At Cornell AAP, our powerful alumni community of leaders and change agents in our fields and industries advances a better world. With every opportunity and challenge — from advancing climate adaptation and emerging technologies to expanding access and affordability — our alumni continue to find ways to design a future together, empowering the next generation of architects, artists, designers, and planners.
Alumni engagement and philanthropy enable the college to build our capacity and expertise to respond to today’s urgencies. We invite Cornell AAP alumni, parents, and friends to join us in building a more sustainable, just, and resilient world.
Get Involved
As a member of our AAP community, there are many opportunities for you to connect and engage with the college.
Explore Alumni Stories and News
Explore Alumni Stories and News
In the Media Landscape or Architecture? They Boldly Blur Boundaries
The New York Times — This exploration of work by Weiss/Manfredi [Michael Manfredi (M.Arch. '80), cofounding partner], examines how the firm has discovered expressive possibilities by sculpting landscapes that shape buildings.
Stories Built on Curiosity: Architecture and the Public Realm
Rubacha Featured Speakers Susan Rodriguez ('81, B.Arch. '82) and Michael Manfredi (M.Arch. '80) will deliver lectures on Thursday, October 23, at 5:30 p.m. in the Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium on Cornell's Ithaca campus. In advance of their talks, Rodriguez and Manfredi share insights drawn from their professional trajectories.
In the Media At Bethel Woods’s BuildFest Students and Faculty Work “Convivially” with Emerging Technology
The Architect's Newspaper — Design Tech faculty Lawson Spencer, former Architecture faculty Ekin Erar, alumni Jordan Young and Cait McCarthy (both M.Arch. '20), and AAP students contributed to BuildFest 2025 with projects advancing collaborative modular construction through robotic joinery and portable CNC fabrication.
Alumni Archive
Jay Valgora
As a Fulbright Fellow, Jay Valgora (B.Arch. '85) created an ambitious proposal to transform and regenerate London's Royal Docks.
Stories Using Found Objects, California Artist Turns Trash to Treasure
Cornell AAP alumnus Alvaro Alvarez (B.Arch. '15) is profiled for transforming discarded materials from the US-Mexico border region into sculptural artworks that reframe waste, abandonment, and environmental neglect as sources of beauty, memory, and renewal.
Stories Tribute to Europe’s Lost Synagogues Is an Artist’s Labor of Love
Cornell AAP alumna Andrea Strongwater (B.F.A. '70) is profiled for her 15-year artistic and historical effort to document 77 destroyed European synagogues as an act of cultural memory and architectural preservation.
Stories At COP30, Floating Plaza Shifts Perspective of Sea-Level Rise
AquaPraça, a collaboration between AAP Dean J. Meejin Yoon (B.Arch. '95), Eric Höweler (B.Arch. '94, M.Arch. '96) (Höweler + Yoon Architecture), and Carlo Ratti Associati, has arrived at this year's UN climate summit in Belèm, Brazil.
Announcements Announcing the 2025 Boston Artadia Awardees
Sopheak Sam (M.F.A. '25) was named one of the 2025 Boston Artadia awardees, recognizing their emerging artistic practice among a distinguished group advancing contemporary visual arts in the Greater Boston region.
How Cornell AAP is Shaping the Future
Drawing from the depth of our five departments and the breadth of collaborations with experts across the university, Cornell AAP continues to change the world we share for the better. Explore how our faculty and students are shaping the future and creating new possibilities.
Explore Faculty Work
-
US Communities Are Getting Older — And More Livable
CRP Professor Mildred Warner and Xue Zhang (M.S. RS '16, Ph.D. RS '19) lead a national analysis showing that US communities are becoming more age-friendly, with AARP-network localities achieving the greatest improvements in livability, transportation, and civic engagement as the nation's population grows older.
![An woman with short gray hair gazes thoughtfully out a window, resting her hands lightly on the windowsill as soft daylight illuminates her face.]()
-
Announcing: Architecture and the Right to Heal, Resettler Nationalism in the Aftermath of Conflict and Disaster
Cornell AAP Architecture Professor Esra Akcan released a new book examining architecture's dual role as both a cause of human casualties and an agent for the public good with the potential to ameliorate traumas following conflict and crises.
![Book cover with a stone facade of a mountain and white text.]()
-
Groundwork: Cultivation Rooted in Art and Action
At the intersection of art, ecology, and community, students enrolled in a course led by Associate Professor Jen de los Reyes explore research and practice that moves beyond the studio and into Ithaca's local ecologies.
![People planting flowers and trees with gardening tools.]()
-
Machine Learning Teaches Membranes to Sort by Chemical Affinity
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Design Tech faculty Uli B. Wiesner and his team used machine learning to create a new class of ultrafiltration membranes that sort molecules by chemical affinity rather than size, enabling more precise separations for medicine, manufacturing, and water treatment.
![Side-by-side SEM and machine-learning segmentation reveal how different micelle chemistries pattern the membrane surface to enable chemical-affinity sorting.]()
Student Work
-
![A hand operating a rectangular device with buttons, rotationg knobs, and small cubic attachable pieces.]()
Group Work
-
![An architectural model with staggered wooden landscapes and an angular white building.]()
Ting Wei Fan
B.Arch. '21 -
![A series of plywood sculptures that are connected with a thick rope.]()
Layla Zubi
M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts '22 -
![Photographic collage of symbols on brick walls.]()
Blanche Shao
B.S. URS '19Chasing the Urban Dream: Land Politics, Citizenship, and State Identity in Contemporary China
-
![a colorful graphic of a woman holding a large magnifying glass observing a building picked out of a city skyline]()
Group Work
-
![Rendering of a city block with bright pink murals on the side of one building.]()
Cornelius Tulloch
B.Arch. '21 -
![Overhead view of a gallery with blue geometric sculptures on the wood floor.]()
Christina McDonald
M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts '22 -
![A rendering of a lean-to structure that has picnic tables underneath it. Silhouettes of people are positioned in and around the lean-to.]()
Group Work
-
![Zoomed-in view of a solid geometric structrure formed by multiple metal rods and wires tensed together.]()
- Keep Browsing
