Cooper Union Building - Essay Example

? An Analysis of Cooper Union building (2009) in a political light The new building of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, in Manhattan's East Village, is a brave and unique architectural achievement that cost $150 million and was designed by noted architect, Thom Mayne. The design is based on the structure of a cube, which is deconstructed in a creative manner to make it “slashed with a jagged hook-shaped gash.”1 The building is built around a “ 20-foot-wide grand staircase that ascends to a rooftop atrium.”2 The superstructure of the building has a total 1,75,000 square-feet area. As the Cooper Union Centre is dedicated to the promotion of science and art, this innovative building stands for the basic values of the institute by blending scientific architectural design experiment with a creative vision for future building designs. Most of the building is lit by natural sunlight and the “green roof” of this building has won it LEED Gold rating.3 The design of the building attains a political overtone primarily through assimilating the spirit of Peter Cooper, the founder of the institution, who aimed at promoting free access to all, to the arts, whereas appreciation of art still at large remains an upper class vocation and privilege. It was Slavoj Zizek who took the idea of political unconscious delineated by Frederic Jameson based on the theory of Marxism, and developed it to make it a useful tool in evolving a critique of architecture.4 Zizek observed that “there is a coded message in an architectural formal play, and the message delivered by a building often functions as the “return of the repressed” of the official ideology.”5 The premise in which such a conclusion is made is that of an “architectural ideology”, that is viewed as “systematically mediat(...) (ing) the extraction of the surplus value by the capitalist dynamics, at least since the advent of secular, capitalist modernity.”6 This surplus value of course has an underlying “aesthetic ideology” to justify it and it necessarily caters to the capitalist market economy.7 This essay envisages to look at architecture through the political prism, to establish the meaning of buildings in terms of the class and community functions that they tend to serve. This essay begins its argument in the realization that architecture is not at all an, “autonomous art” but one that exists in relation with a “complex web of social and political concerns.”8 In this attempt to find the political connotations of architecture, one has to take into account, many streams of thought as evolved by social critics and philosophers like Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel, Roland Barthes and so on. For example, while comparing imaginative and functionalist architecture and its progression through history, Adorno has pointed for the need of a modern aesthetics that addresses both the ends of the spectrum.9 This has to be understood in the backdrop of a market oriented architectural ideology. If the history of architecture is traced from a political angle, it can be seen that the entry of an affluent bourgeoisie reflected in architecture as “decline in craftmanship, enduring mediocrity, and the swindle of mechanical reproduction.”10 This resulted in “unmitigated kitsch” and later in an attempt to overcome this and address modern realities of capitalism, “monstrous, schematically rigid skyscrapers (began to) project out of a raging sea lacquered tin.”11 Bloch had called this trend in architectural design as non-humanely and “rendered uniform in the domineering form of the glass box.”12 Marxian analysis of architecture has taken this discourse one step further and shown how cultural artifacts, including buildings, serve to reinforce the hegemony of “commodity capitalism.”13 Hale has went on to explain this concept further citing Walter Benjamin and said that: A new architecture had evolved in iron and glass, which eroded the distinction between inside and outside space. This perfectly suited the status of the new “commodity fetish”, which relied on a similar break down between consumer and consumed.14 In order to resist this cultural hegemony of commodity capitalism in architecture, what is crucial according to these theorists is, the “creativity of the architect.”15 In such a context, it is observed that “when the liberating intentions of the designer “coincide with the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom”, a new anti-capitalist political consciousness in architecture can emerge.16 In other words, this is to replace “commodity fetishism” by user participation, where the workers are also not treated as mere “objects.”17 The Marxist critique specific to the field of architecture also has to be briefly discussed before this essay moves into the case of a particular building in question, namely, the Cooper Institute building. The well-defined thoughts on an alternative and critical architectural approach has been raised since the 1960s, initially by Manfredo Tafuri and the like and Tafuri pointed out that: Architectural project today could not escape this (cultural) hegemony, and would always end up colluding with the progress of the capitalist project, therefore the only the positive role for architecture that was opposed to this ideology was not in the world of practice but the realm of critique.18 Though putting critique above practice, Tafuri also made mention about the possibility of evolving an “alternative mode of practice” through this critique.19 As the debate on this progressed, the “theme of revolution” became a prominent topic in architecture, the result being an influx of new ideas and innovations.20 For example, the works of Christopher Alexander, which were based on direct user participation using the handbook of design patterns created by him.21 Such efforts led to “an architecture of often chaotic and somewhat over-complex forms.”22 The Cooper Institute building has many properties that make it an inheritor of the political legacy in architecture discussed above. The below given photograph of the building reveals the complexity and chaotic nature of the architectural design even to the eyes of a layman. The New York Times has described the design of this building as the end of “high-concept luxury towers” and observed that, “it is the kind of serious work that we don’t see enough of in New York: a bold architectural statement of genuine civic value. Its lively public spaces reaffirm that enlightenment comes from the free exchange of ideas, not just inward contemplation”.23 New York Times has also stated that this building “says as much about the city we’ve lost as it does about the future we are building.”24 The nearby glass luxury apartment tower is seen as a contrast to the openness and coarse beauty of this building that parades the strength of “raw concrete, steel I-beams, (and) metal screens”.25Before moving on to discuss the overt and covert political statements that this building makes, one has to be broadly aware of how a building appeals to the senses of humans and how they create meaning. Architecture is understood primarily as a tactile art work and the importance of being so can be related in the following words: Touch is the sensory mode which integrates our experiences of the world and of ourselves. Even visual perceptions are fused and integrated into the haaptic continuum of the self; my body remembers who I am and how I am located in the world.26 From a humanist point of view, hence, architecture has to address the fact that “the essential mental task of buildings is accommodation and integration.”27 When such an approach is adopted, “architecture does not make us inhabit worlds of mere fabrication and fantasy (and instead) it articulates the experience of our being-in-the-world and strengthens our sense of reality and self.”28 The Cooper Union building can be understood as carrying out a similar humanely and political function. This building has been hailed as “launching new directions in architecture thinking.”29 This building hosts the humanities, art and architecture departments of the institution. There is an art gallery arranged inside this building exclusively for architectural artifacts and also an auditorium for public gatherings. The idea that motivated this building, both for the institution authorities and the architect, has been the excellence of this institution as a centre of learning in arts, humanities and architecture.30 The architect company has stated that this building with its unique design, “aspires to manifest character, culture and vibrancy of both the 150-year old institution and of the city in which it was founded.”31 The inside of the building is designed in such a way as to facilitate inter-disciplinary dialogue between various departments.32 Right at the centre of the building is a vertical piazza that functions as a space for such dialogue.33 It is also explained by the designers that: 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.34 Visual transparency and accessibility to the public have two highlights of the building, thereby building a counter-hegemony dialogue with the users. The building was rebuilt on an existing plot rather than going for expansion, an act that is focused on sustainability and judicious development, fully aware of the value of conserving available urban open spaces for the people of a community. The design of the building is also important in that it replaces the “hermetic aura” of the existing main building of Cooper institution with a more user friendly space manipulation, thereby breaking down the “psychological barriers” that the users were feeling about the institute.35 It is also observed that “with a shimmering metal facade punctured by the swollen form of an atrium, the design bursts with communal energy.”36 It is as if the puncture that gives the structure its unique shape, is an inviting openness that denies the academic reclusiveness and calls for interaction and dynamic user participation. The construction reflects a power that is always ready to engage with its urban vibrancy. It also serves as a great contrasting figure to the old building of the institution, built with yellow bricks and a grave aura. The use of mechanical screens that open and close to regulate and save light, present a picture of constant action as compared to the closed and “bureaucratic” appearance of the old building.37 The puncture on the structure also provides a kind of transparency, that imparts a whole new ecstatic openness to the building. It is observed: Notion of a communal hive becomes explicit on the Third Avenue facade, where a large section is cut away to reveal a curved section of the interior atrium. A series of slender glass-enclosed walkways extend along the atrium's surface, where students will be seen crossing back and forth between the various labs and studios.38 This also acts as a “window into the school's emotional core”, something that will evoke fondness and a sense of satisfaction in each and every parent who passes by.39 In its totality, the architectural design of the building provides a new vision that encompasses the politics of user participation in a Marxian sense. It builds a new aesthetics as coarse as the mud-stained hands of a construction worker and always carries an image of its constructive stage within it, as a reminder of the human labor that went into it. It is a challenge before the “smooth spaces” that “confound or deterretorialize,” and thereby assert hegemony. 40 Thus 41 Cooper square serves as a symbol of political vibrancy in an era of smoothened up manipulation of the entire people's lives by the Empire. Bibliography Adorno, Theodor. W. Functionalism Today, In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, London, 1997. Bloch, Ernst, Formative Education, Engineering Form, Ornament, In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, London, 1997. Cooper Union, (Feb 22, 2009) Morphosis, http://morphopedia.com/projects/cooper-union Last Accessed Date 05 August 2013. Easterling, Keller, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and Its Political Masquarades, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2005. Fener, Edward A., and Farley, Marylin, Design Excellence: Building a Public Legacy, In Architecture: Celebrating the Past, Designing the Future, Visual Reference Publications, New York, 2008. Hale, J. Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory, London: Wiley-Academy, 2000. Lahiji, Nadir, The Political Unconscious of Architecture: Re-opening Jameson's Narrative, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Surrey, Introduction, 2011. Leach, Neil, (ed.) Rethinking Architecture, London: Routledge, 1997. Mutis, Silvia, (September 1, 2010) Must see new architectural wonders, Metrolic, http://www.metrolic.com/must-see-new-architectural-wonders-123926/ Last Accessed Date: 3rd August 2013. Ouroussoff, Nicolai (September 14, 2004) Cooper Union Engages the Neighbourhood, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/arts/design/14ouro.html?_r=0 Last Accessed Date: 3rd August 2013. Ouroussoff, Nicolai (June 4, 2009) The civic value of a bold statement, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/arts/design/05coop.html?_r=0 Last Accessed Date: 1st August 2013. Pasmallaa, Juhani, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, John Wiley & Sons, London, 2013. Read More