About

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Desk Crits
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2024 End of Year Show
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Design Studio Review
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2024 End of Year Show
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Studio Conversation

The mission of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture is to provide its students with the finest professional education available within an intellectual environment that fosters and expands their creative capacities and sensibilities and establishes the foundation for a creative professional life. The school is committed to the belief that one of society’s prime responsibilities is toward learning and education in the deepest sense: that exercising individual creativity within a willing community is a profoundly social act. Fundamental to the school's mission is the maintenance of an atmosphere in which freedom of thought and exploration can flourish, where students can explore and utilize their strengths and individual talents, interests, and modes of working to their highest potential.
 
The curriculum offers a cultural and intellectual foundation in the liberal arts as they relate to the design of the environment at all scales. The discipline of architecture is interpreted in the widest possible sense. Students develop their knowledge and design skills within a framework of studios and courses that stimulate research and debate into the role of architecture as a cultural practice with broad social and environmental implications. As the nature, role, and scope of the architect rapidly assume new directions and dimensions, the school emphasizes the principles of design and their underlying human values. The program seeks to engender a strong sense of the ethical responsibilities of service and leadership, teamwork, and individual creativity essential to the development of principled professionals dedicated to addressing the spatial needs of the community. 

Launch 3rd Floor Architecture Studio

 

  • 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.