Island Editions Conversation Series at the Gensler Family AAP NYC Center

Bernard Tschumi

Founder and Principal, Bernard Tschumi Architects

Bernard Tschumi is an architect based in New York and Paris. First known as a theorist, he exhibited and published The Manhattan Transcripts and wrote a series of theoretical essays collected in Architecture and Disjunction. Major built works include the Parc de la Villette in Paris; the Acropolis Museum in Athens; Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France; concert halls in Rouen and Limoges, France; architecture schools in Marne-la-Vallée, France, and Miami, Florida; Binhai Science Museum in Tianjin, China; and large educational centers for Paris-Saclay University and for Institut Le Rosey near Geneva. Tschumi is Professor and Dean Emeritus at Columbia University's GSAPP, where he served as Dean from 1988 to 2003. He is the author of many publications, including Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color and the five-volume Event-Cities series. His drawings and models are in the collections of major museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which each presented a major retrospective of his work in 1994 and 2014, respectively.

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 new book, Rewriting Alberti (MIT Press, October 2025), with contributions by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Mario Carpo, and Daniel Sherer, will be presented at AAP NYC on Thursday, November 6.

Eisenman holds a B.Arch. from Cornell University, a 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; and an honorary doctorate in architecture from the Università La Sapienza in Rome.

Steven Holl

Founder and Principal, Steven Holl Architects

Steven Holl was born in 1947 in Bremerton, Washington. He graduated from the University of Washington and pursued architecture studies in Rome in 1970. In 1976, he joined the Architectural Association in London and, in 1977, established STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS. Considered one of America's most influential architects, he is recognized for his ability to blend space and light with great contextual sensitivity and to utilize the unique qualities of each project to create a concept-driven design. He specializes in seamlessly integrating new projects into contexts with particular cultural and historic importance.

Steven Holl has realized projects both in the United States and internationally, including the Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle, Washington (1997); the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland (1998); Simmons Hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2002); the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (2007); the Horizontal Skyscraper, Shenzhen, China (2009); the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark (2009); the Linked Hybrid, Beijing, China (2009); Cité de l'Océan et du Surf, Biarritz, France (2011); Reid Building at the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland (2014); the University of Iowa, Visual Arts Building, Iowa City, Iowa (2016); the Lewis Arts complex at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (2017); Maggie's Centre Barts, London, United Kingdom (2017); the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (2018); the Glassell School of Art for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2018); The REACH, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC (2019); Hunters Point Library, Queens Public Library, New York (2019); the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2020); Cofco Cultural and Health Center in Shanghai, China (2021); the Rubenstein Commons at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (2022); and Meander Housing in Helsinki, Finland (2024).

Steven Holl received the 2016 VELUX Daylight Award in Architecture, the 2014 Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award for Architecture, the 2012 AIA Gold Medal, the 2010 RIBA Jencks Award, and the first-ever Arts Award of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in 2009.

Steven Holl is a tenured Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He has also taught at the University of Washington, Pratt Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania.

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 new book, Rewriting Alberti (MIT Press, October 2025), with contributions by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Mario Carpo, and Daniel Sherer, will be presented at AAP NYC on Thursday, November 6.

Eisenman holds a B.Arch. from Cornell University, a 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; and an honorary doctorate in architecture from the Università La Sapienza in Rome.

Nader Tehrani

Principal, NADAAA

For his contributions to architecture as an art, Nader Tehrani is the recipient of The American Academy of Arts and Letters' 2020 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize. Tehrani has also been named the 2022 National Design Awards Design Visionary by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, honored for his innovation and impact on the field of architecture.

Working on interdisciplinary platforms, Tehrani's research has been focused on the transformation of the building industry, innovative material applications, and the development of new means and methods of construction, as exemplified in his work with digital fabrication. His work has received many prestigious awards, among which are an unprecedented eighteen Progressive Architecture Awards. His works have been widely exhibited at MoMA, LA MOCA, and ICA Boston. His work is also part of the permanent collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture and the Nasher Sculpture Center. Tehrani is the former Dean of The Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, where he served from 2015–22, and former head of the Department of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, where he served from 2010–14.

Tehrani has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Rhode Island School of Design; the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design; and The University of Toronto, where he served as the Frank O. Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architecture. He also served as the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.

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 new book, Rewriting Alberti (MIT Press, October 2025), with contributions by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Mario Carpo, and Daniel Sherer, will be presented at AAP NYC on Thursday, November 6.

Eisenman holds a B.Arch. from Cornell University, a 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; and an honorary doctorate in architecture from the Università La Sapienza in Rome.