Cooper union saturday program architecture

Students need no prior experience, just strong motivation. An online application must be submitted to be considered for the program. Those who have attended the Saturday Program at The Cooper Union in prior years will be offered a place in the program as space permits. Returning students do not need to re-apply however must submit a confirmation form emailed to directly to students mid-Dec.

New students who want to join for the Spring must submit the online application. For high school seniors, our year-long long Senior Studio classes provide portfolio development support to successfully compete for admissions to art and architecture colleges. These intensive studio courses include individual advisement and studio visits with professional artists.

Applicants to Senior Studios must attend an informal work review before gaining admission into these classes. Some fifty percent of our student population is entirely new to the physical place of The Cooper Union, and they are only now becoming familiarized with the spaces, programs, and events that are a central part our cultural experience.

Maintaining and further developing our school of thought has proven to be a true challenge. The pandemic may have kept us apart, but the return to in person was marked by sufficient administrative protocols that ensured an experience that was anything but normal: weekly testing, limited access to workshops, mask mandates, and many other small details that would otherwise go unnoticed.

These conditions have become the defining features of our daily experience. The mere recognition of each other behind masks is possibly the first obstacle of everyday communication, requiring our added efforts to overcome the inevitable anonymity that they enforce. Today, as I write down these thoughts, I acknowledge the delicacy of the situation, having overcome the isolation of the pandemic, only to face the Delta variant some months ago, and now the renewed uncertainties brought about by the Omicron variant.

These are reminders of the new, ever-changing conditions under which we need to thrive. Despite this, or maybe precisely because of it, there is no substitute for being back in person. It is a joy to be able to see people, and to reclaim a studio space that is so vital for speculation and experimentation.

For one, it opened the doors of our school to professors and critics who would otherwise not have been able to join us. Mae-ling Lokko and Matthew Waxman have both taught this semester from different time zones, and they have genuinely transformed our intellectual reach. In turn, our lecture series has taken advantage of varied modalities to bring many people back into The Cooper Union in person, while advancing other voices online.

Chanin Distinguished Professor for the academic year, through her lecture The Wall and the Books. 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.

Academics Admissions About Give Search. Cooper Union. Houghton, Jr. Since then the program has expanded while staying true to its basic tenets. Today SatPro offers classes in painting, sculpture, sound composition the only such free course in the city , architec- ture, and graphic design, in addi- tion to the drawing classes initially provided in its earlier days.

And the courses are still taught by art, architecture, and engineering students of The Cooper Union, Marina Gutierrez under the guidance of a staff of working artists. Even students who decide not to pursue the arts gain an appreciation for learning; this is reflected in the rate of SatPro alumni who go on to college—approximately 85 percent, some of whom gain entry to The Cooper Union.

One of them, Vaughn Lewis, currently a fifth-year architecture student, applied to Cooper after studying in the Saturday Program. The Saturday Program helped me learn to think abstractly and analytically to do my best work. I also realized what I needed to know to be a competitive student in the application process. One of the most valuable courses offered through the program is Portfolio Prep, which helps students build a strong selection of work to submit when applying to art schools.

Now he has returned to the program as the acting office coordinator and instructor for Portfolio Prep. At various points in its history, the program has been criticized for following a student- as-teacher model. Detractors argued that such an arrangement could not deliver a worthwhile education and that the open- enrollment policy of the program would by definition lower the quality of work produced.

That assessment, however, is countered by supporters who argue that all students should have the chance to make art, not least because many have not had any other opportunities via the public school system. In fact, the program has consistently positioned itself as an alternative to the exclusivity of an atelier education.

That appraisal is in keeping with the era of its presumed founding. Out of this milieu was born the Saturday Program. Efforts to reach out to specific graduates of that era yielded nothing specific.