Posted on 06/17/2026 7:00:16 AM PDT by MtnClimber
As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking. . . personal creativity is required only rarely." —Leon Krier on architecture.
Behold, The Cooper Union main academic building (41 Cooper Square, New York City) designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis, a frequent Eyesore of the Month winner. Cooper Union, was founded in 1859 by industrialist Peter Cooper as a tuition-free college emphasizing art, architecture, and engineering, basically, a polytechicnic. The new building, completed in 2009 at a cost of about $175-million, nearly bankrupted the school — its endowment tanked in that year’s Great Financial Crash due to investments in sketchy hedge funds. By 2012, the hallowed institution had to start charging tuition.
You can assume that the architect felt compelled to express the spirit of the age the building was conceived in, and that seems to come down to a romance with the latest high-tech materials arranged in a way that defies our neurologically-derived expectations about how buildings work. The latest hocus-pocus includes LEED certification for “environmental” fabulosity. Thus: the perforated stainless steel cladding for temperature control (fail).
As you can see in contrast from the 19th century building next door, no one has to guess what the elements of its facade do. The windows are not half-hidden or disguised. The decorative elements, pediments, pilasters, all emphasize the tectonic quality of something that reaches into the sky under the rules of gravity. Not so much the Cooper Union building, with its mystifying slashes and those bizarre tilted columns along the ground floor. And then there’s this:
What is that fragment of a darker building peeking out of the steel skin at the corner? Is that the actual building hidden inside the box it came in? Someone, please, let it out!
Grace note: Cooper Union has partially recovered its financial equilibrium due to its luck at owning the land underneath the Chrysler Building uptown on 42nd street, on which it receives annual rent.
Thanks to Len Austin for the nomination.
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EYESORE ping
I see a crooked metal building with a lot of pigeon poop on it! ;)
I’ve worked with a lot of architects. Yeah, this is what they do. Basically s**t in the morning when they wake up. Stare at it hard before they flush. Then make the memory into a pretty drawing.
Post-modern architecture has generally been a disaster. This is living proof.
It truly is an eyesore and so out of place! chaotic!
Back in the seventies I lived on sixth street and had to walk past the old Cooper Union building to go to school. It smelled of pi$$! That’s the only thing I miss about the old building.
The steel building sticks out like a sore thumb among all the low brownstone buildings.
Different is not necessarily better. Maybe the architect was Schizophrenic. 🤪
Paging Howard Roark
Ain't that the troof!
If you haven't read Thomas Wolfe's "From Bauhaus to Our House", you would enjoy it.
Looks like it was designed by Jawas ...
More like eyesore of the decade
Behold the delicate grace of brutalism.
The Obama Presidential Center
This one is hard to beat...
Izzat the new launch pad for ‘New Glen’? Water deluge system is state of the art!
The bowery was just down the street. But it's a warning of what is to come back under Mamdani.
I find it somewhat amusing that this EYESORE is mostly funded by the land rent from the Chrysler Building, a Art-Deco architectural marvel that no one would consider an EYESORE.
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