Ugh

I was just looking for Sam Waterston’s reading of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech. What I found was a picture of the Cooper Union’s new academic building.

Architects these days. There are images of the interiors which are even more disturbing. This is an environment expected to be conducive to learning? I’m dizzy just looking at the pictures.

At least it seems to fit into the block. Thank God that [t]he zoning envelope proscribes the kind of exuberant challenge to the grid that the institutional personality of Cooper Union would seem to demand. The best thing I can say about the building is that it looks like it has the potential to engage the street. Why, I wonder, did the architect not echo the exterior of the Cooper Union if his whimsy was forced inward by the zoning code? Is it too much to ask for right angles?

2 Comments

  1. This is really a stupid building! Feels like you are in an insect hive, or about to be caught in a spider web.
    I don’t think I would blame the architect’s so much, but who were the idiots who hired him and approved the design??
    if nothing else, it seems a bad use of available space. Poor students!

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