Island Editions Conversation Series at the Gensler Family AAP NYC Center Fall 2026

Overview
Island Editions is an extraordinary conversation series that invites leading architects to offer candid reflections on their work, the evolution of their careers, and the broader professional and cultural landscapes that shape their thought and practice. Launched in Fall 2025 to mark the NYC program’s move to its new permanent home in the Tata Innovation Center (Cornell Tech campus, Roosevelt Island), the series is curated and hosted by faculty members Cynthia Davidson and architect Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. ’55). Previous guests included Bernard Tschumi, Steven Holl, Nader Tehrani, Elizabeth Diller, Toshiko Mori, and J. Meejin Yoon.

The series is open to the public. Registration is required.

Fall 2026
Preston Scott Cohen + Peter Eisenman
Monday, October 26 at 7 p.m.
Gensler Family AAP NYC Center
Tata Innovation Center, 4th Floor; Cornell Tech

Billie Tsien + Cynthia Davidson
Wednesday, December 2 at 7 p.m.
Gensler Family AAP NYC Center
Tata Innovation Center, 4th Floor; Cornell Tech

Spring 2027 Speakers TBD

View the Fall 2025 conversation series.

Cynthia Davidson, Cofounder and Executive Director, Anyone Corporation; Visiting Critic, Cornell AAP
Cynthia Davidson is cofounder and executive director of the nonprofit Anyone Corporation, an architecture think tank in New York City. She is the editor of the international architecture journal Log, which she launched in 2003, and previously ANY magazine, an architecture theory tabloid (1993–2000). She is also responsible for more than 40 books in print, including 28 books in the Anyone project’s Writing Architecture series, published with MIT Press. She cocurated The Architectural Imagination, an exhibition of speculative projects for Detroit, which was first shown in the US Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, and she started the pop-up architecture gallery Anyspace in New York in 2017. The American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized her work with its Architecture Award in 2014.

Davidson is a Visiting Critic at the Gensler Family AAP NYC Center (AAP NYC). She also teaches at Princeton University.

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.

October 26: Preston Scott Cohen + Peter Eisenman
Please join us on Monday, October 26 at 7 p.m. for a conversation with Preston Scott Cohen, hosted by Peter Eisenman.

Anhui Province Science Center (2025). photo / Preston Scott Cohen 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.

December 2: Billie Tsien + Cynthia Davidson
Please join us on Wednesday, December 2 at 7 p.m. for a conversation with Billie Tsien hosted by Cynthia Davidson.

The recently opened Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago, IL. photo / Angie McMonigal, Courtesy Obama Foundation Billie Tsien, Founder and Principal of Studio Tsien and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA)
Billie Tsien is a New York-based architect, mentor, and leading voice in the design and broader cultural community. Her approach to architecture is rooted in the spirit of collaboration with a portfolio imbued with a sense of optimism, warmth, texture, and serenity. She is a founding partner of Studio Tsien and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA), which for the past 40 years has completed award-winning projects for nonprofit, cultural, and academic institutions. Prominent examples include academic buildings at Princeton University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Bennington College, and University of California, Berkeley; public and institutional projects such as the Phoenix Art Museum, Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Lefrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Recent work includes the renovation of the David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the U.S. Embassy Complex in Mexico City, and the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

In parallel to her architecture practice, Billie has taught at many institutions and is a devoted participant in many arts organizations. Appointed by President Biden as the first woman and Asian-American Chair of the Commission of Fine Arts (serving 2021–2025). She has also served as President of the Board of the Architectural League of New York and taught at institutions like Yale and Harvard. Her dedication to work and the cultural landscape at large has garnered her numerous awards including the National Medal of Arts, the 2013 AIA Architecture Firm Award, and the 2019 Praemium Imperiale presented by the Japan Art Association.

Tsien holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice at Yale University and contributes to a range of cultural institutions such as the National Academy of Design, American Philosophical Society, American Academy in Rome, and American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she serves as president. Her work has been recognized with the Thomas Jefferson Medal Award in Architecture and the Architecture Firm Award of the American Institute of Architects, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Tsien is steadfast in her mission to create a better world through architecture and to contribute to supporting a broader and more diverse cultural landscape.