Karan Vafadari, (Cooper Engineering Alum ‘87), has been detained by Iranian authorities, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. He and his wife, Afarin Niasari, were arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and have been held without access to counsel or formal charges since late July in connection with an art gallery they had been directing in Tehran. After months of silence, Afarin’s sister, Kateh has written a letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khameni which calls for the couple’s immediate release and asserts that they have been subjected to "extortion, property seizure and national security threats" since their arrest earlier this year.     

The online community Archinect recently posed questions to the heads of some of the leading Architecture schools across the country. Dean Nader Tehrani was one of the six respondents who cemented Cooper Union as the vanguard of free expression. Archinect’s questions focused on how the pedagogical community plans on responding to the views of President-elect Trump and nature of the implications of his presidency on the practice of Architecture. Dean Tehrani describes the “call to intellectual arms” as an ethos that must be maintained both in the present moment and sustained moving forward:

 “Our responsibilities are to expose intellectual projects, to reveal positions and to enable the space of disagreement.”

Congratulations to Visiting Professor Sean Canty and Instructor Stephanie Lin, two recent additions to the School of Architecture faculty, who have been selected as finalists for the MoMA Young Architects Program (YAP) for their collaborative work as Office of Three. The winning architect(s) will install a structure in PS1’s iconic courtyard during its summer 2017 for its Warm-Up music series.

A full list of this year’s finalists can be found here. Previous winners of the prize include BEATFUSE! by Pablo Castro and 1997 Cooper Union architecture graduate Jennifer Lee of OBRA Architects.

An array of architectural models from the Spring 2016 Design IV studio, led by Professor Diane Lewis, Professor Peter Schubert, Instructor Daniel Meridor, Visiting Assistant Professor Daniel Sherer and Visiting Lecturer Francois de Menil is now on display in an unlikely venue. The East 57^th Street windows of upscale men’s clothing retailer, Turnbull & Asser, feature models by Aimilios Davantlis Lo, Jorge Flores, Sam Koopman, Kelsey Lee, Piao Liu, Hui Rong Liu, Hugh Scott Moncrieff, Stephanie Restrepo and Kyle Schroeder, channeling the lifestyle of the urban architect. Inspired by the display of fourth year design studio work in the ground floor windows of Cooper Union’s Foundation Building as part of the 2016 End of Year Show, Zander Scheider, Turnbull & Asser’s director of design, called on the talents of Cooper’s architecture students to enhance the architect-themed display. The installation will be on view until November 11^th at 50 East 57^th Street. Read More on Cooper Union’s website.