Jessica Ngan

Assistant Professor Adjunct

Jessica Ngan is an architectural historian whose research is on environment, postcolonialism, and agricultural space. Her current research project situates countercultural practices of the 1960s and 70s within a wider context of agricultural production and labor. She was trained as an architect in Sydney, Australia and is currently a PhD Candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. She holds a M.S. in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices from Columbia University and has taught at SUNY Buffalo, New York Institute of Technology, and Cornell University. She was an exhibition designer at Studio-X and a curatorial fellow at the Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Ngan's CV is available here
 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • 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.