san francisco CALIFORNIA

preston scott COHEN
Monday 14 February
7.00pm / Timken Lecture Hall at CCA
California College of the Arts
1111 8th Street
San Francisco CA 94107

cambridge MASSACHUSETTS

suckerPUNCH: describe your project

preston scott COHEN: the new library for datong city is inspired by the yungang grottoes, the masterpiece of early chinese buddhist cave art for which the city is known around the world. the grottoes are located at the southern foot of wuzhou mountain some 16 km west of datong. filled with carvings and buddha statues from the 5th and 6th centuries, they combine traditional chinese art forms with foreign influences. the new datong city library forms a roof landscape with openings that recall the carved spaces of the grottoes. though related to the wuzhou mountainside, its horizontal form identifies the library as a place that belongs to the contemporary world and to the people of this city in particular.

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2001

princeton architectural PRESS: preston scott COHEN combines the use of the most advanced digital modeling technologies with a fascination for 17th century descriptive geometry. he uses familiar forms distorted by oblique projections and similar devices to create complex designs that challenge our preconceptions about the nature of order in architecture. contested symmetries and other predicaments in architecture features cohen’s intricate abstract geometries and lucidly describes both the mechanics and the theory behind their application. a wealth of projects, including the widely acclaimed torus house, are represented through drawings, models, and computer-generated images.