Daphne Binder AR’11

Running for: Council

Campaign Statement

I am thrilled to submit my candidacy for the Cooper Union Alumni Association as an alumna of the Irwin
S. Chanin School of Architecture (AR’11). Cooper Union remains one of the most unique education institutions in the world. It has the ability to bring together a diverse student body, faculty and staff to study and create through a curriculum that is simultaneously forward thinking and steeped with history and tradition.

I am motivated to run for the CUAA Council by the sense of social responsibility that Cooper and the architecture profession has enforced in me. As a member, I intend to utilize the enterprising and bootstrapping skills I draw on as a business owner. During my time as a student and after, I took great pride in representing the school on guided tours, open houses, college fairs and alumni and donor events, and I will continue to assist Cooper in its various outreach efforts. As a council member, I intend to devote my time and energy to supporting the school’s steps towards a sustainable future of academic excellence, a future in which it can continue to transform and adjust in response to, and as a leader of, the changing needs of its student, alumni, and global communities.

Biography

Daphne Binder is a registered architect and co-founder of Space ODT, an architecture and urban design
firm based in NYC. The firm’s recently completed project, Howl! Arts/Howl! Archive (HA/HA) gallery, is a
7,000 square foot headquarters for the art organization in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and is the companion space to Howl’s first gallery, designed by Space ODT in 2015. Current projects include,
among others, the New York Headache Center, a doctor’s office and clinic on the Upper East Side. Space ODT is a member of Design Advocates, an advocacy group that came together to address the challenges of the Covid-19 Pandemic through design, and Daphne is a recipient of the AIA NYS 2021 Presidential Citation for her volunteer work on the AIA’s Emergency Task Force.

Before founding Space ODT, Daphne had practiced with various firms in New York and Boston with a
focus on national and international institutional and commercial work. Her thesis at The Cooper Union
(BArch 11’), for which she was awarded the Benjamin Menschel Traveling Fellowship, was the
springboard to a multi-year research project that culminated in the recently published book chapter Minus 400 and Over 40 Degrees: Architecture in the Dead Sea 1948-1971, with Theodore Kofman (Intellect Bristol,UK, ‘20). Daphne is also a graduate of Yale University School of Architecture where she graduated with honors from the Masters of Architecture program.

Daphne has received multiple awards in recognition of her academic work, including the Irma Giustino
Weiss Prize for Creative Achievement for her thesis “Circumnavigating the Dead Sea”, the AIA Henry
Adams Medal, The Alpha Rho Chi Medal and the Lotos Foundation Prize in Arts and Sciences. Daphne
has taught at Northeastern University and the Cooper Union Summer Program, and is currently teaching
at Pratt Institute.