I though I would talk about one of the only objects on my desk right now other than books, a pair of crocs.

But before that I will give you a quick studio update. Studio/ Cooper life has been stressful and intense. I will take this as a good sign for the program. Partly stressed by pressure I am putting on myself and partly from professors. Within the last three weeks we (m.arch II students) have settled into libraries across NYC, researching Shanghai or Chicago, Shanghai in my case. I am becoming a book hoarder, sorry NYU students, your shanghai collection is on my desk. We have shared library access with a number of schools in the city. Only recently I have started producing work from my research, mainly just mappings. One of the first topics I became interested in is parking, and now it has developed into the places of exchange between transportation systems. Shanghai is one big mess of a traffic jamb waiting to happen. A good percent of the population is shifting from bicycle use to car use yet the infrastructure is not there. This shift will have drastic changes in the way people interact with the city. These places of transportation transfer I am finding are becoming an interesting topic to focus on. The places between bus stop and metro, between parking and walking, between transportation access points and destinations. Where are the traffic jambs going to happen? Hopefully this will lead me to a project. I have always been fascinated with how Chinatown buses seem to make the most convenient corner the stop; I have been dropped off in front of Friendly’s, at the on-ramp of a highway, and the random city corner. As apposed to the western notice that we need to mark everything with a grand station. Chinatown bus is the closest I will be getting to China and Chinese transportation culture.

Oh yeah, Crocs! Lately, I have been super interested (almost obsessed) with Crocs. I started talking about them in Prof. Turnbull’s seminar class and have been using them as a window of interpretation into our culture and how they relate to our floor surfaces and spaces. The continual adaptability of public/private spaces and floor surfaces requires an equally responsive piece of footwear. Crocs are a symbol for our leisure culture and a symbol of adolescent adults. What is the nature of our current public spaces when we are allowed to and can wear Crocs in them? Crocs are the free plan of footwear. They free the barriers of the floor surface; sand to water to hospital, to home, to kitchen, to 5th Ave. No other shoe can achieve such a diversity of surfaces. They democratize footwear and break gender barriers. They are worn by presidents and have even been shipped to needy Iraqi school children, ‘Operation Iraqi Children’. They are made of anti-microbial and odor resistant foam allowing one to not worry about the fungal and odor problems associated with other pieces of footwear. Unfortunately for social reasons a certain someone is not letting me purchase a pair for myself to wear. It would be such a great studio shoe! A small pair of Caymans (size 4/5) and I had a little photo shoot in studio. For research purposes I sliced one in half.

Sorry for the length of this entry, I started writing last week and became to busy to finish. You are getting a two for one special, consider yourselves lucky. In this entry I thought I would give a description of my classes. The masters program is structured around a minimum of twelve credits; studio, pro-seminar, and two electives. (see the website for more information). There are a handful of electives you can take from the undergraduate curriculum with an array of interesting topics ranging from toys to town planning. Some electives change from semester to semester and year to year. Since the grad program is so small there is a fair amount of integration required with the undergrad program.


Proseminar - David Turnbull: This class feels like the ‘connective tissue’ of the masters program. It will continue into the spring semester. Professor Turnbull is an encyclopedia of references, giving you the book title, author, publisher, and chapter of practically any topic known to architecture (so it feels like). He lays out a large quantity of information that we are to siphon through and extract our interests from. It gets you excited in a geeky architecture sort of way. The intended goal of the class is to study our areas of concentration (theory, urban studies, and technologies) and then refine, expand, mix up and overlap them. The class will work in conjunction with the development of your thesis; assist you in your research, and possible overlap with studio. It is a comfortable setting to discuss architecture and your ideas. Besides studio the pro-seminar is the only other class that is composed of just the grad students and this gives the program a little more sense of cohesion. It is becoming one of my favorite classes.


Drawn to Utopia - Lebbeus Woods: I will assume that this seminar does not need too much of a description. We will be discussing why architects draw utopias, the means they use to represent utopia, and also consider our own utopian visions. A handful of notable guests will be coming in to share their thoughts on the matter. Recently Raimund Abraham came in for a group discussion. It is awe-inspiring when you have two masters discussing these topics with you in such an intimate environment.


Computer Graphics, Image Processing and Vision – Pablo Lorenzo Eiroa: This is billed as an introductory class but it has been much more advanced than that. All of the grad students ended up taking this because we are all trying to grasp the technology. The goals of the class are to familiarize you with a number of different software, techniques, and also the integrated use of the programs. Currently we have been playing around with parametric design and we are about to start on Maya. I think the real question is how to integrate this into studio, ultimately it is really on us to push such techniques. My guess is that it will probably happen more next semester and during the summer when we are more familiar with the programs. A couple of professors have expressed interest in how Cooper will approach digital techniques especially in the context of Cooper’s history and reputation for hand drafting. I hope that something unique comes out of this.


Shop Tech: Ok, in this class I feel old. This is an intro class that all new students are required to take if they want to use the wood shop. I am with a section of freshman sculpture students, 17 and 18 year olds. The shop monitors run you through all the basics like how not to cut off your finger and etc. Sometimes it gets slow when you are going over stuff you know already, but it can also be a nice refresher. I have to say, the shop at Cooper is really nice; clean, well maintained, and very large.


That brings me to studio. Diana Agrest and Masha Panteleyeva are the professors this semester. Diana Agrest is very sharp and intense. She really pushes hard for rigor in your concepts and representation. I think she will prepare us well for the following two semesters. We were just given a semester long assignment, which is to produce readings from an urbanistic, technological, or theoretical/historical viewpoint through drawings of either Chicago or Shanghai. We will start at the scale of the city but will adjust to a scale we see fit in our projects.

We just finished a two week assignment. Professor Agrest described it as a good Cooper type project to kick off the grad program. The project was to produce an architectural reading of a break up email. It was an extension of an idea by Sophie Calle in an exhibit called ‘Take Care of Yourself’. Sophie was the artist who was dumped by her boyfriend via email. She decided on sending the letter to over a 100 women of different professions and have them make a response to it. These responses became the exhibit, and then our studio project (no architect was represented in the original exhibit). I will spare you the details on how my review went, but it feels nice to have gone through a quick project. It makes me feel a little more like a Cooper student.

As I said in my last blog entry we were assigned to ask ourselves; What is the most pressing issue in architecture today? My question was formed from Ray Kurzweil’s book 'The Singularity is Near' where he talks about the exponential growth of technology and the implications this will have. My question was along the lines of: Does technology kill program? And also a general question of an architecture that always has inherent inefficiencies to the adaptability with technology. What are the implications of this? Somehow this might work its way into our studio assignment or into the proseminar.


I wanted to briefly mention the relationship the grads have to the undergraduates. Obviously Cooper’s undergraduate program consists of a strong student body. I cannot help but feel a little intimidated by the quality and level of their work and intellect. They are much more mature than I was at their age. So far I have felt like a ‘grad freshman’, novice to the workings of Cooper but also responsible for producing work that is of the schools standards at a graduate level. I think we (the grad students) have been a little shy so far to introducing ourselves, hopefully this will change.


Working environment: We have a small room but plenty of space for the seven of us. Our set up has me wondering if the faculty is trying to veer the direction of our work by the type of studio space and furnishings they gave us. Unlike the rest of the students we have low desks rather than work-counters with drafting boards and we have really nice swivel desk chairs compared to stools. We also have a projector in our room that we can hook up to our computers. Maybe this is a vague hint at what they are expecting. The faculty also references to the ‘cooper way of doing things’. I am still discovering what that means.



the ribbon cutting



I could only get the back of Thom Mayne with his building.

For an introduction read my bio. I am not the type of person to blog, so bare with me if it is a little boring at first. I feel it is important to document the very beginning of the M.Arch II program at the Cooper Union and also to promote it for any prospective candidates. There has been a fair amount of mystery surrounding this program and I will be revealing it to you as it is revealed to me. I will try to give descriptions of the school atmosphere, a look into our studio and classes, what the faculty and students are like, and eventually show you the type of work that we will be producing. I am certain that these three semesters of study will go by in a flash, the first week certainly did.

Currently my energy has been concentrated on writing papers. Three papers have been assigned within the first week. Two are loosely defined and will be easy to produce. The most significant one is due in three days and is to ask yourself “what is the most pressing critical issue in architecture today” and in addition, “state your interests in architecture, your desires and fantasies about what you would do now.” Hmm? I have many fantasies and desires in and out of architecture, sure, but to define my ‘most pressing critical issue’, that is the big one. Such deep existential questions are opening up too many tangents. (thanks for the heads up mz) This paper is more or less a thesis statement that will be used as a starting point to inform the direction of study for the semesters ahead. I really wish I had done a little more architecture soul searching over the summer than I did, but as is always the case, summers fly by. Next summer’s thesis semester which is geared too solo investigations is one of the main reasons I choose Cooper. I thought I would have at least the first semester of dabbling in a variety of topics to distract myself from nailing that down, though I have been finding that flushing out my thoughts the last couple days is more productive to do sooner rather than later. Cooper realization number one; they are definitely making you nail down the theory first and foremost.

The grad students make up only a small part of the entire program. There are only seven of us and we all have varied backgrounds. I am but one of the two Americans. I am glad for this diversity and interested to see multiply design directions coming out of our studio. until next time. .