UCLA A.UD Lecture: January 12, 2015
Preston Scott Cohen
Chair, Harvard GSD Architecture Department and the Harvard GSD Gerald M. McCue Professor of Architecture; Principal, Preston Scott Cohen Inc., Cambridge
The architecture of Preston Scott Cohen, founder and principal of Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. of Cambridge, MA, encompasses diverse scales and types of buildings including houses, educational facilities, cultural institutions and urban designs for private owners, institutions, government agencies and corporations.
Recent projects include: Datong City Library [2008-2013], The Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building, Tel Aviv, Israel [2003-2011], Taiyuan Museum of Art, Taiyuan, China [2007–2013], Nanjing Performing Arts Center, Nanjing, China [2007-2009], The Goldman Sachs Canopy, with Pei Cobb Freed Associates, New York, NY [2005-2008], Robbins Elementary School, Trenton, New Jersey [2005-2011], Goodman House, Pine Plains, New York [2002-2004].
Awards include the Progressive Architecture Award for Taiyuan Museum of Art [2010]; First Prize, Taiyuan Museum International Competition [2007]; First Prize Competition Robbins Elementary School, Trenton, NJ [2005]; Academy Award in Architecture, American Academy of Arts and Letters [2004]; Progressive Architecture Award, Architecture Tel Aviv Museum of Art [2004]; First Prize, Herta and Paul Amir International Competition for the New Building, Tel Aviv Museum of Art [2003]; Progressive Architecture Awards: Torus House [2000], Terminal House [1998].
Cohen is Chair and Gerald M. McCue Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is the author of Contested Symmetries (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001) and numerous theoretical and historical essays on architecture. His work has been widely published and exhibited and is in numerous collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard. He lectures regularly in prestigious venues around the world.
Cohen’s work has been the subject of numerous theoretical assessments by renowned critics and historians including Nicolai Ouroussoff, Sylvia Lavin, Antoine Picon, Michael Hays, Nikolaus Kuhnert, Terry Riley, Robert Somol, Hashim Sarkis and Rafael Moneo. Cohen has held faculty positions at Princeton University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Ohio State University. He was the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto in 2004 and the Perloff Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002.
