Madison Cook

Madison Cook is building a career devoted to contemporary pedagogical practice.  As a Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture, she is committed to the foundational education of architects, interior designers, industrial designers, and landscape architects.  This commitment manifests through experiential, studio-based learning focused on drawing and making.  She encourages her students to learn by doing (and doing again). 

Madison’s teaching responsibilities at Virginia Tech include a First-Year Foundation Design Laboratory, Summer Transfer Laboratory, Fifth-Year Thesis Design Laboratory (for which she serves as a co-coordinator), and Professional Practice (a NAAB required course).  She makes space for individual student experiments through a constellation of independent studies and research projects.  Madison’s active presence within Cowgill Hall includes her work as a constructive critic and juror of student projects.  She is typically invited to 17 internal “reviews” each academic semester.

Her “research” (which she resists untangling from her pedagogical practice) is concerned with the two-dimensional and three-dimensional representation of light and shadow.  This research is rooted in curiosities about historical time-measurement instruments ranging in scale from the portable or pocket-sized to the monumental.  These curiosities about light and shadow were initially sparked at Steven Holl’s T-Space Foundation in Rhinebeck, New York where she was a Cosmic Dust Resident.

Through collaboration and by way of meaningful mentorship, she’s had the privilege of engaging with and constructing a broad set of educational experiences for architecture students.  These include co-curating the Foundation Lecture Series which invites internationally acclaimed artists, musicians, and designers to visit and connect with beginning design students in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Each year, Madison leads cohorts of upper-year students to significant architectural sites across Europe as a part of Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture Fall Travel Program.  Madison also mentors communities of students both informally and formally through the Women in Architecture and Design student organization which she co-founded at Virginia Tech with Professor Jessica Hernandez in the fall of 2023.

Madison graduated with a master's and bachelor's degree in architecture from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.  She has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture since the fall of 2022.