New Ideas CityHello Museum

Building a Model of Education

Cover Image:

Foundation Building model opened and extended in Union Square Park, New York, 2014

Part of the Street Program

During the 2014 fall semester, the first-year architecture studio measured, drew, and built a model of the Foundation Building of the Cooper Union. On December 7, 2014, the model was taken out into New York City to engage the public and other key civic monuments in a series of duets. The journey was a social poetic act of architecture—involving a question of ethics and imagination, of quite literally caring for the “model” of the Cooper Union—that made visible the long, deep bonds between the institution and the public. These are bonds that require creative acts and constant work to maintain.