June 2026 | Eyesore
"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.
Eyesore of the Month is sponsored by Sage Restoration.
I keep seeing buildings that architects design not to please occupants and bystanders, but to impress other architects.
LOL. I lived on the Bowery for 20 years and used to walk by this job site regularly. I would always ask the crew out front how things were going. I received unanimous eye rolls and snickers everytime I asked. And let me tell you, this job went on FOREVER. The workers knew the deal. It was needlessly complex and the architects were outrageously demanding of the building crew. They felt like abused children when I spoke to them. This building is a blight on city of New York.