Introduction
Through many conversations with professors and peers and near constant personal evaluation of my transfer decision I have come to a point where I can compare my experience with Syracuse and Cornell’s B.Arch programs. These thoughts are definitely subject to change over the next few years. They are observations that I am writing in the hopes of shedding some light on these two high ranking architecture schools and it is also a chance for me to reflect on whether I made the right decision or not in transferring.
The Mysticism v. The New
There is a mysticism that surrounds Cornell architecture. Even to architecture students from other schools. You see it in the way people react. What is it like? Do you really never sleep? Do you really live in studio? Is it true that you guys sacrifice a freshmen every year? This is largely due to a combination of: minimal exposure (from a closed loop hiring trend that I will talk about later), its Ivy League prestige, and its longevity. It is undoubtedly an elusive place unless you or someone you know has been through its program. Compared to the transparency of say SCI-Arc’s student work through social media, an outsider really has no idea as to what is going on in Milstein or what the pros and cons of the school’s program are. I hope I can help pull back that curtain from a student’s perspective. Syracuse’s program, on the other hand, is in the midst of a transition under Michael Speaks as dean.
Leadership
Towards the end of my year at Syracuse I thought that I was beginning to understand what its program was, but I was wrong because the program is still evolving. For better or worse it is changing in its faculty, curriculum, and even thesis format. It is beginning to find its new updated form (despite being established in 1873, only two years after Cornell’s) with Michael Speaks, but its trajectory is unquestionably in the right direction as evidenced from Syracuse’s ranking in the past few years going from #5 to 4 to 3. In a comparison between these two schools I believe starting at the leadership of each school is vital as an institution’s direction and its decision making can be traced back to this point.
I believe that Speaks is making bottom up decisions that first and foremost establish a solid foundation for the betterment of Syracuse’s program in the context of an architectural field that is becoming more and more digitized and globalized. He has assembled a uniquely diverse faculty in age, gender, race, education, and interests.
There are the experienced and tenured Princeton-grad professors, the fresh L.A. faces, and also the Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Jamaican, and Korean lecturers, professors, and visiting critics. Not only is there a diversity to Syracuse’s voices in Slocum Hall, it also has many more opportunities than Cornell does to study abroad in Florence, London, New York, summer workshops with faculty all over the world, and also a program in Shanghai that Speaks has been working to develop.
Not only is there this global diversity, this year professor Maya Alam also hosted an all women symposium.[1] No words can describe how important it is for students to see a panel of nine women leading an important discussion on contemporary architecture. One of my personal favorite decisions Speaks has made has been in his appointing Kyle Miller[2] to direct the Florence program - one of the best design instructors I have ever worked with.
Thesis is also one of the aspects of Syracuse’s B.Arch program that is changing from student driven to a cooperation between student and faculty after 2020, which is controversial in the pedagogy of an architectural studio education. I have an optimistic outlook on it though. It is an attempt to allow students to hopefully work more in depth on a project that a professional is already interested and invested in, which may be a more efficient use of both the professor and student’s efforts. Though these decisions are not flashy and will not make any headlines, they do contribute greatly to a better, perhaps more up to date architecture education that Speaks hopes to achieve.
An hour’s drive away, Kent Kleinman’s decisions and focus have been misguided in comparison. During his time so far, he has made large moves. He has: “significantly fortified” and moved AAP (Cornell’s Department of Architecture Art and Planning) NYC to a new location, completed the over $55 million construction of OMA’s Milstein Hall, and is beginning to realize the dreaded Fine Arts Library renovation. Take these gigantic decisions out of his resume though and his time at Cornell has been largely complacent. He has made no significant changes to any of the curriculum or faculty or overall intellectual infrastructure of the school, because in his defense if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This attitude, whether he is conscious of it or not has resulted in a closed feedback loop of Cornell architecture.
By this I mean that it is not out of the ordinary for faculty at Cornell to be Cornell undergraduates and then Harvard GSD alumni. In fact, this seems to be almost favorable in the hiring of new architecture professors. Perhaps this has existed long before I have come to realize it, but if that is the case then Kleinman has done nothing to address this in a profession that is changing. Look at the Helsinki Guggenheim and most recent Pritzker winners for example, the age of Starchitecture may be over.
Many lecturers are Cornell grads, many are white, and most are male. There is a canon in architectural education from Vitruvius to Corbusier, but there also seems to be a Cornell canon that feeds back in on itself. This is so dangerous for a school because if you grow up in an environment with no one to dispute your way of thinking or methodology of working then you will grow up believing your way is the right way, the only way.
Recently, AAP has been searching for a successor to Department Chair, Mark Cruvellier. Of the four candidates, all were educated at and are teaching outside of Cornell except for one. You can probably guess who got the job. Just one week ago on April 26, Kleinman announced that professor Andrea Simitch would be the next Department of Architecture Chair.[3] After attending every candidate’s lecture, I strongly disagree with this choice. It is even more evident of Kleinman’s complacent attitude and overall ignorance towards the problems that the architecture school has. Andrea, who was Cornell educated, is a wonderful woman and I have had nothing but pleasant experiences with her, but it is the stories you hear from her previous students that paint a different picture of what she is like as an instructor.
What any of the other three candidates would have provided so critically is an outside perspective; a tension inherent in different academic upbringings. What Cornell Architecture needs at the moment is not to continue on as it has, which is what Simitch’s vision seems to be. Despite this missed opportunity, I am confident that Simitch will do a good job as she has as a professor at Cornell for over 30 years, but I am skeptical about whether proper adjustments to the curriculum and school infrastructure will be made under her. I am skeptical, but will be hoping that she will exceed my expectations. Now by bringing back the monumental facilities decisions back into the conversation the discussion goes from complacency to also misallocation.
Firstly, the relocation of AAP NYC is not a Kleinman driven project. Starting with a $450,000 donation[4] in 2011 from Gensler for the appointment of the program’s director with an additional commitment of $500,000 over the following five years to specifically NYC, it seems the NYC program is more Gensler backed than it is a result of the efforts of AAP. Not only has the program’s leadership been determined by the firm,[5] its new location has also been selected and designed by a Gensler team.[6] Secondly, the building of Milstein Hall[7] also seems to have been more motivated by the added mysticism of having an OMA/Koolhaas building than anything else. I will not lie, this is definitely effective as a huge draw for me was the great facilities Milstein offers. However, that was before I started classes at Cornell and before I made the connection between my tuition and where it was being spent – and here we get to the new Fine Arts Library.
An estimated $19 million[8] renovation that displaces the original library, shop, and work spaces during my time here is not ideal, to put it lightly, and it is also designed by an architect who just so happens to be an alum, but one who has not built before.[9] Fantastic. What is not so fantastic is the coincidence between the decision to renovate the library and the dip in rankings Cornell took in 2014 when Cal Poly SLO edged Cornell out of first place for a year. What might have been Kleinman’s reaction to this drop? Based on the somewhat positive results of Milstein at the time, why not invest further into facilities to bring the school back to its rightful place? So in 2015 the renovation was announced. But for some odd reason before construction even began (God forbid), Cornell has returned to and maintained #1 for every year past 2014. Perhaps the reason why Cornell’s program is ranked so high is because the program’s success is not entirely dependent on the quality of its facilities? What an interesting thought! Someone should tell Kleinman. To use the same quote that Cornell Architecture Professor, Jonathan Ochshorn,[10] used to critique the renovation decision,
“Better a splendid and complete faculty in a barn than an insufficient faculty in a palace.”
A.D. White, co-founder and first President of Cornell University
To also quote one of my studio professors at Cornell, “we used to have people teaching here like Rowe and Ungers, but all the money has been going towards things like Milstein and the library instead of getting the best faculty out there.” So if the strength of Cornell Architecture today is not in its facilities, strangely enough, where does it shine? What did I come here for?
The Students
Syracuse Architecture has a class size of 120-130 students, double that of Cornell’s. I do not think this is as big of a disparity as one might think initially because similar to their faculty, each Syracuse class is incredibly diverse with students from all over the world. Other than diversity, however, there is not much else to be said on this subject. There are students who work hard and produce great work, and there are some who you question how they got in. All relatively normal for a design school. I found Cornell to beat out Syracuse in this respect, to no fault of their own.
It is a refreshing and inspiring feeling to walk around during a pinup and to see work that is different, interesting, and well executed – something I had not felt before visiting Cornell for the first time during their first year final review last May. As the saying in design school goes, “you learn more from your classmates than your teachers,” and Cornell’s students are some of the best. However, this is both an important asset and a vital crutch for Cornell’s program.
The knife’s edge on which Cornell’s architecture program is sitting on is the talent of its students. This is not good. If I have learned anything in architecture school about structure, if your entire building is built on a shaky foundation then it will fall, and honestly you do not need a degree to know that. This is a luxury Cornell possesses that no other school does. They are able to every year hand pick the 60 best[11] students and designers for their freshmen class because of the mysticism, because of the Ivy League prestige, and because it has such a stranglehold on #1. Once you get that acceptance letter, it is hard to find a reason why not to go to Ithaca, it seems I was no different.
This stranglehold is only possible because of their ability to create a small class size of ridiculously hard working and capable design students. I came largely because I thought the work was great, but I did not know this was the reason why. That these were simply the best of the best from the year’s pool of students. However, the student’s work is not because of great leadership, or amazing support, or an innovative curriculum, in fact I would go so far as to say that Cornell’s program itself does not live up to its pedigree in any of these regards. The program is lacking in many of these aspects despite being so highly ranked. Cornell is able to identify the strongest architecture students out of high school, but does their program then take those student’s incredible potential further than say Syracuse or SCI-Arc or any other architecture school could? No, I do not believe so.
Switch the incoming 2022 graduating class of Cornell with USC’s for the next five years, for example. In my opinion, I think that Cornell would immediately drop several places in the rankings because not many students are able to physically survive, much less succeed in the environment that Cornell creates. USC’s program would most likely immediately see an immense jump in the quality of their work because those students do not necessarily need a robust infrastructure in place to make great work.
Looking at the most recent student survey done at AAP, students are: 70% dissatisfied with the transparency of the administration’s decision-making process, 63% dissatisfied with the role of students in that process, 72% dissatisfied with cross-departmental interaction despite AAP being an Architecture, Art, and Planning school, 76% dissatisfied with supplies affordability, 56% dissatisfied with supplies availability, (“The supplies are wildly expensive and students are rewarded for work that costs more to produce.”) and 50% dissatisfied with student mental health and wellbeing consideration. It is evident that despite the promise of a #1 ranked architecture program, Cornell does not deliver.
Studio
The most important factor in my transfer decision was definitely because of the student work, a result of the intense studio environment at Cornell. It has a dark side, however, as I have come to learn firsthand. It is something that perhaps is taken for granted here because many students have not experienced a different design program. The largest difference between the studio environments of Cornell and Syracuse is that one demands a mandatory level of work ethic and the other is individually escalated.
Studio is the heart of most architecture programs today. It is where students work on projects through models and drawings and it is where most of a student’s time goes. Perhaps it was because a student died from overworking themselves a few years prior to me arriving at Syracuse, but nonetheless the faculty at Syracuse are very openly concerned about the mental health of their students – infinitely more so than at Cornell.
I remember days at Syracuse where my professors would recommend to our section that we get some sleep rather than finishing another model and to get outside of Slocum to engage in what the rest of the university has to offer. This attitude was not just all talk. The studios also implemented midnight deadlines for work and the school arranges no-studio-deadline weeks to try and make an effort to streamline due dates for the students. Though sometimes essays, tests, and studio still did stack up and the definition of midnight was stretched, it was reassuring to know that the school, from administrators to professors, were making an effort to ensure their students made it to graduation, alive.
Walking to the cafe one day I remember overhearing something absurd from an architecture student at Syracuse giving a tour saying how she was in two clubs, and an athletic club, and was doing well in her classes. This is because the amount of time one wishes to spend on studio is up to the student. There is perhaps a base minimum of pressure that is inherent in any highly ranked architecture program, but the amount that pressure is escalated to is determined by the student. Putting this power in the hands of the student to decide whether or not they will dedicate their entire life to studio or whether they will pursue other interests outside of architecture or I daresay, have a social life is so important to the mental health of any student. It is possible to graduate from Syracuse’s architecture program without ever having to pull a single all-nighter, without needing to work on architecture seven days a week. Cornell, however, is a never ending architecture boot camp.
I think I speak for many of my classmates at Cornell when I say that death is often easier. It is definitely something I have considered during difficult and demanding times here. You look over the railing of one of the bridges at the beautiful gorge below and after 48 hours of being awake, your eyes sit a little longer on larger gaps in the suicide prevention netting. This speaks to the intensity of the program, both a good and bad thing. Good because a certain degree of unparalled intensity should be expected of a program that is the best, but bad in this instance because it is not a healthy intensity especially when there is no infrastructure in place to counteract the pressure.
For most, the closest they may come to this kind of intensity is in a summer program. Summer or winter intensive programs are grueling. An entire month, day after day of the same material to be learned with quizzes daily, tests weekly, and studying nightly. A summer program is hell for a month, but extend that hell into an entire semester and you get a good feeling of what a semester in Cornell’s B.Arch is like.
Some may say that these snowflakes need this dose of reality to shake them out of the entitled fantasy worlds they grew up in, but I challenge you, sir, to try to survive a single week with the schedule of some of these ‘snowflakes,’ much less 16 weeks of it. An average of 18 credits a semester to graduate on time in five years, with a daily schedule of classes from 9am to 4:30pm (no lunch break included if you are lucky), you have roughly six hours a day with also the weekends to finish all the work for your four classes and studio if you somehow manage to sleep eight hours a day. Mathematically this seems fine, the numbers seem plausible. Hell, you may even be thinking to yourself that you could probably handle it no sweat. It may be possible for a week, maybe two, three if you are a machine, but over the course of 16 weeks trying to maintain this working schedule without sacrificing a poorly done assignment here to complete another one there is impossible. Somehow the students here manage though, it’s still a mystery to me. I have never been a great student, but many of my classmates here are some of the hardest working people I know – but it is because they have no choice.
To simply stay afloat you must be working nearly every waking moment at Cornell Architecture, much less to try and maintain a perfect GPA. The second year studio coordinator for this semester even provided our class with some great wisdom that I will never forget during our first studio wide meeting where he said that we, “better get all our laundry done now because there will not be any time for that later.” This is a pretty accurate summation of the studio culture at Cornell. It is an abusive relationship with architecture.
You are expected to use “noble materials” in model making. Accessible materials such as paper, chipboard, foam core, and foam will be frowned upon during a desk crit as if you did not put in the same effort if you had done the exact same thing with wood, rockite (concrete), or metal. Not only is the accessibility of these materials an issue for students who do not all own cars with on campus stores that are about as well supplied for art and design as an office depot is, the cost of working in large scale wood, rockite, or metal models can quickly get into the thousands of dollars. Pile those costs on top of the price of plots after plots after plots, on top of the tuition you are already paying and you can understand the student’s frustration.
Professors outline expectations for three models and five drawings assigned on Monday to be delivered on Wednesday. There are also structures problem sets and that essay you still need to write due Thursday before you get to your studio work. Or do you just not do the problem set? Plagiarize that essay? It might give you a few precious extra hours to finish those models and maybe get a nap in if you stay on task. Perhaps this lack of support is intentional to get the most out of the students by pushing them beyond their limits, but if that is the case then it is a severely outdated education methodology.[12]
First Year
Now as we get into the nitty gritty of both school’s respective studio classes, similar to how this essay began with leadership, both school’s studio instruction sits upon a foundation of their first year curriculums. I talk a lot about the quality of Cornell’s student work and how much it has impressed me, but the level of work is more evident of the school’s approach to first year than anything else.
Both heavily focused on a precedent to projective first year sequence where a student must analyze and understand an existing project before producing a project from said analysis. The large difference here is the precedents the first years look at. This is where Syracuse and Cornell approach the same problem from two completely different points. Syracuse establishes many constraints for the student to work within. Not every student that comes into Syracuse arrives with the intention of becoming a practicing architect, and like me, may have never had any experience or exposure to the field prior. So the curriculum assumes this and thus creates a two semester framework to teach a student how to crawl before they walk. Crawling is not sexy. It is not flashy, yet it is essential to eventually run. Competently.
After several return visits this year to Syracuse, the first year work looks for the most part similar to my first year and the year before mine. Strictly buildings as precedents; strictly paper, foam core, chipboard, and basswood stick models and strictly orthogonal spaces. This is to strip away confusion in the pursuit of a simple and clear architectural introduction. The most important part of these limitations is in keeping the designs strictly orthogonal which eliminates the diagonal and the curved line because they have the ability to distract the beginner from what is essential: space.
Architecture, as my first year class learned, can be boiled down to being the design of spaces. Your first year project does not need to aspire to be a Zaha building for you to learn the fundamentals of architecture. An emphasis for my first year was on the difference between simply additive and subtractive (tectonic and stereotomic) space-making. By breaking the complex art of space-making down to its most fundamental, there was the potential to allow the students to create extremely simple, sophisticated projects born out of a rigorous set of rules – which is much more difficult than creating a project under no limitations.
At Syracuse, concepts are introduced one exercise at a time. Precedent analysis, then production of a plan, sections and elevations, then program is considered, and then site and context. (Syracuse has 3 exercise-based projects per semester while Cornell has 1 continuous project per semester) Perhaps you could say the same for the first year at Cornell, but the final work produced makes a different statement. It is big and bold. Once you realize it is first year B.Arch work that is pinned up you will be shocked as I was. I was envious of the final drawings and models my current classmates and the current first years pinned up. What kind of work would I have made in this kind of first year? Cornell’s first year is extremely ambitious, but I do not think I would have found the same success or found the same interest in the field if my first year program had thrown me into the middle of a busy highway and demanded I learn to run or die.
My classmates at Cornell began their first year analyzing animals and insects, and this year they began with analyzing things that pertained to the four elements. This analysis through a series of complex hand drafted drawings lead to the production of large scale moving models, instruments, that could create drawings that traced its own movements based upon each individual precedent analysis. Though the final drawings and models were nothing short of amazing when I walked around the Milstein Dome, after speaking with several of the first years and discussing this with several of my classmates, you question what they learned from this.
Did they learn anything exceptionally meaningful about architecture from this experiment that demanded giant models costing upwards of $300? Sure, they learned how to make complex and interesting abstract drawings and fun, move-able models, but it seemed more about a showcase of some agenda or idea the professors wanted to push and show off rather than a showcase of a strong, class-wide grasp of fundamentals of architecture. This disconnect may be born out of an actual physical disconnect a student will have at Cornell throughout their first year.
At Cornell you will not work with a professor your first year. Two professors create an outline and are there with other critics on your final review, but for the entire year you will be working with a Super-TA, as one of my professors likes to call them. You will learn from someone who has even less experience than a young visiting critic. This may go hand in hand with Cornell’s confidence in the talent of their own students as they often have upper year undergraduate, thesis, or graduate students participate in the smaller reviews for their first year students. Even if you are working with one of the most talented 4th years at the school that still has nothing on the quality of guidance and feedback of even a young professor. There is a difference in purely time where even a young professor will have their undergraduate, masters, and some working experience to draw from.
Despite having double the class size of Cornell, you get both a professor and a TA at Syracuse. Throughout this year at Cornell, I think I have seen the first year professors a grand total of three times actually physically present and walking around in the first year studio the entire year. The Syracuse TA’s that my classmates and me worked with were outstanding. Nearly all of the TA’s were nominated for or won thesis awards so I do not think Cornell’s have a leg up on instruction quality despite the unheard of control their TA’s have over the student work during the year.
On top of the perspective the TA’s at Syracuse brought as older students, you were actually able to work one-on-one with a professor every studio day – a luxury totally foreign it seems to Cornell’s first year. Now there may be some benefits to having older students teach your entire first year, but I for one am drawing a blank on any positives there when compared to having both a professor and a TA lead you through one of the most difficult years of any B.Arch program.
Past first year, Cornell does a full 180 from a hyper-conceptual first year to a hyper-practical second year. The work is focused intensely on structure in the first semester and the second is focused on getting a project to the point where a student is considering things like drainage, detailed wall sections, and egress. The studio in which Syracuse gets to this detail level is fourth year. Syracuse applies the similar crawl before you walk approach to their overall B.Arch curriculum and puts their students through another few years of strictly exercise based semesters to try and explore different techniques and ideas early on. This can be extremely taxing on certain students who may want to learn how to work on a project for an extended period of time, but it also allows for a degree of exploration that the Cornell students do not have. That said, there are also benefits to working on a single project for an entire semester and learning to develop a project from start to finish.
At this point I am comparing small differences in each school’s program because although they are different in their approach, their programs produce largely the same results in student quality. While I was considering transferring I received advice from my studio professor that I did not know was so accurate until now, “Both schools have very similar programs, but I think going there [Cornell] would be a slight downgrade. They have better facilities, but the only thing I could think of that would largely sway your decision to leaving would be if you wanted to work with one of their faculty specifically.”
Rankings
Even though Cornell’s system of overworking their students is flawed and antiquated, it does breed a lot of valuable qualities that employers want which may directly contribute to their rankings which is determined from a survey of these very employers. Among these qualities being: a strong work ethic, dedication, and the desire to put studio or architecture above all other concerns. Aside from the quality of their students, the only thing Cornell’s program currently contributes is the work ethic it breeds which may not be a sustainable way to maintain their #1 position long term.
Design Intelligence’s rankings[13] help students unfamiliar with the field of architecture begin to understand which school might be best for them. Cal Poly SLO has held #2 consistently for the past few years, but with Syracuse’s trajectory coupled with how SLO has never been known for being an outstanding school for design in its aesthetics, I believe 2018’s rankings will shape up to be: #1 Cornell, #2 Syracuse, and #3 SLO. When Syracuse will dethrone Cornell is not a question of if, but when. I personally would prefer if this happened after 2020, when I graduate, but I believe it may happen as early as 2019 which irritates me to no end. I transferred in the hopes of going to a better program. I am not frustrated that Syracuse’s program is better than Cornell’s. I believe it is an important reality check for Kleinman and AAP to learn that their complacency, misguided decisions, and misallocation of resources will not continue to be rewarded. I am frustrated that Cornell’s program does not live up to what it could be.
There is so much potential for Cornell’s program to be exactly what it historically has been – the undisputed best architecture school in America, but it is currently falling short of that promise. Once Syracuse is able to retain more of the top talent of each year as they get closer to and reach #1, perhaps Cornell will decline. When the foundation of their entire program’s success begins to crumble coupled with having the renovation of the Fine Arts Library tying up the hands of AAP’s administration for the next few years, how quickly will Cornell be able to recover from this potentially devastating hit to their program? It was not reassuring to hear Kleinman say recently that the renovation of the rest of Sibley Hall is the “next big project” for AAP after the library. As of now, simply overworking the best students is all Cornell has. As a student who transferred to and will graduate from that exact program, I hope that I will be proven wrong and that improvements will begin to be made from the feedback the student body has been providing, but as any uncooperative teenager may need – Cornell’s B.Arch program might need this reality check, a kick in the ass so that they get their shit together.
Conclusion
So let us say you are faced with this decision: you are accepted to the Syracuse and Cornell B.Arch programs, but do not know which to choose. This determines where you will be for the next five years of your life and defines the beginning of your architectural career, it is not an easy decision. How things are currently, I would just ask you one thing. Are you absolutely 100% positive that you will become a practicing architect? If there is any hesitation in your response or you have any other reason why you are entering architecture school, then pick Syracuse.
[1] Ishness & Counter-Absolutes, Syracuse Architecture, 2017
https://soa.syr.edu/live/events/532-ishness-counter-absolutes
[2] Kyle Miller Profile, Syracuse School of Architecture, 2017
https://soa.syr.edu/live/profiles/12-kyle-miller
[3] Andrea Simitch Named Department of Architecture Chair, AAP Communications, 2017
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/andrea-simitch-named-chair-department-architecture
[4] Gensler Renews Commitment To Support AAP NYC, AAP Communications, 2013
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/gensler-renews-commitment-support-aap-nyc
[5] Gensler Family Gift Names AAP NYC Executive Director Position, AAP Communications, 2015
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/gensler-family-gift-names-aap-nyc-executive-director-position
[6] AAP NYC Set to Expand Offerings in New Space, AAP Communications, 2014
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/aap-nyc-set-expand-offerings-new-space
[7] Milstein Hall to Feature Interplay between Sustainability and Design, Sherrie Negrea, 2009
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/milstein-hall-feature-interplay-between-sustainability-and-design
[8] Fine Arts Library funding comes from: 53% Alumni donations / 31% Univ. facilities ("deferred maintenance") / 10% AP / 1% CU library/ 5% TBD.
[9] Mui Ho Fine Arts Library, Cornell AAP
https://aap.cornell.edu/about/campuses-facilities/ithaca/mui-ho-fine-arts-library
[10] Comments on Ho Fine Art Library: A Body of Books, Jonathan Ochshorn, 2016 http://jon.ochshorn.org/2015/10/comments-on-ho-fine-arts-library-a-body-of-books/
[11] Note: To try to clarify what I mean by ‘best,’ I think out of a pool of a year’s students there has to be a certain percentage that stands out above the rest for whatever reason be it on quantifiable statistics like GPA or test scores or a fantastic portfolio.
[12] Note: Cornell has recently put great emphasis on developing the lab component of their M.Arch program. The program’s focus and capabilities for digital fabrication has grown significantly under the likes of Jenny Sabin with a symposium on the topic this year, but those developments have been geared more towards the M.Arch program and I will be focusing solely on the B.Arch here. There is little to no interaction between the departments of AAP in studio, course content, or between the degree programs so there is nothing to discuss there.
[13] America’s Top Architecture Schools 2017, Architectural Record, 2016
http://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11865-americas-top-architecture-schools-2017
Through many conversations with professors and peers and near constant personal evaluation of my transfer decision I have come to a point where I can compare my experience with Syracuse and Cornell’s B.Arch programs. These thoughts are definitely subject to change over the next few years. They are observations that I am writing in the hopes of shedding some light on these two high ranking architecture schools and it is also a chance for me to reflect on whether I made the right decision or not in transferring.
The Mysticism v. The New
There is a mysticism that surrounds Cornell architecture. Even to architecture students from other schools. You see it in the way people react. What is it like? Do you really never sleep? Do you really live in studio? Is it true that you guys sacrifice a freshmen every year? This is largely due to a combination of: minimal exposure (from a closed loop hiring trend that I will talk about later), its Ivy League prestige, and its longevity. It is undoubtedly an elusive place unless you or someone you know has been through its program. Compared to the transparency of say SCI-Arc’s student work through social media, an outsider really has no idea as to what is going on in Milstein or what the pros and cons of the school’s program are. I hope I can help pull back that curtain from a student’s perspective. Syracuse’s program, on the other hand, is in the midst of a transition under Michael Speaks as dean.
Leadership
Towards the end of my year at Syracuse I thought that I was beginning to understand what its program was, but I was wrong because the program is still evolving. For better or worse it is changing in its faculty, curriculum, and even thesis format. It is beginning to find its new updated form (despite being established in 1873, only two years after Cornell’s) with Michael Speaks, but its trajectory is unquestionably in the right direction as evidenced from Syracuse’s ranking in the past few years going from #5 to 4 to 3. In a comparison between these two schools I believe starting at the leadership of each school is vital as an institution’s direction and its decision making can be traced back to this point.
I believe that Speaks is making bottom up decisions that first and foremost establish a solid foundation for the betterment of Syracuse’s program in the context of an architectural field that is becoming more and more digitized and globalized. He has assembled a uniquely diverse faculty in age, gender, race, education, and interests.
There are the experienced and tenured Princeton-grad professors, the fresh L.A. faces, and also the Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Jamaican, and Korean lecturers, professors, and visiting critics. Not only is there a diversity to Syracuse’s voices in Slocum Hall, it also has many more opportunities than Cornell does to study abroad in Florence, London, New York, summer workshops with faculty all over the world, and also a program in Shanghai that Speaks has been working to develop.
Not only is there this global diversity, this year professor Maya Alam also hosted an all women symposium.[1] No words can describe how important it is for students to see a panel of nine women leading an important discussion on contemporary architecture. One of my personal favorite decisions Speaks has made has been in his appointing Kyle Miller[2] to direct the Florence program - one of the best design instructors I have ever worked with.
Thesis is also one of the aspects of Syracuse’s B.Arch program that is changing from student driven to a cooperation between student and faculty after 2020, which is controversial in the pedagogy of an architectural studio education. I have an optimistic outlook on it though. It is an attempt to allow students to hopefully work more in depth on a project that a professional is already interested and invested in, which may be a more efficient use of both the professor and student’s efforts. Though these decisions are not flashy and will not make any headlines, they do contribute greatly to a better, perhaps more up to date architecture education that Speaks hopes to achieve.
An hour’s drive away, Kent Kleinman’s decisions and focus have been misguided in comparison. During his time so far, he has made large moves. He has: “significantly fortified” and moved AAP (Cornell’s Department of Architecture Art and Planning) NYC to a new location, completed the over $55 million construction of OMA’s Milstein Hall, and is beginning to realize the dreaded Fine Arts Library renovation. Take these gigantic decisions out of his resume though and his time at Cornell has been largely complacent. He has made no significant changes to any of the curriculum or faculty or overall intellectual infrastructure of the school, because in his defense if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This attitude, whether he is conscious of it or not has resulted in a closed feedback loop of Cornell architecture.
By this I mean that it is not out of the ordinary for faculty at Cornell to be Cornell undergraduates and then Harvard GSD alumni. In fact, this seems to be almost favorable in the hiring of new architecture professors. Perhaps this has existed long before I have come to realize it, but if that is the case then Kleinman has done nothing to address this in a profession that is changing. Look at the Helsinki Guggenheim and most recent Pritzker winners for example, the age of Starchitecture may be over.
Many lecturers are Cornell grads, many are white, and most are male. There is a canon in architectural education from Vitruvius to Corbusier, but there also seems to be a Cornell canon that feeds back in on itself. This is so dangerous for a school because if you grow up in an environment with no one to dispute your way of thinking or methodology of working then you will grow up believing your way is the right way, the only way.
Recently, AAP has been searching for a successor to Department Chair, Mark Cruvellier. Of the four candidates, all were educated at and are teaching outside of Cornell except for one. You can probably guess who got the job. Just one week ago on April 26, Kleinman announced that professor Andrea Simitch would be the next Department of Architecture Chair.[3] After attending every candidate’s lecture, I strongly disagree with this choice. It is even more evident of Kleinman’s complacent attitude and overall ignorance towards the problems that the architecture school has. Andrea, who was Cornell educated, is a wonderful woman and I have had nothing but pleasant experiences with her, but it is the stories you hear from her previous students that paint a different picture of what she is like as an instructor.
What any of the other three candidates would have provided so critically is an outside perspective; a tension inherent in different academic upbringings. What Cornell Architecture needs at the moment is not to continue on as it has, which is what Simitch’s vision seems to be. Despite this missed opportunity, I am confident that Simitch will do a good job as she has as a professor at Cornell for over 30 years, but I am skeptical about whether proper adjustments to the curriculum and school infrastructure will be made under her. I am skeptical, but will be hoping that she will exceed my expectations. Now by bringing back the monumental facilities decisions back into the conversation the discussion goes from complacency to also misallocation.
Firstly, the relocation of AAP NYC is not a Kleinman driven project. Starting with a $450,000 donation[4] in 2011 from Gensler for the appointment of the program’s director with an additional commitment of $500,000 over the following five years to specifically NYC, it seems the NYC program is more Gensler backed than it is a result of the efforts of AAP. Not only has the program’s leadership been determined by the firm,[5] its new location has also been selected and designed by a Gensler team.[6] Secondly, the building of Milstein Hall[7] also seems to have been more motivated by the added mysticism of having an OMA/Koolhaas building than anything else. I will not lie, this is definitely effective as a huge draw for me was the great facilities Milstein offers. However, that was before I started classes at Cornell and before I made the connection between my tuition and where it was being spent – and here we get to the new Fine Arts Library.
An estimated $19 million[8] renovation that displaces the original library, shop, and work spaces during my time here is not ideal, to put it lightly, and it is also designed by an architect who just so happens to be an alum, but one who has not built before.[9] Fantastic. What is not so fantastic is the coincidence between the decision to renovate the library and the dip in rankings Cornell took in 2014 when Cal Poly SLO edged Cornell out of first place for a year. What might have been Kleinman’s reaction to this drop? Based on the somewhat positive results of Milstein at the time, why not invest further into facilities to bring the school back to its rightful place? So in 2015 the renovation was announced. But for some odd reason before construction even began (God forbid), Cornell has returned to and maintained #1 for every year past 2014. Perhaps the reason why Cornell’s program is ranked so high is because the program’s success is not entirely dependent on the quality of its facilities? What an interesting thought! Someone should tell Kleinman. To use the same quote that Cornell Architecture Professor, Jonathan Ochshorn,[10] used to critique the renovation decision,
“Better a splendid and complete faculty in a barn than an insufficient faculty in a palace.”
A.D. White, co-founder and first President of Cornell University
To also quote one of my studio professors at Cornell, “we used to have people teaching here like Rowe and Ungers, but all the money has been going towards things like Milstein and the library instead of getting the best faculty out there.” So if the strength of Cornell Architecture today is not in its facilities, strangely enough, where does it shine? What did I come here for?
The Students
Syracuse Architecture has a class size of 120-130 students, double that of Cornell’s. I do not think this is as big of a disparity as one might think initially because similar to their faculty, each Syracuse class is incredibly diverse with students from all over the world. Other than diversity, however, there is not much else to be said on this subject. There are students who work hard and produce great work, and there are some who you question how they got in. All relatively normal for a design school. I found Cornell to beat out Syracuse in this respect, to no fault of their own.
It is a refreshing and inspiring feeling to walk around during a pinup and to see work that is different, interesting, and well executed – something I had not felt before visiting Cornell for the first time during their first year final review last May. As the saying in design school goes, “you learn more from your classmates than your teachers,” and Cornell’s students are some of the best. However, this is both an important asset and a vital crutch for Cornell’s program.
The knife’s edge on which Cornell’s architecture program is sitting on is the talent of its students. This is not good. If I have learned anything in architecture school about structure, if your entire building is built on a shaky foundation then it will fall, and honestly you do not need a degree to know that. This is a luxury Cornell possesses that no other school does. They are able to every year hand pick the 60 best[11] students and designers for their freshmen class because of the mysticism, because of the Ivy League prestige, and because it has such a stranglehold on #1. Once you get that acceptance letter, it is hard to find a reason why not to go to Ithaca, it seems I was no different.
This stranglehold is only possible because of their ability to create a small class size of ridiculously hard working and capable design students. I came largely because I thought the work was great, but I did not know this was the reason why. That these were simply the best of the best from the year’s pool of students. However, the student’s work is not because of great leadership, or amazing support, or an innovative curriculum, in fact I would go so far as to say that Cornell’s program itself does not live up to its pedigree in any of these regards. The program is lacking in many of these aspects despite being so highly ranked. Cornell is able to identify the strongest architecture students out of high school, but does their program then take those student’s incredible potential further than say Syracuse or SCI-Arc or any other architecture school could? No, I do not believe so.
Switch the incoming 2022 graduating class of Cornell with USC’s for the next five years, for example. In my opinion, I think that Cornell would immediately drop several places in the rankings because not many students are able to physically survive, much less succeed in the environment that Cornell creates. USC’s program would most likely immediately see an immense jump in the quality of their work because those students do not necessarily need a robust infrastructure in place to make great work.
Looking at the most recent student survey done at AAP, students are: 70% dissatisfied with the transparency of the administration’s decision-making process, 63% dissatisfied with the role of students in that process, 72% dissatisfied with cross-departmental interaction despite AAP being an Architecture, Art, and Planning school, 76% dissatisfied with supplies affordability, 56% dissatisfied with supplies availability, (“The supplies are wildly expensive and students are rewarded for work that costs more to produce.”) and 50% dissatisfied with student mental health and wellbeing consideration. It is evident that despite the promise of a #1 ranked architecture program, Cornell does not deliver.
Studio
The most important factor in my transfer decision was definitely because of the student work, a result of the intense studio environment at Cornell. It has a dark side, however, as I have come to learn firsthand. It is something that perhaps is taken for granted here because many students have not experienced a different design program. The largest difference between the studio environments of Cornell and Syracuse is that one demands a mandatory level of work ethic and the other is individually escalated.
Studio is the heart of most architecture programs today. It is where students work on projects through models and drawings and it is where most of a student’s time goes. Perhaps it was because a student died from overworking themselves a few years prior to me arriving at Syracuse, but nonetheless the faculty at Syracuse are very openly concerned about the mental health of their students – infinitely more so than at Cornell.
I remember days at Syracuse where my professors would recommend to our section that we get some sleep rather than finishing another model and to get outside of Slocum to engage in what the rest of the university has to offer. This attitude was not just all talk. The studios also implemented midnight deadlines for work and the school arranges no-studio-deadline weeks to try and make an effort to streamline due dates for the students. Though sometimes essays, tests, and studio still did stack up and the definition of midnight was stretched, it was reassuring to know that the school, from administrators to professors, were making an effort to ensure their students made it to graduation, alive.
Walking to the cafe one day I remember overhearing something absurd from an architecture student at Syracuse giving a tour saying how she was in two clubs, and an athletic club, and was doing well in her classes. This is because the amount of time one wishes to spend on studio is up to the student. There is perhaps a base minimum of pressure that is inherent in any highly ranked architecture program, but the amount that pressure is escalated to is determined by the student. Putting this power in the hands of the student to decide whether or not they will dedicate their entire life to studio or whether they will pursue other interests outside of architecture or I daresay, have a social life is so important to the mental health of any student. It is possible to graduate from Syracuse’s architecture program without ever having to pull a single all-nighter, without needing to work on architecture seven days a week. Cornell, however, is a never ending architecture boot camp.
I think I speak for many of my classmates at Cornell when I say that death is often easier. It is definitely something I have considered during difficult and demanding times here. You look over the railing of one of the bridges at the beautiful gorge below and after 48 hours of being awake, your eyes sit a little longer on larger gaps in the suicide prevention netting. This speaks to the intensity of the program, both a good and bad thing. Good because a certain degree of unparalled intensity should be expected of a program that is the best, but bad in this instance because it is not a healthy intensity especially when there is no infrastructure in place to counteract the pressure.
For most, the closest they may come to this kind of intensity is in a summer program. Summer or winter intensive programs are grueling. An entire month, day after day of the same material to be learned with quizzes daily, tests weekly, and studying nightly. A summer program is hell for a month, but extend that hell into an entire semester and you get a good feeling of what a semester in Cornell’s B.Arch is like.
Some may say that these snowflakes need this dose of reality to shake them out of the entitled fantasy worlds they grew up in, but I challenge you, sir, to try to survive a single week with the schedule of some of these ‘snowflakes,’ much less 16 weeks of it. An average of 18 credits a semester to graduate on time in five years, with a daily schedule of classes from 9am to 4:30pm (no lunch break included if you are lucky), you have roughly six hours a day with also the weekends to finish all the work for your four classes and studio if you somehow manage to sleep eight hours a day. Mathematically this seems fine, the numbers seem plausible. Hell, you may even be thinking to yourself that you could probably handle it no sweat. It may be possible for a week, maybe two, three if you are a machine, but over the course of 16 weeks trying to maintain this working schedule without sacrificing a poorly done assignment here to complete another one there is impossible. Somehow the students here manage though, it’s still a mystery to me. I have never been a great student, but many of my classmates here are some of the hardest working people I know – but it is because they have no choice.
To simply stay afloat you must be working nearly every waking moment at Cornell Architecture, much less to try and maintain a perfect GPA. The second year studio coordinator for this semester even provided our class with some great wisdom that I will never forget during our first studio wide meeting where he said that we, “better get all our laundry done now because there will not be any time for that later.” This is a pretty accurate summation of the studio culture at Cornell. It is an abusive relationship with architecture.
You are expected to use “noble materials” in model making. Accessible materials such as paper, chipboard, foam core, and foam will be frowned upon during a desk crit as if you did not put in the same effort if you had done the exact same thing with wood, rockite (concrete), or metal. Not only is the accessibility of these materials an issue for students who do not all own cars with on campus stores that are about as well supplied for art and design as an office depot is, the cost of working in large scale wood, rockite, or metal models can quickly get into the thousands of dollars. Pile those costs on top of the price of plots after plots after plots, on top of the tuition you are already paying and you can understand the student’s frustration.
Professors outline expectations for three models and five drawings assigned on Monday to be delivered on Wednesday. There are also structures problem sets and that essay you still need to write due Thursday before you get to your studio work. Or do you just not do the problem set? Plagiarize that essay? It might give you a few precious extra hours to finish those models and maybe get a nap in if you stay on task. Perhaps this lack of support is intentional to get the most out of the students by pushing them beyond their limits, but if that is the case then it is a severely outdated education methodology.[12]
First Year
Now as we get into the nitty gritty of both school’s respective studio classes, similar to how this essay began with leadership, both school’s studio instruction sits upon a foundation of their first year curriculums. I talk a lot about the quality of Cornell’s student work and how much it has impressed me, but the level of work is more evident of the school’s approach to first year than anything else.
Both heavily focused on a precedent to projective first year sequence where a student must analyze and understand an existing project before producing a project from said analysis. The large difference here is the precedents the first years look at. This is where Syracuse and Cornell approach the same problem from two completely different points. Syracuse establishes many constraints for the student to work within. Not every student that comes into Syracuse arrives with the intention of becoming a practicing architect, and like me, may have never had any experience or exposure to the field prior. So the curriculum assumes this and thus creates a two semester framework to teach a student how to crawl before they walk. Crawling is not sexy. It is not flashy, yet it is essential to eventually run. Competently.
After several return visits this year to Syracuse, the first year work looks for the most part similar to my first year and the year before mine. Strictly buildings as precedents; strictly paper, foam core, chipboard, and basswood stick models and strictly orthogonal spaces. This is to strip away confusion in the pursuit of a simple and clear architectural introduction. The most important part of these limitations is in keeping the designs strictly orthogonal which eliminates the diagonal and the curved line because they have the ability to distract the beginner from what is essential: space.
Architecture, as my first year class learned, can be boiled down to being the design of spaces. Your first year project does not need to aspire to be a Zaha building for you to learn the fundamentals of architecture. An emphasis for my first year was on the difference between simply additive and subtractive (tectonic and stereotomic) space-making. By breaking the complex art of space-making down to its most fundamental, there was the potential to allow the students to create extremely simple, sophisticated projects born out of a rigorous set of rules – which is much more difficult than creating a project under no limitations.
At Syracuse, concepts are introduced one exercise at a time. Precedent analysis, then production of a plan, sections and elevations, then program is considered, and then site and context. (Syracuse has 3 exercise-based projects per semester while Cornell has 1 continuous project per semester) Perhaps you could say the same for the first year at Cornell, but the final work produced makes a different statement. It is big and bold. Once you realize it is first year B.Arch work that is pinned up you will be shocked as I was. I was envious of the final drawings and models my current classmates and the current first years pinned up. What kind of work would I have made in this kind of first year? Cornell’s first year is extremely ambitious, but I do not think I would have found the same success or found the same interest in the field if my first year program had thrown me into the middle of a busy highway and demanded I learn to run or die.
My classmates at Cornell began their first year analyzing animals and insects, and this year they began with analyzing things that pertained to the four elements. This analysis through a series of complex hand drafted drawings lead to the production of large scale moving models, instruments, that could create drawings that traced its own movements based upon each individual precedent analysis. Though the final drawings and models were nothing short of amazing when I walked around the Milstein Dome, after speaking with several of the first years and discussing this with several of my classmates, you question what they learned from this.
Did they learn anything exceptionally meaningful about architecture from this experiment that demanded giant models costing upwards of $300? Sure, they learned how to make complex and interesting abstract drawings and fun, move-able models, but it seemed more about a showcase of some agenda or idea the professors wanted to push and show off rather than a showcase of a strong, class-wide grasp of fundamentals of architecture. This disconnect may be born out of an actual physical disconnect a student will have at Cornell throughout their first year.
At Cornell you will not work with a professor your first year. Two professors create an outline and are there with other critics on your final review, but for the entire year you will be working with a Super-TA, as one of my professors likes to call them. You will learn from someone who has even less experience than a young visiting critic. This may go hand in hand with Cornell’s confidence in the talent of their own students as they often have upper year undergraduate, thesis, or graduate students participate in the smaller reviews for their first year students. Even if you are working with one of the most talented 4th years at the school that still has nothing on the quality of guidance and feedback of even a young professor. There is a difference in purely time where even a young professor will have their undergraduate, masters, and some working experience to draw from.
Despite having double the class size of Cornell, you get both a professor and a TA at Syracuse. Throughout this year at Cornell, I think I have seen the first year professors a grand total of three times actually physically present and walking around in the first year studio the entire year. The Syracuse TA’s that my classmates and me worked with were outstanding. Nearly all of the TA’s were nominated for or won thesis awards so I do not think Cornell’s have a leg up on instruction quality despite the unheard of control their TA’s have over the student work during the year.
On top of the perspective the TA’s at Syracuse brought as older students, you were actually able to work one-on-one with a professor every studio day – a luxury totally foreign it seems to Cornell’s first year. Now there may be some benefits to having older students teach your entire first year, but I for one am drawing a blank on any positives there when compared to having both a professor and a TA lead you through one of the most difficult years of any B.Arch program.
Past first year, Cornell does a full 180 from a hyper-conceptual first year to a hyper-practical second year. The work is focused intensely on structure in the first semester and the second is focused on getting a project to the point where a student is considering things like drainage, detailed wall sections, and egress. The studio in which Syracuse gets to this detail level is fourth year. Syracuse applies the similar crawl before you walk approach to their overall B.Arch curriculum and puts their students through another few years of strictly exercise based semesters to try and explore different techniques and ideas early on. This can be extremely taxing on certain students who may want to learn how to work on a project for an extended period of time, but it also allows for a degree of exploration that the Cornell students do not have. That said, there are also benefits to working on a single project for an entire semester and learning to develop a project from start to finish.
At this point I am comparing small differences in each school’s program because although they are different in their approach, their programs produce largely the same results in student quality. While I was considering transferring I received advice from my studio professor that I did not know was so accurate until now, “Both schools have very similar programs, but I think going there [Cornell] would be a slight downgrade. They have better facilities, but the only thing I could think of that would largely sway your decision to leaving would be if you wanted to work with one of their faculty specifically.”
Rankings
Even though Cornell’s system of overworking their students is flawed and antiquated, it does breed a lot of valuable qualities that employers want which may directly contribute to their rankings which is determined from a survey of these very employers. Among these qualities being: a strong work ethic, dedication, and the desire to put studio or architecture above all other concerns. Aside from the quality of their students, the only thing Cornell’s program currently contributes is the work ethic it breeds which may not be a sustainable way to maintain their #1 position long term.
Design Intelligence’s rankings[13] help students unfamiliar with the field of architecture begin to understand which school might be best for them. Cal Poly SLO has held #2 consistently for the past few years, but with Syracuse’s trajectory coupled with how SLO has never been known for being an outstanding school for design in its aesthetics, I believe 2018’s rankings will shape up to be: #1 Cornell, #2 Syracuse, and #3 SLO. When Syracuse will dethrone Cornell is not a question of if, but when. I personally would prefer if this happened after 2020, when I graduate, but I believe it may happen as early as 2019 which irritates me to no end. I transferred in the hopes of going to a better program. I am not frustrated that Syracuse’s program is better than Cornell’s. I believe it is an important reality check for Kleinman and AAP to learn that their complacency, misguided decisions, and misallocation of resources will not continue to be rewarded. I am frustrated that Cornell’s program does not live up to what it could be.
There is so much potential for Cornell’s program to be exactly what it historically has been – the undisputed best architecture school in America, but it is currently falling short of that promise. Once Syracuse is able to retain more of the top talent of each year as they get closer to and reach #1, perhaps Cornell will decline. When the foundation of their entire program’s success begins to crumble coupled with having the renovation of the Fine Arts Library tying up the hands of AAP’s administration for the next few years, how quickly will Cornell be able to recover from this potentially devastating hit to their program? It was not reassuring to hear Kleinman say recently that the renovation of the rest of Sibley Hall is the “next big project” for AAP after the library. As of now, simply overworking the best students is all Cornell has. As a student who transferred to and will graduate from that exact program, I hope that I will be proven wrong and that improvements will begin to be made from the feedback the student body has been providing, but as any uncooperative teenager may need – Cornell’s B.Arch program might need this reality check, a kick in the ass so that they get their shit together.
Conclusion
So let us say you are faced with this decision: you are accepted to the Syracuse and Cornell B.Arch programs, but do not know which to choose. This determines where you will be for the next five years of your life and defines the beginning of your architectural career, it is not an easy decision. How things are currently, I would just ask you one thing. Are you absolutely 100% positive that you will become a practicing architect? If there is any hesitation in your response or you have any other reason why you are entering architecture school, then pick Syracuse.
[1] Ishness & Counter-Absolutes, Syracuse Architecture, 2017
https://soa.syr.edu/live/events/532-ishness-counter-absolutes
[2] Kyle Miller Profile, Syracuse School of Architecture, 2017
https://soa.syr.edu/live/profiles/12-kyle-miller
[3] Andrea Simitch Named Department of Architecture Chair, AAP Communications, 2017
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/andrea-simitch-named-chair-department-architecture
[4] Gensler Renews Commitment To Support AAP NYC, AAP Communications, 2013
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/gensler-renews-commitment-support-aap-nyc
[5] Gensler Family Gift Names AAP NYC Executive Director Position, AAP Communications, 2015
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/gensler-family-gift-names-aap-nyc-executive-director-position
[6] AAP NYC Set to Expand Offerings in New Space, AAP Communications, 2014
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/aap-nyc-set-expand-offerings-new-space
[7] Milstein Hall to Feature Interplay between Sustainability and Design, Sherrie Negrea, 2009
https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/milstein-hall-feature-interplay-between-sustainability-and-design
[8] Fine Arts Library funding comes from: 53% Alumni donations / 31% Univ. facilities ("deferred maintenance") / 10% AP / 1% CU library/ 5% TBD.
[9] Mui Ho Fine Arts Library, Cornell AAP
https://aap.cornell.edu/about/campuses-facilities/ithaca/mui-ho-fine-arts-library
[10] Comments on Ho Fine Art Library: A Body of Books, Jonathan Ochshorn, 2016 http://jon.ochshorn.org/2015/10/comments-on-ho-fine-arts-library-a-body-of-books/
[11] Note: To try to clarify what I mean by ‘best,’ I think out of a pool of a year’s students there has to be a certain percentage that stands out above the rest for whatever reason be it on quantifiable statistics like GPA or test scores or a fantastic portfolio.
[12] Note: Cornell has recently put great emphasis on developing the lab component of their M.Arch program. The program’s focus and capabilities for digital fabrication has grown significantly under the likes of Jenny Sabin with a symposium on the topic this year, but those developments have been geared more towards the M.Arch program and I will be focusing solely on the B.Arch here. There is little to no interaction between the departments of AAP in studio, course content, or between the degree programs so there is nothing to discuss there.
[13] America’s Top Architecture Schools 2017, Architectural Record, 2016
http://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11865-americas-top-architecture-schools-2017