1-2-1 Urban Field / Summer Design Workshop 2008

The 1-2-1 Urban Field  project was the product of a summer design workshop that set out to investigate the ideal of multiple architectural works woven together across an urban landscape. A typological classification was undertaken of ready made architectural fragments (remnants from previous studies) and a general catalogue established. Primary relationships and space/form compositional associations were laid out. Works were to operate in fields of non-specific boundaries. Where the limits of one individual architectural idea began and another ended was not defined, allowing for combinations of urban architectural interactions. The design team was required to develop architectural propositions that communicated with each other. These architectural conversations could be across the field, in the context of overlapping structures or as inter-penetrations of elements- as long as the projects somehow addressed other proposals. Each step produced a kind of spatial/zoning diagram, and an architectural master plan governing the positioning of the collected works was proposed.  The team established its own community and negotiated its own zoning and building code rules for various architectural actions. The assembly of works became an autonomous architectural work, with accidents and non-intentional spaces provoking further architectural response. The Urban Field problem began to build its own context and its own history.     
 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.