Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) has announced a substantial gift that will enable it to sustain its New York City satellite program in perpetuity. The benefactors are the Genslers, a multigenerational clan of architects and proud Cornellians.
The $10 million gift, bestowed to the school by Brooklyn-born M. Arthur “Art” Gensler (B. Arch ’58), founder of the eponymous global design and architecture firm established in 1965 in San Francisco, and the greater Gensler family, will see AAP’s Big Apple outpost be formally renamed from AAP NYC to the Gensler Family AAP NYC Center.
Operating 200 miles away from Cornell’s main campus in Ithaca, New York, the AAP NYC program was first established in 2006 as a “shared vision” between Gensler and former AAP dean Mohsen Mostafavi (2004-2007) according to a news story published in the Cornell Chronicle and provided to AN. Benefitting from “the city’s unique resources and from AAP’s extensive alumni network of noted professionals, who frequently teach and serve as guest critics and mentors,” the program was subsequently expanded by Mostafavi’s two-term successor, Kent Kleinman (2008-18).
Under Kleinman’s deanship, the program moved into its current home on the 20th floor of the historic Standard Oil building at 26 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The Gensler-designed space includes studios, classrooms, a gallery, and a large multi-use room for lectures and events. Roughly 100 to 120 students attend AAP NYC each year.
Including a $9 million endowment and $1 million for current-use funds, the Gensler Family gift will support programming and personnel within the tri-departmental program, which the university describes as initially being a remote-campus pilot program that has since grown into an “essential component of AAP’s academic offerings, strengthening student recruitment by complementing the traditional Ithaca-centered experience with an immersive semester in the urban environment of New York City.”
“Art Gensler’s commitment to the college and the architecture profession, like the man himself, is larger than life,” said the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP, J. Meejin Yoon, in a statement. “His vision for the discipline and the field has been and continues to be radically inclusive, expansive and open. He is a constant reminder that the built environment not only embodies values but creates value—value to communities, cities and society.”
Yoon, who herself is a Cornell grad (B.Arch ’95), added: “The Gensler Family gift is an unparalleled endowment for our college and promises to expand the opportunities afforded AAP students, grounding their education in experiences that enable them to make a deep and lasting impact on the world.”
Currently, the AAP NYC program is open to students pursuing their bachelor of fine arts, bachelor of architecture, master of regional planning, or master of landscape architecture. It is a compulsory element for students enrolled in the professional master of architecture and post-professional master of science in advanced architectural design programs. Alongside the Rome program, it is one of two AAP off-campus programs and one of numerous New York City-based satellite programs offered by Cornell in addition the university’s trio of dedicated NYC campuses: Cornell Tech, Weill Cornell Medicine, and the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
“When I graduated from Cornell in 1958, I knew I had received a wonderful architectural education. I certainly couldn’t have imagined then how meaningful and important it would be to expand the educational offering to include off-campus programs,” said Art Gensler, who is an emeritus member of AAP’s advisory council and has long lent philanthropic support to the college, in a statement. “After attending the opening of AAP’s Rome program, I was inspired by the unique experiences that program offered students and began to work with the dean to develop the AAP NYC program to provide similar unique experiences to future AAP students. These two programs have become key parts of any Cornell AAP educational experience.”
Douglas Gensler, son of Art Gensler, is also an AAP alumnus (B.Arch ’91) as are multiple Gensler grandchildren. The elder Gensler stepped down from his role as chairman of his namesake firm in 2010.
On the same day AAP unveiled its new endowment, another major private New York university, The New School, announced it had received two grants—one for $500 million and the other for $500,000—from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that together “will strengthen vital scholarly skills in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences, advance equity and inclusion in our faculty ranks, and further our commitments to scholarship and public discourse on the significance of art as an instrument for political engagement” said Dwight A. McBride, president of The New School, in a statement.
