new cooper union building, originally uploaded by Sam 森崩
I’ve talked about Cooper Union’s Architect Trading Cards in the past, but the above timelapse of 41 Cooper Square by Morphosis in the past, so this timelapse is very revealing to me: the building is fairly standardized (repeating floor plates) but idiosyncratic base columns and what can only be described as a rain-screen skirt.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t internal gymnastics going on – there is as this flickr set illustrates.
What I find interesting is that this building shows a real design maturity from Thom Mayne which previous designs lacked. There is a real balance of form, function and economy which earlier work lacked; for example the International Elementary School has many layers of form which diagrammatically might be useful, fail to find resolution. That isn’t a critique of the previous designs, but rather my surprise regarding how rational the underlying building is and how restrained the overall composition of the building is compared to previous work.
- Cooper Union’s Architect Trading Cards
- For more about Morphosis, check out Morphopedia
- Morphopedia – 41 Cooper Square