Vertical Urban Art Campus Connects Students
Written by Lynn DeRocco
Check out the radical new campus of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in NYC. “41 Cooper Square” is an extremely creative edifice with a boring name. I would have gone with “Hulk Smash.” Its nine stories look like they were crushed by a galactic fist, crumpling on one side into a grimacing bulk.
Nonetheless, it’s nothing short of awesome, and if I were smart or artistic enough to be one of the Lower Manhattan institution’s architecture, engineering or art students, I believe it would inspire me to want to create spectacular things.
Completed just a few months ago to the tune of $11.6 million by Morphosis Architects, this M.C. Escher-esque campus is described as “a stacked vertical piazza, organized around a central atrium to encourage social exchange.” Whereas my alma mater had a traditional campus with old buildings and quiet, grassy places to lounge and study, Cooper Union now has “an undulating lattice” flanking a 20-foot-wide staircase, sky bridges to connect the different areas, and a student lounge with views of the Big Apple.
I’d be remiss to leave out that the design elements and layout are meant to foster communing and the exchange of ideas. It was very important to the school that the completed project lived up to that ideal, as well as force students to walk. Yes, express elevators that don’t connect all the floors and platforms to walk across were intentional so that the budding creatives of the future have to coalesce throughout the school day.
Connecting to the city in which the school resides was also paramount. “Visual transparencies and accessible public spaces connect the institution to the physical, social and cultural fabric of its urban context,” says Morphosis. “At street level, the transparent facade invites the neighborhood to observe and to take part in the intensity of activity contained within.”
This principled project also lends itself well to the green movement. The exterior is made up of a glass and aluminum wall surrounded by perforated stainless steel, which the company says deflects heat in summer and insulates in winter. They’ve implemented great use of natural light, a “green roof” that enables collected water to be reused, a cogeneration plant, and other features, which make the building 40 percent more energy-efficient than a similar one, if there were such a thing.
To the academics of the present, architects, engineers, and artists of the future: Learn well from this functional art so that you, too, may go forth and produce neat things for us to enjoy.
Photo Credit: Architectural Records
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