Events

Preston Scott Cohen, Principal, Preston Scott Cohen Inc (PSC)

Preston Scott Cohen is the Principal and Founding Partner of Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., an internationally acclaimed firm renowned for its new interpretations of conventional and non-typological forms and for its original approach to integrating buildings with their urban and landscape environments. His practice originated in theoretical projects and widely published and exhibited building designs, and grew to include first-prize honors in nine international competitions. His built works include the Nanjing University Xianlin Campus Center; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building; the Taiyuan Museum of Art; and the Goldman Sachs Canopy in New York. Recently completed projects include the Anhui Province Science Museum; Congregation Beth Shalom in Overland Park, Kansas; the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; the Keystone Academy Performing Arts Center in Beijing; Xining City Center; and Datong City Library.

Cohen is the author of Contested Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture, which is recognized for establishing pedagogical strategies that combine typological analysis with studies in projective and other types of geometry; Taiyuan Museum; and Lightfall: Genealogy of a Museum. He has authored numerous theoretical and historical essays, including “Toroidal Architecture,” “Elegance, Attenuation, Geometry,” “Dexterous Architecture,” “The Hidden Core of Architecture,” “Successive Architecture,” and “The Lithic Idiom.” His forthcoming collection of essays, The Isomorphic Imperative, is scheduled for publication in 2027.

His honors include an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, induction as an academician at the National Academy of Art and five Progressive Architecture awards. He is the Gerald M. McCue Professor and director of the post-professional Master of Architecture degree program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he served as Chair of the Department of Architecture from 2008–13.

Peter Eisenman, Founder and Principal, Eisenman Architects; Visiting Critic, Cornell AAP

Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. ’55), an internationally recognized architect and educator, is founder and design principal of Eisenman Architects, an architecture and design office in New York City. He is also a Visiting Critic at Cornell University’s Gensler Family AAP NYC Center (AAP NYC).

Award-winning projects by Eisenman Architects include the Wexner Center for the Arts and Fine Arts Library at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; the Koizumi Sangyo Corporation headquarters building in Tokyo; and in Berlin, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and IBA Housing at Checkpoint Charlie, each of which received a National Honor Award for Design from the American Institute of Architects.

Eisenman is also a distinguished author and teacher. Among his many books are Written Into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990–2004 (Yale University Press, 2007) and Ten Canonical Buildings, 1950–2000 (Rizzoli, 2008), which examines the work of ten architects since 1950. His most recent book is Rewriting Alberti (MIT Press, October 2025), with contributions by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Mario Carpo, and Daniel Sherer.

Eisenman holds a B.Arch. from Cornell University, an M.S. in architecture from Columbia University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University. He holds an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, and the Brera Academy of Art in Milan, as well as an honorary doctorate in architecture from the Università La Sapienza in Rome.