Andrea Simitch & Val Warke Lecture

Beyond the Language of Architecture

Andrea Simitch is a Professor in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University, where she currently serves as Department Chair. She is a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow awarded for, in addition to being a successful researcher, a sustained record of commitment to the teaching and mentoring of undergraduate students and to undergraduate education.  She teaches courses in architectural design, architectural representation, and furniture design. She served as Director of the Bachelor of Architecture program from 2011–14, as Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2007–08, and as Associate Dean of AAP from 2002–03. She has been a panelist on the New York State Council on the Arts, a department representative for the Cornell Council for the Arts, and was a faculty collaborator with the Andrew Goldsworthy workshop at Storm King. She and Val Warke partner in a collaborative architectural practice that engages multiple scales and programs, and recent projects include the Seneca House – recently published in Architectural Record – Nalati National Park Resort and the Eco-Tourism Strategic Planning Proposal, both for Nalati, China, as well as numerous design competitions that include the Arbedo Castione school in Ticino, Switzerland, the Center for Promotion of Science of the Republic of Serbia Competition, Benetton Competition "Designing in Teheran”, and the Stockholm City Library Competition. She has taught extensively for Cornell in numerous international venues that include Europe and Central and South America and is regularly invited to lecture and participate in diploma juries and symposia at peer institutions, most recently in Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Student work from her furniture design course has been exhibited at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. In 2015 she was a Fellow at the Baer Art Center in Hofsós Iceland. The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know, a book she co-authored with V. Warke and published by Rockport Publishers (June 2014) has been translated into six additional languages and has been included in ArchDaily’s 2018 “Best 116 Best Architecture Books for Architects and Students”. Simitch attended Occidental College in Los Angeles and l'Ecole Special d'Architecture in Paris, and received her B.Arch. from Cornell in 1979.

Val Warke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University whose teaching and research has been in the realms of architectural design, theory and criticism.  His specific focus has been on genre theory, including issues of fashion, formalism, populism, reception, and relations to literary theory, with a particular emphasis on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. He teaches courses in the areas of design (architectural and urban) and architectural theory. In addition to the Field of Architecture, he is also a member of the graduate field of Fabric Science and Apparel Design. In 2015, he was awarded a fellowship at the Baer Art Center in Hofsós, Iceland, where he produced a monograph entitled The Berserker's Tale. He has been published in a number of journals, including Assemblage, A+U, Cornell Journal of Architecture, Harvard Design Magazine, Scroope, and the Architectural Review. His writing have included numerous essays and texts on the work of Morphosis, including the book Morphosis [Phaidon], co-authored with Thom Mayne. He recently published The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know [Rockport], which was co-authored with Andrea Simitch; 100 Buildings; 1900-2000, a project produced by Eui-Sung Yi and the Now Institute at UCLA; and an essay in Unfinished: Ideas, Images, and Projects from the Spanish Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennial.  He practices design with Andrea Simitch, as a partner in Simitch + Warke Architecture, with projects varying from houses to resort complexes and regional design. Simitch + Warke has also teamed with Labics (Rome) in a number of competitions that include the Arbedo Castione school in Ticino, Switzerland, the Center for Promotion of Science of the Republic of Serbia, Benetton Competition "Designing in Teheran,” and Concorso di Progettazione per la Riqualificazione Urbanistica di Piazze della Repubblica/Nuovo Teatro in Varese, Italy. He received his B.Arch. degree from Cornell University and his M.Arch. from Harvard University.