Cooper Union opens access to database of student work dating back to the 1930s

Design 4-12-2019 Archinect 91

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City has unveiled The Student Work Collection, a new online resource that highlights nearly 80 years' worth of architectural output with the aim of recording the "School of Architecture's pedagogy by documenting student work."

The comprehensive archival project includes over 4,000 student projects that are catalogued by student and and instructor names, as well as by course number, semester, decade, and design problem, among other topics. The collection provides a deep view into the early pen-on-vellum work of now-famous architects like Daniel Libeskind (class of 1970), Liz Diller (class of 1979), and others. The archive also offers a more complex perspective of the educational efforts of prominent architectural educators and theorists, including John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, Toshiko Mori, Lebbeus Woods, and others.