49 Bond Street

49 Bond Street

Originally built in 1830 as a Federal style residence, the structure had, by 1880, evolved into a mercantile loft building. In 2010 the building was converted into an urban villa with an attached apartment and two floors of workspace. The artist’s triplex loft is organized around an atrium that passes through the three floors of space, bringing daylight and visual connectivity to the interior reaches of the building. The atrium bridge, diagonally oriented across the vertical core space, connects the north and south terraces of the penthouse. The bridge derives its skewed geometry from a shift in the street grid that occurs at this location.

60 East 12th Street

60 East 12^th Street

This transformation of an existing 1950s post-war apartment house employed a wall system that would change the identity of the building and create a new architectural presence on Broadway, as well as upgrade the performance characteristics of the exterior envelope system. To facilitate the identity change while respecting the positions of the existing window openings, the redesign grouped windows together in horizontally oriented window surrounds. The angular corner was emphasized through a metal clad “tower” component.

Cooper Union Facade Restoration

Institute of Sustainable Design Events

The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design

Professor Bone was appointed founding Director of the Institute in the summer of 2009, advocating for the creation of this program in order to increase student, faculty and community exposure to the issues of sustainability. The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design seeks to assist Cooper Union in providing architects, engineers and artists with the cross-disciplinary knowledge and the practical skills that they will need to successfully meet the professional and personal challenges of creating a sustainable society. The Institute cooperates with the larger intellectual and civic community to increase social dialogue and develop architectural and engineering systems to address current issues of sustainability. The Institute has won numerous grants, supported independent research and organized and produced public programming and exhibitions related to environment and sustainability.

Landscapes of Extraction Exhibition

Landscapes of Extraction: The Collateral Damage of the Fossil Fuel Industries

As the first public exhibition mounted by the Institute, Landscapes of Extraction: The Collateral Damages of the Fossil Fuel Industries examined the fossil fuel industries’ unconventional, high-risk methods of extracting fuel sources. It is an approach that exists across the continent, from the northern forests of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and one that has resulted widespread environmental damage and dangerous levels of pollution. The exhibition featured the photography of J. Henry Fair, an internationally renowned photographer of environmental disasters and resource-extraction operations. His photographs exist between the beautiful and uncanny, the abstract and fact. Moreover, they inspire questions and provide certain truths into the subjects of the photography and efforts to silence environmental and political issues. The exhibition also included thirty original maps and diagrams produced by the Institute, documenting the extent of infrastructure and landscape impact associated with such industries as hydrofracking and mountain top removal.

Lessons from Modernism Exhibition

Lessons From Modernism:  Environmental design Considerations in Twentieth Century Architecture, 1925-1970

Lessons From Modernism, an exhibition at Cooper Union’s Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery from January 29 – March 23, 2013, examines selected works of architecture completed between 1925–70 through the lens of sustainability, analyzing the use of environmental strategies—long before they were commonly used in 21st Century buildings. Through an analysis of the influence of nature and the environment in architectural design, Lessons From Modernism provides new insights into works achieved by a diverse selection of architects, including Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Jean Prouvé and Oscar Niemeyer. The exhibition demonstrates how these architects integrated environmental concerns into their designs and explores the extent to which these practices have produced environmentally performative and distinctive architecture. The 25 examples shown in the exhibition were extensively researched and documented by a team of Cooper Union students, faculty and alumni. These buildings demonstrate the importance of the aesthetic of clarity and utility that characterizes 20th Century modern architecture. This aesthetic, or really, these values, inform the contemporary green building movement today.

Manhattan Penthouse

Lower Manhattan Penthouse

This three story domestic complex was built on top of an early 20^th Century office building. The project employs an organizational scheme set around three separated volumes, each providing spaces for different elements of the program; a private apartment, private working areas and shared common spaces. The architecture uses a material and construction vocabulary based on traditional rooftop mechanical enclosures. The project won the Chicago Athenaeum Prize for American Architecture in 2003.

Mesa Edge Malloy House

Mesa’s Edge

This home sits within the mesas of western Colorado along the North Fork of the Gunnison River. The site had previously existing homestead era ranch structures which were preserved, repurposed and incorporated into the design. The house derives its structural logic from typical regional pole barn structures; timber posts and trusses covered with a corrugated metal roof. The house consists of two main architectural systems, the timber super structure and independent volumes for enclosure. Those two systems partially interlock; the spaces left between set up key plan considerations and the programmatic elements of the interior. The house uses active and passive solar heating and passive cooling, and employs numerous green design considerations. The project received the Chicago Athenaeum Prize for Architecture in 2005.

One Prize Competition

One Prize Competition: New York Harbor, Enhancement of Estuary and Ecological Systems

Transforming the harbor and estuaries to meet the changing demands of the coming decades and offering a richer and more ecologically integrated urban environment will require planning approaches that employ various strategies and support interventions at multiple scales. Ecological enhancement should be incremental and opportunistic, allowing for the testing of ideas and the development of different localized landscapes. Site-specific project developments will allow for the verification of adaptability, efficiency and performance for each type of proposed ecological system improvements. The overall direction should be towards creating more articulated edge conditions, more diverse biological zones and improved habitats. Increased ecological complexity and the potential for biological systems to thrive can also provide the benefits of ecological servicing: storm surge protection, natural water filtration, stream flow stabilization and increased recreational, cultural and economic opportunities. This Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design team project was selected as one of the four winning projects in the One Prize Competition, 2011.

Palisades Glacier Mountain Hut

Palisades Glacier Mountain Hut

The proposed Glacier Mountain Hut is a modular prototype for wilderness huts in the National Park System. The scheme uses pre-fabricated sleeping units that can be transported to remote sites by helicopter or truck. The structure is raised above the ground to create protected outdoor areas and minimize the footprint on the natural features. The proposal incorporates photovoltaic electric systems, rainwater and snowmelt collection and passive cooling through natural ventilation strategies.

Waterfront

The New York Waterfront Studies

Conducted over several years, these studies focused on the New York City’s port, harbor and estuary systems. Students, working with the New York City Municipal Archives, developed a program to review, catalog and research the records of the former Department Docks. This effort generated a knowledge base pertaining to the historic and contemporary architecture of the waterfront and the urban and ecological evolution of the estuary at a critical time of rapid waterfront transformation. The result of these efforts was made public in an exhibition on the New York City Waterfront, held at The Cooper Union in the winter of 1994. Professor Bone also served as the editor and contributing author to the publication of The New York Waterfront, Evolution and Building Culture of the Port and Harbor (The Monacelli Press 1997).

Waterworks

The New York City Water Supply System

This research (1993 to 2005) focused on the resources and infrastructure of the city’s water supply system. Professor Bone directed a seven-year program, between The Cooper Union and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, to study the archival holdings of those agencies that designed and built the monumental water supply system. An exhibition on the New York City Waterworks was held in 2001 at Cooper Union. For the following two years, Cooper Union worked the city on its vast archival holdings, directing initiatives to preserve, database and store the several hundred thousand drawings, photographs and artifacts. Professor Bone served as the primary editor and contributing author to the publication of Water-Works, The Architecture and Engineering of the New York City Water Supply (Monacelli Press, 2006).