 |
 
|
09.15.2004
New York Newsday / "Plans for the new Cooper Union unveiled"
by Justin Davidson
09.14.2004
New York Times / "Cooper Union Engages the Neighborhood"
by Nicolai Ouroussoff
PLANS FOR THE NEW COOPER UNION UNVEILED
By Justin Davidson / Staff Writer
It takes only a stroll around Astor Place in early September, as NYU and the Cooper Union rev up the academic year, to notice that the East Village fashion sense consists of ever more strategic piercings, a deliberate confusion of outerwear and lingerie, and plenty of peekaboo. The tide may have turned toward demureness by the time the Cooper Union opens its new academic center in three years, but the boldly ravishing building will be flaunting plenty of skin beneath a gauzy swath of steel.
For the small block on the east side of Third Avenue between East Sixth and Seventh streets, Thom Mayne, the principal of the Los Angeles-based firm Morphosis, has designed a $120-million wrapped box that reveals glimpses of concrete, expanses of naked glass and the perpetual coursing of students inside the highly regarded school of architecture, art and engineering.
Rather than wear an armature of masonry or a sheer curtain of windows, the new Cooper Union will be clothed like a body in a translucent veil. A second skin of perforated steel panels will sheath the building, fluttering open and closed like a silk robe in a breeze. At one corner, a swatch of the outer layer pulls away from the structure as if plucked by an unseen hand.
The most dramatic gesture comes where the metal jacket falls away to reveal a transparent core reaching from the third floor to a great skylight. This is a building that shows as much as it hides, and Mayne lifts the solid structure off the street by a series of V-shaped struts, then slices the schoolhouse open, creating a glassy center visible from the street. Between the see-through lobby and the crystal-palace atrium, a curving grand staircase rises through the belly of the building, wide and long enough to accommodate a Broadway finale, an impromptu lecture or a flock of students lounging on the steps.
The labs and classrooms have yet to be worked out, but it's already clear how the students will use the space for seeing and being seen. It's as theatrical in its way as the Metropolitan Opera, even to the lofty vantage points it offers on those gliding from tier to tier. A series of luminous, translucent bridges slice through the upper levels of the atrium, connecting floors and acting as lanterns, broadcasting the ferment and traffic inside to the city beyond.
Mayne has literalized the notion of education as a way of learning to see below the surface. But transparency is an all-purpose architectural metaphor these days. Renzo Piano uses it in the New York Times tower, which announces the ideal of journalistic transparency and Santiago Calatrava proposes to have commuters emerge from the PATH tunnels to the streets of lower Manhattan through a glass cathedral.
What these projects have in common is the fusion of architecture and spectacle. The new Cooper Union aspires to be a star. It will have to compete for attention with another, taller, more luxuriant diva across Astor Place, an apartment building designed by Charles Gwathmey, with an amoeba-shaped plan and undulating walls.
Mayne has responded to Gwathmey's future waves with a restless, rippling high-gloss exterior. In the new Cooper Union, a computer will control the perforated steel panels over every window: As the sun swings around to a particular facade, the shiny louvers will batten down, letting in pinpoints of light that merge into a soft, pixilated glow. As more light is needed, the panels will automatically admit unfiltered sunshine.
Gwathmey's tower, under construction, will certainly be more appealing than the brutal boxes and glowering high-rises in this 19th-century neighborhood. The apartments are geared to the moneyed, but revenue from them will flow to the owner: Cooper Union. So the school's new building must contend with its own cash cow. For anyone wondering how a small school can afford to provide all students with full scholarships, the answer is real estate: Cooper Union owns the Chrysler Building, too.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
|
|
|
|
