The Best Architecture Student Work is 50 Years Old

The Post-Modern Eden of The Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture

This Substack is by David Perrine. I write about architecture, aesthetics, design theory, and philosophy. I share new posts bi-weekly. If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing.

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Some New:

I will soon be an adjunct professor of architecture!

Although I am looking forward to sharing what I know with young architecture students, I am a bit intimidated by this responsibility. In preparation, I have been researching various architecture programs, methodologies, and pedagogies. Below is a snippet of what I have learned thus far, including a brief overview of the history of architectural education in the US, and a short piece on a particular moment in this history that I find compelling.

The history of architectural education in the US can be canonicalized without the loss typically expected from such narrative building (oversimplification, loss of marginalized voices, destruction of local nuances or context, etc). This is because until recently, the American system of architectural education was quite standard since it’s conception in the late 1800s. Academia was dominated by the Beaux-Arts academic programs which were structured around studios, regular critiques, design competitions, aesthetics, hand drawing, and classical architecture. Then the Bauhaus methodology was imported to Chicago and Cambridge, MA from Germany which took over architectural education in the early 20th century. The Bauhaus was interested in the integration of industrial production, design and art. Bauhaus design philosophy, unlike the Beaux-Arts, challenged previous architectural methods. This persisted throughout the US until Post-Modernity started to challenged Modernist architecture methods in the late 60s. The academic ecosystem started to become more pluralistic during this time until advances in technology sparked the discussion of computing and the digital in architecture. Lead by Bernard Tschumi and Greg Lynn in Columbia, these “paperless studios” paved a way out of the pluralistic confusion of the 70s and 80s. Now, the influence of these paperless studios is still visible in a few universities, but for the most part, we have returned to the pluralistic environment of the 80s, but with more pluralism than ever! This is due to the growing concerns of climate, social justice, ethics and more which are now beginning to overshadow the romantic formal exploration enabled by digital tools.

My interest in past academic methodologies was focused on the 70s and 80s as it most closely matches the conditions we are in now. During this research, I came across an exhibition that I found particularly beautiful. This exhibition took place at MOMA in November 1971 by the Cooper Union School of Art & Architecture. Entitled: Education of An Architect : A Point of View, This exhibition displayed the work of the architecture students at Cooper Union, the various assignments they were given, and overarching methodologies of the school.

This exhibition was during the canonical post-Bauhaus period of pluralism. The student work possess rigorous, clear, artistic, and humanist qualities which reflect a Bauhaus influence but does not subscribing to the dogmatic formal and structural qualities of Modernism, form is free and allowed to express spatial and composition externalities. I found the work in this exhibition absolutely stunning so I decided to curate some images from the exhibition as a Substack post. Images are organized by assignments so you can track the variety between student work. More on the exhibition can be found here.

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The Nine-Square Problem

“The Nine-Square problem is used as a pedagogical tool in the intro duction of architecture to new students. Working within this problem the student begins to discover and understand the elements of architecture. Grid, frame, post, beam, panel, center, periphery, field, edge, line, plane, volume, extension, compression, tension, shear, etc. The student begins to probe the meaning of plan, elevation, section, and details. He learns to draw. He begins to comprehend the relationships between twodimensional drawings, axonometric projections, and three-dimensional (model) form. The student studies and draws his scheme in plan and in axonometric, and searches out the three-dimensional implications in the model. An understanding of the elements is revealed—an idea of fabrication emerges.”

—John Hejduk