching and expanded awareness of the scales and structures of civic teachers at Cooper for over thirty years. In his teaching at all art practice of our longest-serving professor, Tony Candido, architecture while filmic investigations of cities and levels he insisted on an ethical allegiance to the true nature and brought together his work from 1949 to the present—fifty topological studies of nature, have framed and narrated the of architecture and the role of authentic form in society. His years of painting, drawing, design, and teaching with a rare life of inhabited environments. In the Fifth Year Thesis, a First Year Architectonics course was perhaps the best ever dedication to the discipline. Professor Candido’s anticipation thousand individual propositions have researched and formed to succeed that of the Bauhaus version. of the advantages of greening the city, through his celebrated questions of habitat, from the individual house to the global design problem of the urban farm, was explored with many effects of warming. Both Richard and Raimund were iconoclastic and radical years of students, as was his belief in the need for high- figures in our collective history. Perhaps, however, they This year also saw the inauguration of our Master of density living units in cities newly formed for the rapidly should not be put so quickly into history—for theirs was a Architecture, post-professional degree program, an intensive expanding population of the globe. prospective vision, demonstrated by the last decade of work three-semester research and design experience for students in the school, that pointed towards a future, not a past. For The third exhibition, prepared for the NAAB re-accreditation from five and three year professional degree programs. With this, Cooper and the world will miss them greatly, as at the site visit, brought together the work of all studios and courses concentrations in theory and history, urbanism, and same time, we celebrate their powerful legacies to the over the last three years in order to demonstrate the abilities technology, the curriculum emphasizes an interdisciplinary fundamental discipline of architecture. and understandings of our students with respect to the NAAB and experimental approach to design problems of every scale, conditions of accreditation, in the context of a curriculum from the object to the environment. structured on a rigorous five year design sequence, informed In reflecting on this history and looking to the present, by coursework in structures, building technologies and we were able to see how, based on the skills of drawing and environmental technologies and a strong commitment to modeling, on the knowledge of history, theory, structures, study in the humanities and social sciences. While we will environmental and building technologies, humanities and not receive a formal report from the NAAB until July, the exit social sciences, and their creative interpretation, multiple meeting with the visiting team indicated that they were architectures have been invented and reinvented, as faculty unanimous in their admiration for the program and support and students have worked together to construct an ever- of the school’s direction. transforming but always rigorous pedagogy that, founded Anthony Vidler on its own rich tradition, meets the challenges of the present Dean and Professor and anticipates those of the future. The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture LECTURES AND EVENTS The Irwin S. Chanin The Irwin S. Chanin The Irwin S. Chanin Saturday 10/3 School of Architecture/ School of Architecture/ School of Architecture/ Architecture Moves The Architectural League Open House New York/ Pecha Kucha The day long conference probed the intersections of of New York The Architect’s Newspaper Friday 2/20 architecture and the aesthetics of movement from the 19th The School of Architecture annually Monday 10/5 Fundraiser for Haiti: New York #9 to the 21st century, exploring rhythm and spatial relocation, co-sponsors and hosts a number of displacement of vision, temporality and animation in space. Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Presenters included: Stan Allen, events with the Architectural League , film premiere Anthology Film Archives co-presented two films in 35mm by of Julius Schulman Jesse Reiser, Gregg Pasquarelli, Iwan of New York in The Great Hall. This Heinz Emigholz as part of this conference: Introduction by Eric Bricker, Director, Baan, Craig Dykers, Sam Jacob, Schindler’s House ongoing relationship has fostered (2007) and (2002/03). Zachary Lieberman, Florian Idenburg Goff in the Desert a continuously expanding forum for Visual Acoustics & Jing Liu, Stefan Sagmeister, Introductions: Anthony Vidler, Dean, The Irwin S. Chanin contemporary architectural dialogues Visual Acoustics celebrates the life David Adjaye, Steven Holl, Paul Lewis, School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. and career of Julius Shulman, whose Michael Bell, Stella Betts & David Conference Chair and Opening Remarks: images brought modern architecture Monday 10/19 Leven, Susannah Drake Tamar Zinguer, Associate Professor, The Irwin S. Chanin to the American mainstream. Shulman, Andrew Freear, Director, Rural Studio, School of Architecture who passed away