New Academic Building, Cooper Union

The conceptual spatial diagram of the central atrium that forms the backbone of the New Academic Building's circulation and social life.

Project Details

• Project Name: New Academic Building for the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Location: New York, USA
• Client: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Architect: Morphosis
  • Thom Mayne, Principal / Design Director
  • Silvia Kuhle, Project Manager
  • Pavel Getov, Project Architect
• Project Designers: Chandler Ahrens, Jean Oei
• Associate Architect: Gruzen Samton, LLP
  • Peter Samton, Principal
• Site Area: 18,000 square feet
• Project Size: 180,000 gross square feet
• Projected completion: 2008

Program

Public amenities including an exhibition gallery, 200-seat auditorium, lounge and multi purpose space, Shell retail space along Third Avenue, 15,000 sq.ft.of classrooms (approximate), 40,000 sf of laboratories (approximate), 10,000 sf of Art Teaching Studios and workspaces, 12,000 sf of institution and student activity spaces (approximate), 15,000 sf of administrative and faculty offices (approximate), 4,000 sf of centralized computer center (approximate).

The Building

The new academic facility is conceived as a 'stacked vertical piazza', contained within a semi-transparent envelope that articulates the classroom, laboratory and art studio spaces. The vertical campus is organized around a central atrium that rises to the full height of the building. This connective volume, spanned by sky bridges, opens up view corridors across Third Avenue to the Foundation Building.

A montage of the new building within its context, as seen from Third Avenue with the Foundation Building towards the left.

The interior space configuration encourages interconnection between the school's Engineering, Art and Architecture departments. All institutional amenities - including meeting rooms, social spaces, seminar rooms, wireless hubs and computer drop-in centers - are located in the fourth and eighth storey sky lobbies that surround the atrium. The skip-stop elevator system makes trips exclusively to the fourth and seventh floors, drawing occupants to use, and congregate on, the grand stair; in practice, 50% of people will use the stairs as their sole means of circulation. These key social spaces for students, faculty, and visitors become the places where education informally takes place.

Cross-section of the building [50 KB image - opens in pop-up window]

The building's physical and visual permeability helps integrate the college into its neighborhood.  At street level, the transparent facade invites the neighborhood to observe and to take part in the intensity of activity contained within.  Many of the public functions (including retail space and a lobby exhibition gallery) are located at ground level, and a second gallery and a 200-seat auditorium are easily accessible from the street.

The open, accessible building would be exemplary as sustainable, energy-efficient architecture. A steel-and-glass skin improves the building's performance through control of daylight, energy use, and selective natural ventilation. The double skin system allows for heightened performance and dynamic composition on several levels: the operable panels create a continually moving pattern, provide surface variety on the facade, reduce the influx of heat radiation during the summer, and give users control over their interior environment and views to the outside.

View inside the central atrium, looking down from the upper levels into the cavernous interior space spanned by sky-bridges.

Credits

• Text and Photographs: Courtesy, the architect
• Compiled by Suprio Bhattacharjee