Morphosis-ing? Morphosis-izing? Morphing.

Last week I finally got to sink my teeth into a project that's been sitting on the periphery of my workload for weeks, shoved to the side by the almighty Harlem. I was worried the project was going to get passed off to someone else in the meantime. But alas, a couple days freed up and I got to indulge.

Morphosis architects in Los Angeles have been designing a new school for Cooper Union in the East Village. We are the landscape architects on the project and are doing a roofscape - mostly a narrow 160' long bed of eight types of mass planted grasses and strips of crushed glass, running underneath a series of columns, directing occupants vision towards the skyline of downtown Manhattan. Everything in between the project site and downtown is low built form due to a giant slab of bedrock that could never be heavily built upon, therefore affording a fantastic view corridor. I wish I could post photos of the project renderings, but that might get me in trouble. Here is one I grabbed from Arcspace. Way not as cool, but will give you an idea of the project:

The greatest asset of the site is that all four sides have free, unencumbered facades, leaving the architects with tremendous freedom. Very seldom is a new building constructed in New York City with more than 2 free facades.

I wanted to experience this project, even if only briefly, because Thom Mayne of Morphosis is our next speaker in the Omaha design speaker series I've blogged about previously. I'm looking forward to attending dinner with him on that occasion, and knowing this project gives me something with which to connect. I also wanted to experience this project because of the uniqueness of Cooper Union as an institution, as well as their position as vast property owner in Manhattan. They now own the Chrysler Building as part of their endowment. However, the school is most well known as one of the few American institutions of higher learning to offer a full-tuition scholarship to all admitted students.

The Cooper Union was founded by American industrialist Peter Cooper, who had less than a year of formal schooling but went on to become an industrialist and an inventor; designing and building America's first steam railroad engine. Originally intended to be called simply "the Union," the Cooper Union began with adult night classes on applied sciences and architectural drawing, as well as day classes for women on the subjects of photography, telegraphy, typewriting and shorthand; types of education not widely available to women in the late-1800's, at what was called the Female School of Design. Those free classes—a landmark in American history and the prototype for what is now called continuing education—have evolved into three distinguished schools that make up The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. The Cooper Union is also where the Red Cross and NAACP were organized and where Susan B. Anthony had her offices. How cool.

Peter Cooper's dream was to give talented young people the one privilege he lacked—a good education. He also wanted to make possible the development of talent that otherwise would have gone undiscovered. Considering this history, I feel fortunate to spend even a couple days, in a relatively indirect way, in hopefully what is a reciprocation of gratitude and good will.