Favorite Green Places: Cooper Union!
By Karina | November 4, 2009
I want to share with you one of my new favorite green places - it’s the new academic building at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art — which, incidentally, happens to be my alma mater. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Cooper Union (and there are bunches of you!) it’s a small school in the East Village neighborhood of NYC that offers a full-tuition scholarship to every student, and has programs in art, architecture, and engineering.
Recently, Cooper Union found itself in need of updating it’s aging infrastructure. And to do so they went big and constructed a new academic building on the footprint of the former Hewett Building. What’s really cool about the building isn’t the neat structure (which has been at the center of a LOT of discussion about architecture in NYC), but how they were able to achieve LEED Platinum rating from the US Green Buildings Council.
While a lot of serious engineering and planning went into this building - LEED Platinum is the highest rating possible for a building, and requires consideration of sustainable materials choices to daylighting to efficient toilets with a solid and liquid waste option - the most arresting points that get a lot of attention are the large central staircase, and the skip-stop elevators which only land at every other floor (there is a separate elevator for those who are unable to take the stairs). I love this quote from Thom Maine, the architect [via treehugger]:
“I’m interested in shaping behavior,” says Mayne. “The stairs and skip-stop elevators “make people think and organize yourselves in a way. I couldn’t possibly be an architect if I thought I were a cake decorator.”
“Somehow architecture alters the way we think about the world and the way we behave. Any serious architecture, as a litmus test, has to be that.”
What a great illustration of using our everyday actions to modify behavior and guide people towards making Tiny Choices! Be it designing a building with a big staircase, only offering cloth napkins at a party, or giving people thoughtful gifts that will help others, the opportunities are there always to make Tiny Choices.
(I really should have written about this on Monday - that was the actual date of The Cooper Union opening its’ doors 150 years ago!)
More information about the new Cooper Union building here and here, and about The Cooper Union here.
Any Cooper alum out there reading? holla! AND, how do you feel about LEED buildings?
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[[Photo from the NYTimes]]
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Topics: Favorite Green Places |
Wait, so what’s the deal with skip-stop elevators? They conserve energy by making (presumably) half the usual number of stops, and/or force folks to exercise a little bit if they need to go to the in-between floors?