Looking at the "Mayne Death Star"

Alexandra Lange discusses Cooper Union's new academic building in The New Design Observer.

I never thought I would say this about a work by Thom Mayne of Morphosis, but I think 41 Cooper Square is too small. Cooper Union’s new, sustainable academic building on Third Avenue is nine stories, 175,000 square feet, takes up an entire city block, and yet, with all the other wonderful and terrible architecture happening on the Bowery and its side streets (the Cooper Square Hotel’s tower version of Frank Gehry’s IAC Building, Herzog and de Meuron’s disco-visionary 40 Bond, Foster + Partners’ Sperone Westwater Gallery) it blends right in. All the photographs I had seen, most taken from the air, made it look like another Mayne Death Star, a chunk of some intergalactic space ship deposited here for repairs (there is that nasty cut across the front).

Another observation: "At the sidewalk 41 Cooper Square might as well be set in the middle of a parking lot in Mayne’s native L.A."

And in the end...she said the building leaves her "just curiously bored."

Gleaming the Coop

Curbed has noted some of the shenanigans occurring on the ramp outside Cooper Union's new academic building... got a chance to see some tomfoolery myself Friday night... About five or six teen skateboarders were enjoying the new makeshift park...






This went on for a good five minutes. Right when someone watching remarked, "I can't believe security hasn't said anything," a lone security guard brandishing a walkie talkie appeared... one of the skateboarders yelled "go, go, go" to his friends, who took off and hung a left on Sixth Street.

What's doing in Texas?: Dallas getting a Cooper Square academic building lookalike

Thom Mayne, head of the renowned Morphosis architectural office in Santa Monica, Calif., is designing the new the Perot Museum of Nature and Science north of downtown Dallas. And it may look familiar to those of us hereabouts. As Metropolis notes:

[I]t’s safe to say that the Perot Museum bears resemblance to another recently completed Morphosis project: 41 Cooper Square, located in New York’s East Village. That structure, also a distorted cube, also featuring a large central atrium, was praised by critics when it opened earlier this year, and has generally received a warm welcome by New Yorkers. Moreover, the Cooper Union building, as an academic facility that engages with its architectural neighbors and encourages street-level interaction, has been heralded as a civic achievement in a neighborhood that has been the site of particular contentiousness in its recent history.

Related:
Cooper Union Building is East Village's Newest Thrill Ride! (Curbed)

Does the new Cooper Union building have a renter? (Plus, food cart!)

The "store for rent" signs are gone from in front of the new Cooper Union buidling...and the windows along Cooper Square have been papered over...so, has a retail client been secured for this spot? What could it be?



The first "for rent" ads stipulated "non cooking food." Which leaves open the possibility of FroYo. You don't cook that, right? Just pour it out of a bag?

Speaking of food!

The (Penn Station) eagle has landed

Nice preservation piece in the City Room on one of the old Penn Station eagles. Its new perch: The eighth floor at the new Cooper Union building.


[Photo by Claire Michie]

Flashback: When the Christodora House became a Greek house

Jill's post yesterday on the 12th Street NYU frathouse reminded me of a post I did almost one year ago to date...Here it is again...from Sept. 9, 2008...

[Photos by Charlie Kerman]

In 1983, when the Christodora House on Avenue B was still abandoned, members of the Tau Delta Phi, Delta Eta Chapter at Cooper Union, placed their Greek letters on the west side atop the 17-floor building. Don't have a lot of details, such as how long the letters remained there. Long enough for a photo opp, of course. Photos of the letters crew are below. (Note the condition of the Christodora...)

Collecting butts at the Cooper Union Building

We never thought much about this. However! You spend, say, $950 trillion on a new building. How will you go about collecting the butts from smoker's out front? Given the 23rd-century space-aged look of the new building, no regular old ashtray contraption will work... These seem a little pedestrian, but serviceable...




Previously.

Walking alongside the new Cooper Union building

Hey now. The sidewalks are open alongside the new Cooper Union building.




And I hope the security guard working at the CU is feeling better today.

Why Cooper Union can thank the Chrysler Building for some of its good fortune

Interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal today on how Cooper Union has sidestepped the economic crisis while other college endowments suffer.

Cooper's most valuable asset is a gift from Peter Cooper's family -- the land under the Chrysler Building. With 1,000 students and a $57 million budget, Cooper currently receives $7 million annually in ground rent from the iconic Art Deco skyscraper. And under an unusual arrangement with roots in the school's original charter, the holder of the Chrysler lease is assessed city real-estate taxes -- but that money, currently $12 million annually, goes to the school. Over the decades, New York City has challenged the arrangement, but Cooper has prevailed in court.

Cooper Union still looking for a store (plus, we communicate with the building)

Previously.

Oh, and don't forget! You can watch the building live via its, uh, Live Web cam!





And now, please let me concentrate: I must communicate with the building.

"Some great art was produced in those self-indulgent times"

The Times checks in with a review of the new Cooper Union academic building on Seventh Street and Cooper Squuare... and they like it.

To the review!

We’ll have to wait to find out exactly what the end of the Age of Excess means for architecture in New York. Yes, the glut of high-concept luxury towers was wearisome. But some great civic works were also commissioned in that era. And given the hard economic times, they may be the last we see for quite some time.

The new academic building at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is yet more proof that some great art was produced in those self-indulgent times.

And!

The building occupies a contentious site at Cooper Square, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, in the East Village. The area has experienced a particularly painful process of gentrification in the past decade. First, generic glass boxes began popping up along the Bowery. Then CBGB closed. For me the final straw was the opening in 2005 of Gwathmey Siegel’s undulating glass luxury apartment tower at Astor Place, a vulgar knockoff of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt Glass Skyscraper project and a symbol of the era’s me-first mentality.

And!

Yet the more you look at the building, the more it looks right at home in its surroundings. From certain angles the facade’s concave form seems to exert a magnetic pull, as if it were trying to embrace the neighborhood in front of it. The curve of the corner, which lifts up to invite people inside the lobby, has an unexpected softness. Even the bulky exterior mirrors the proportions of the Foundation building — a friendly nod to its older neighbor.

Moving into the Coop

A few weeks back in The Villager, Scoopy reported that school officials planned to move into Cooper Union's new academic building at 41 Cooper Square by the summer. (The ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new building is Sept. 15.) Well, this seemed awfully ambitious to me. However, sure enough, over the weekend... the moving trucks lined up....




Meanwhile! The scaffolding is gone from in front of the new building! The graffiti! No!




By the way, what's there now looks a little different from the original rendering...

Is the wrecking ball in store for the Cooper Union Engineering Building?

In this week's issue of The Villager (not yet online), Scoopy addresses the hot neighborhood rumor: Will the Cooper Union Engineering Building on Astor Place be demolished, like, really soon? The Starbucks there is gone, of course. Continental owner Trigger told Scoopy that he heard the building was coming down next month. (By the way, Trigger said that he favors a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's coming to the space...Not sure if he was serious.) Edward J. Minskoff Equities has the long-term lease on the building. Minskoff CFO Ben McGrath told Scoopy: "We are not commencing demolition next month -- that's a certainty. Cooper Union is still in the building. ... Obviously, the economy has an impact on the decision, but we're still wrestling what to do and when to do it."

Scoopy also mentions that the school will have moved into Cooper Union's new academic building at 41 Cooper Square by the summer. The ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new building is Sept. 15."

Dumpsters of the day

Outisde Cooper Union.

Retail space available at Cooper Union (plus: watching the construction from day one)

Despite having been following the new Cooper Union project, I didn't realize there was going to be retail space in the building at Cooper Square between Seventh Street and Sixth Street — 3,000-square feet of it.



"Non cooking food?" Uh, how about FroYo? You don't really have to cook that. Just take it out of the bag and throw it in a machine. Then charge $6 for a three-ounce cup!

By the way, have you been watching the construction at the new Cooper Union building via its LIVE Web cam? You can go all the way back to 2003 and watch it all over again...



How depressing.

Commie controversy at Cooper U!

From the City Room:

After complaints to the city Buildings Department, and concern from the Urkainian community in the East Village, Cooper Union removed a giant banner with a reproduction of a Picasso drawing of Joseph Stalin. That decision has outraged Lene Berg, the 43-year-old Norwegian artist who included the banner as part of her one-woman art installation, “Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache,” in the school’s historic Foundation Building, on East Seventh Street.

“I didn’t get any explanation of what happened,” Ms. Berg, who is based in Berlin, said in a phone interview this week. She said Cooper Union officials removed the banner last Friday, five days after it went up, without consulting either her or Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union’s School of Art and the curator of the exhibition.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Red Square has Lenin; Cooper Union now has Stalin

Blinded by the site

(Photo taken last Friday...in case you were wondering...)

Red Square has Lenin; Cooper Union now has Stalin

City Room explains.

When the Christodora House became a Greek house

[Photos by Charlie Kerman]

In 1983, when the Christodora House on Avenue B was still abandoned, members of the Tau Delta Phi, Delta Eta Chapter at Cooper Union, placed their Greek letters on the west side atop the 17-floor building. Don't have a lot of details, such as how long the letters remained there. Long enough for a photo opp, of course. Photos of the letters crew are below. (Note the condition of the Christodora...)

Dumpster of the day

At Cooper Union.