The Cooper Union End of Year Show opening last Thursday night rocked. That's just about the only word that captures the energy level - as well as the noise level - in the historic Foundation Building on Astor Place. The entire structure was taken over by exhibitions of work by students in all disciplines, and in each year of the programs of the art and architecture schools.

First I stopped to see one of the School of Architecture shows. The graphics on display here are intended to shed light on theoretical concepts, such as Maximum With Minimum, a six week project in which a habitable structure was to be designed based on these requirements: A site with extreme geophysical and weather conditions, day/night and/or seasonal, must be selected. At an edge between land and water including a body of water and land or rock above or below (photo below, left).

Left: School of Architecture show in the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Gallery. Right: The atrium of the new academic building designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects. All photos: Peggy Roalf.

Margaret Morton, Professor of Art, invited me on a guided tour, which began with a gallery showing The Art of the Book. In this course, her students explored the endless possibilities of capturing words and ideas in portable form (photo below, left). Dina Ravvin says of her project, I Speak: Five separate books, each with its own language, share a single spine to represent my personal experiences with various tongues: fluency in English, Russian and Italian, a brisk study of French, and a fleeting knowledge of Hebrew. The book is organized consecutively by years. The size and thickness of each book is determined by the time I've spent interacting with each language. The text expresses how I have integrated these five languages into my life. More ideas about what constitutes a book can be seen in The Book in Motion, a website created by School of Art student Christhian Diaz, which presents projects done for this course by students in previous years.

Left: Marshall Kirk and Patricia Otero, in Art of The Book, by Catherine Kirk. Right: Toxicity by Victor Ochoa, in 2-D Design.

On the 6th floor, in a student-curated show of senior-year design work called On Alternate Realities, was an installation of Toxicity, a graphic novel by Victor Ochoa. Numerous spreads from the epic tale demonstrated not only his crisp pen-and-ink drawing style but also every conceivable way of dividing up a page in order to propel the narrative sequence forward (photo above, right).

After threading our way through the School of Architecture Thesis Show we continued on to the new academic building designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects. The downstairs gallery hosts Afterparty, an exhibition curated by School of Art students Calla Henkel, Cassandra Guan, Max Pitegoff and Tom Witschonke, who wrote an open letter to the architect about their experience of working with as well as in the NAB, as it's become known.

The School of Art show continues through June 19. The School of Architecture Show continues through June 26 at The Cooper Union, East 7^th Street and Cooper Square [Foundation Building] and 41 Cooper Square [NAB]. New York, NY.

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