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    EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT: A Point of View Thirty years later, the Cooper experience in architectural education has demonstrated that in order to deal with the issues enumerated by the critics, in order for the work to be truly of this, our modern world, it was crucial not to abandon the discipline of architecture and substitute it for either planning and engineering, or for sociology, psychology, or anthropology, or to engage in nostalgic or populist evasions. It is a tribute to the original program of the school that such popular and often legitimate concerns never weakened the fundamental faith in the possibilities of an authentic architecture for a modern humanity, simultaneously imaginative and ethical. On November 13, 1971, the exhibition Education of an Architect: A Point of View—featuring the work of Cooper Union students under the direction of the chairman of the Department of Architecture, John Hejduk, and the dean George Sadek—opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The installation of models, drawings, and photographs along with faculty and student statements, documented work from 1964 to 1971. To accompany the exhibition, The Cooper Union published an extremely influential limited edition book—long since out of print—of 54 projects by some 60 students showing their in depth explorations of problems based on the visual discoveries of cubism and neo-plasticism as they related to architectural space and thought. This new volume is a smaller-format reprint that includes all material from the original book—exceptional color and black-and-white drawings and model photographs—and the original introduction by Ulrich Franzen, along with two new texts, a reintroduction by architectural historian and educator Alberto Pérez-Gómez, and an essay by Kim Shkapich, director of the Architecture Archive at The Cooper Union. The reprint charts the foundations of the pedagogical inventions and methodology that a spirited and independent faculty, under the aegis of John Hejduk, brought into what has been called "the best school of architecture in the world." Reconstructed (with additions) by Kim Shkapich based on the original design by Roger Canon. NY: THE MONACELLI PRESS, 1999. |
