Architecture of Nature: Nature of Architecture

Diana Agrest, FAIA is a Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union and has taught at Princeton, Columbia, and Yale Universities. Agrest is internationally renowned for her pioneering and critical approach to architecture in practice and theory, considering architecture an interdiscursive field, focusing since 1989 on the question of Nature. Her designed and built work, which ranges in scale from buildings to cities and urban regions internationally, has received numerous awards. Her books include: The Sex of Architecture; Agrest and Gandelsonas: Works; Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice; and A Romance with the City. She wrote, produced, and directed the feature documentary film The Making of an Avant-Garde: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies 1967-1984, which Premiered at The Museum of Modern Art in June 2013. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, including: The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Walker Art Center; Center Pompidou, Paris; and the Milano Triennale. She graduated from the School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Buenos Aires in 1967 and did Post Graduate Studies at the Centre de Recherche d'Urbanisme and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Vi Section, Paris, France from 1967-1969.