Collection: The Student Work Collection

Description: The Student Work Collection represents over eight decades of The Cooper Union’s experimental, influential approach to architectural education, and its material provides valuable opportunities for enriching public understanding of American culture, history, and the democratic ideals that shape our built environment. The Collection encompasses analog image, text, and audio records as well as born-digital media that document nearly 4,800 projects by over 1,500 students from the 1930s-Present. Most projects date from the mid-1960s forward. Documentation of student work includes process drawings, final presentation drawings, photographs of architectural models, faculty course documents, and supplemental research material, all drawn on an annual basis from each semester of the academic year. Project activities will take place in two phases over five years. Phase I, which began in November 2016 addresses the Collection’s 30,000+ analog records dating from 1930-2006 and includes: cataloging records at the folder/item-level, digitizing them for public access and preserving them through archival rehousing. The METRO grant funds will be used to support 624 hours of post-scanning image processing performed by student interns, resulting in roughly 3,500 adjusted images.