Architecture educators Billy Fleming and Doris Sung will be combining their experience to talk about ways of reconstructing architectural education and Architecture Studios around climate policy and the Green New Deal. This conversation will be moderated by architect and Cooper Professor Austin Wade Smith.
Cooper Climate Week 2021 is a series of lectures and events that aim to engage our communities in assessing the role of the climate crisis in our day-to-day lives. This year, we'll focus on the themes of reconstruction and deconstruction as we imagine all of the work ahead of us. The Cooper Climate Coalition aims to promote curiosity, interdisciplinary dialogue, and sustained engagement with the climate crisis.
The Cooper Climate Coalition is pleased to present a virtual series of lectures and events. *These lectures will be online only. RSVP HERE.
Billy Fleming is the Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center in the Weitzman School of Design, a senior fellow with Data for Progress, and co-director of the "climate + community project." His fellowship with Data for Progress has focused on the built environment impacts of climate change, and resulted most prominently in the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019. In his role at the McHarg Center, Billy is co-editor of the forthcoming book An Adaptation Blueprint (Island Press, 2020), co-editor and co-curator of the book and now internationally-traveling exhibit Design With Nature Now (Lincoln, 2019), and author of the forthcoming Drowning America: The Nature and Politics of Adaptation (Penn Press, expected 2021). Billy is also the lead author of the recently published and widely acclaimed “The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal.” He is also a co-author of the Indivisible Guide (2016).
With the belief that buildings can be sensitive to the changing environment, Doris Sung seeks ways to make building skins dynamic and responsive. Through grant-funded research, she has designed projects with smart thermobimetal to self-ventilate, self-shade, self-structure, self-assemble and self-propel with zero-energy and no controls. As the founder of DOSU Studio Architecture and the Director of Undergraduate Programs at USC, Doris publishes, lectures and exhibits, internationally while bringing her patented inventions to market. One such disruptive technology is InVert™ Self-Shading Windows which reduces the use of expensive air conditioning as a means to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. A recipient of fellowships from Google’s R+D for the Built Environment, the United States Artist, the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio and the Headlands Center for the Arts, Doris has recently received a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and her TEDx talk has now surpassed 1.28 million view.
Austin Wade Smith is an architect, design technologist, and researcher based in Brooklyn, New York. After studying biology and receiving an M.Arch at MIT 16', he is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union and cofounder of the design studio Helloeverything. He has built projects internationally in USA, Europe, and Africa, and exhibited work at the Chicago Architectural Biennale, Louisiana Museum in Denmark, and Center for Architecture New York among many others. At the intersection of human - computer interaction, fabrication, pedagogy, and games, he explores spatial design as an enacted form of community assimilation and socio-technical play. He is an organizer of the art / design / technology cooperative Soft Surplus, and enjoys flying kites and cultivating orchids.
The Cooper Climate Coalition, an open body of students, faculty, and staff at The Cooper Union, facilitates conversations, events, and student projects within the institution that center the Climate Crisis and its intersections with races, classes, genders, sexualities, histories, economies, political structures and more.
Along with organizing Cooper Union’s Climate Week programs and events in the fall, the Climate Coalition takes responsibility for fostering interdisciplinarity throughout The Cooper Union in support of environmental action.
