Sunday, February 15, 2009

Cooper Union Builds (a New Building & its Status)

Cooper Union New Logo
The Cooper Union embarked on the construction of a New Academic Building in 2004, and the building (scheduled for completion last week) will most likely be opened in time for classes in the 2009 Fall semester. Located on Third Avenue between 6-7th Sts, the 8 floor building will actually be 20% smaller than the current Engineering Building, located a block away and scheduled to be torn down and leased to a developer. It will have spaces for students from all of the schools at Cooper (Art, Architecture, and Engineering) as well as being New York City's first "green" academic building. It will surpass Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC's challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by possibly obtaining LEED Platinum status, a measure of a building's environmental friendliness. The building, originally estimated to cost $94 million initially, is now expected to cost $157.9 million (school paper). However, this cost is expected to increase, as the way some of the concrete floors were poured resulted in a slanted floor.
>>>A Daily Dose of Architecture has some shots from January 2009.

In addition, last week The New York Times published a story regarding Cooper's large increase in early decision applications this year - 70% - a huge jump from increases of 5-10% annually. As one of the nation's most competitive colleges, with an acceptance rate of roughly 8%, it is also one of the few colleges that provide all students with a full-tuition scholarship. With the prices of attending both private and public universities increasing, this college is especially attractive in today's slowing economy, and its Board of Directors has even recently voted to not raise the prices of mandatory student "lab" fees for the 2009 Fall Semester.

Also, the Cooper Union recently unveiled their new logo (as seen above) as part of their rebranding campaign which also celebrates its 150th Anniversary. The logo can be explained by an interview with its designer here.

Published Post Number: 106/112

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