41 Cooper Square New York Lab Building, NYC Higher Education Project News, USA Design Images

41 Cooper Square New York

Manhattan Academic Laboratory Building, NYC design by Morphosis architects, USA

Jul 5 + 3, 2016

41 Cooper Square Building

Design: Morphosis

Building images from 24 Jun – 2 Jul 2016 © Adrian Welch:

41 Cooper Square

Design: Morphosis Architects

New photos added Nov 19, 2013:

photo by Ryan Witte courtesy of Sciame Construction

photos by Ryan Witte courtesy of Sciame Construction

THE COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART OPENS 41 COOPER SQUARE, NYC’S FIRST GREEN ACADEMIC LABORATORY BUILDING

NEW YORK-September 15, 2009-George Campbell Jr., President of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and Ronald Drucker, Chairman of the Board of Trustees today welcomed officials, trustees, donors, students, faculty and alumni to the official ribbon cutting for 41 Cooper Square, the college’s dramatic, new sustainable academic building.

The ribbon cutting ceremony marks a defining moment in Cooper Union’s rich 150 year history, underscoring the college’s commitment to academic excellence and its enduring tradition of granting full-tuition scholarships to all students. The distinctive building on Third Avenue between East 6th and 7th Streets will be New York City’s first LEED certified academic laboratory building.

41 Cooper Square

Architect’s Statement by Thom Mayne of Morphosis

41 Cooper Square, the new academic building for The Cooper Union, aspires to manifest the character, culture and vibrancy of both the 150 year-old institution and of the city in which it was founded. The institution remains committed to Peter Cooper’s radically optimistic intention to provide an education “as free as water and air” and has subsequently grown to become a renowned intellectual and cultural center for the City of New York. 41 Cooper Square aspires to reflect the institution’s stated goal to create an iconic building – one that reflects its values and aspirations as a center for advanced and innovative education in Art, Architecture and Engineering.

Internally, the building is conceived as a vehicle to foster collaboration and cross-disciplinary dialogue among the college’s three schools, previously housed in separate buildings. A vertical piazza-the central space for informal social, intellectual and creative exchange-forms the heart of the new academic building. An undulating lattice envelopes a 20-foot wide grand stair which ascends four stories from the ground level through the sky-lit central atrium, which itself reaches to the full height of the building. This vertical piazza is the social heart of the building, providing a place for impromptu and planned meetings, student gatherings, lectures, and for the intellectual debate that defines the academic environment.

From the double-high entry lobby, the grand stair ascends four stories to terminate in a glazed double-high student lounge overlooking the city. On the fifth through ninth floors, sky lobbies and meeting places-including a student lounge, seminar rooms, lockers, and seating areas overlooking the cityscape-are organized around the central atrium. Sky bridges span the atrium to create connections between these informal spaces.

Further reinforcement of the strategy to create a vibrant intellectual space is provided by the “skip-stop” circulation strategy which allows for both increased physical activity and for more impromptu meeting opportunities. The primary skip-stop elevators, which make stops at the first, fifth and eighth floors, encourage occupants to use the grand stairs and sky bridges. Secondary elevators stop at each floor, both for ADA compliance and for the practical tasks of moving materials, artworks, and equipment.

In the spirit of the institution’s dedication to free, open and accessible education, the building itself is symbolically open to the city. Visual transparencies and accessible public spaces connect the institution to the physical, social and cultural fabric of its urban context. 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 – an exhibition gallery, board room and a two-hundred-seat auditorium – are easily accessible one level below grade.

The building reverberates with light, shadow and transparency via a high performance exterior double skin whose semi-transparent layer of perforated stainless steel wraps the building’s glazed envelope to provide critical interior environmental control, while also allowing for transparencies to reveal the creative activity occurring within. Responding to its urban context, the sculpted facade establishes a distinctive identity for Cooper Square. The building’s corner entry lifts up to draw people into the lobby in a deferential gesture towards the institution’s historic Foundation Building. The façade registers the iconic, curving profile of the central atrium as a glazed figure that appears to be carved out of the Third Avenue façade, connecting the creative and social heart of the building to the street.

Built to LEED Gold standards and likely to achieve a Platinum rating, 41 Cooper Square will be the first LEED-certified academic laboratory building in New York City. Advanced green building initiatives include:

An operable building skin made of perforated stainless steel panels offset from a glass and aluminum window wall. The panels reduce the impact of heat radiation during the summer and insulate interior spaces during the winter.

Radiant heating and cooling ceiling panels introduce innovative HVAC technology that will boost energy efficiency. This contributes to making the new building 40 percent more energy efficient than a standard building of its type.

A full-height atrium enables unique circulation for building occupants, improves the flow of air and provides increased interior day lighting.

Seventy-five percent of the building’s regularly occupied spaces are lit by natural daylight.

A green roof insulates the building, reduces city “heat island” effect, storm water runoff and pollutants; harvested water is reused.

A cogeneration plant provides additional power to the building, recovers waste heat and effectively cuts energy costs.

Flexible state-of-the-art laboratories, studios and classrooms are specifically designed to accommodate pedagogical objectives, as well as current and future research activities.

This aggregation of progressive green building initiatives combines with the building’s social spaces and urban connectivity to support Cooper Union in advancing its legacy of innovative ideas, cross-disciplinary knowledge, and creative practices well into the future.

41 Cooper Square – Building Information

Executive Architect:
Morphosis Architects

Project Manager: Silvia Kuhle
Project Architect: Pavel Getov
Project Designer: Chandler Ahrens, Natalia Traverso Caruana, Go-Woon Seo
Job Captain / Project Designer: Jean Oei
Project Team: Irena Bedenikovic, Salvador Hidalgo, Marcin Kurdziel,
Debbie Lin, Kristina Loock

Consultants:

Structural Engineer: Goldstein Associates, PLLC
Cost: Davis Langdon
Fire Engineer: Arup Fire
Performing Arts/Media: Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
Expeditor/Code: Berzak Schoen Consultants, Ltd
Lighting Designer: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, Inc
Acoustics Engineer: Newson Brown Acoustics, LLC

41 Cooper Square New York images / information from Morphosis

Morphosis

Location: 41 Cooper Square, New York City, USA

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