Current Year in Review Presented by the Post-Professional Coordinator - Mark Morris Cornell’s Post-Professional Master of Architecture M2 degree offers a vibrant program that brings together advanced design education and distinct paths of critical enquiry. Entering students nominate to focus on one of five territories of research, specializations that are calibrated to emerging practice and discourse: urbanism, ecology, technology, discourse and media. Work done within these strands culminates in an Advanced Design Research project rather than a text-based thesis. Amenities for all students include computer laboratories, printing facilities, materials and fabrications workshops, the Fine Arts Library and university library system, the Johnson Museum (designed by I.M. Pei) and the college’s own café and gallery. Being part of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning provides immediate interdisciplinary exposure and a broad audience of peers and mentors.
First Semester Our first semester includes a distinguished Post-Professional studio, this year’s class explored their specialized fields regarding Google Earth as a new site and exhilarating zone of collaboration. Finding the anomalies and untapped potentials within the mapping tool, students proposed a range of design responses that crossed several disciplinary boundaries. Elective seminars supported each student’s research program. Students also had access to the college’s lecture series featuring K. Michael Hays, Beatriz Colomina, Toshiko Mori, Stanley Saitowitz and artist James Turrell.
Second Semester The second semester showcases a series of studio options covering the five territories alongside electives drawn from the department and across the university:
- “Architecture Ultra-Lite: Sustainable Applications for Computer Automated Fiber Placement Technology” deals with contemporary information technologies tied to questions of representation and high-tech assemblage. Programs like prefab housing, a high-rise and bridge show the range of this technology’s application.
- “Theatre of Effects/Catalogue of Devices” unpacks a powerful theoretical and art historical agenda in the guise of a cathedral project for San Juan, Puerto Rico. This studio option proposes a sustained critique of the post-critical, it embraces a rich discourse and a series of visually robust precedents.
More information (a downloadable studio poster in PDF format) - “The Ubiquitous Block,” cited in Buenos Aires sets at the nexus of Modernism, myth, limitation, type and questions of locality and, ultimately, meaning of place. There is a theoretical agenda, a political discourse and a return of Urbanism as an architectural problem.
More information (a downloadable studio poster in PDF format) Field Trips All three studios include field trips supported by the graduate program; some also work in partnership with other departments and centers, such as Computer Science, at Cornell.
Third Semester in NYC The third and final semester the post-professional program takes place in New York City at our opulent educational AAP NYC facility. Here students see the culmination of their degree at the epicenter of the design world. Working with an array of top practitioners, curators and critics based in Manhattan, the Advanced Design Research studio situates its program and site considerations in regard to the urbanism, ecology, technology, discourse and media strands. Students take five intense seminar modules, each involving tours and discussions across the city. The summer term concludes with a review and exhibit at the center.
Graduates benefit from both the diverse academic resources in Ithaca and the cultural immersion of New York City, the summer term functioning as a critical segue to internships and job placements at top offices in the city. Many of our students will proceed to prominent positions in the worlds of architecture, allied design fields, criticism and education. Cornell’s Post-Professional Masters focuses on contemporary and emerging practices and problems, it is a forward-thinking twenty-first century curriculum keyed to five focused territories of design culture. Alternative methodologies are embraced; research is embedded in design processes. At its core, the program means to be thoroughly linked to emerging practice, providing an extraordinary opportunity for qualified applicants to become part of a new program within an exceptional university.
