 Peter Cooper, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1859. Conceived as a civic-minded institution for education in the fields of design and engineering, today the Cooper Union is comprised of three professional schools, focused on art, architecture and engineering, and also includes a faculty of humanities and social sciences. The foundation building, designed by Frederick A. Peterson and completed in 1859, was the most technologically innovative building of its time. In 2009, exactly 150 years later, the Cooper Union opened 41 Cooper Square across the street to enhance the civic and academic mission of the institution. Just as the foundation building had embodied concerns with democratic access through forward thinking, design and engineering, 41 Cooper Square, designed by Morphosis Architecture, led by Tom Main, presented maverick thinking around concerns of environment, site, programming and beauty. As with any bold statement, the building has inspired both admiration and critique, but most everyone wants a peek inside. Walk in and a vertical piazza forms the heart of the building. It's designed to be the central space for informal social, intellectual and creative exchange. A grand staircase, 20 feet wide, ascends four stories from the ground level. A skylit central atrium reaches to the full height of the eight-story building. Sky bridges connect the top floors. The steel and plaster-gritted lattice that winds its way up not only adds an architectural element, but also further reflects the natural light into the interior. The space improves airflow and the use of natural daylight, which illuminates 75 percent of the workspaces in the building. That cuts down on powered lighting, resulting in energy savings. Around the central atrium, 41 Cooper Square contains world-class academic laboratories for civil, chemical, biochemical, physics, mechanical and electrical research. Classrooms are used for engineering coursework as well as humanities and social sciences classes. The top floor, equipped with skylights, contains studios for students of the School of Art. Among the other sustainable attributes of 41 Cooper Square, the classrooms, labs, studios, offices and public spaces are heated and cooled by radiant ceiling panels that use recycled water. Construction sensors in each room trigger the panels, so they're not heating or cooling an empty room. This is just one of the many advanced engineering and design techniques used to earn the building the first-ever platinum-level LEED certification for an academic and laboratory building. Just outside the building's glass envelope is one of its key environmental and architectural features, a stainless steel mega-mesh skin that wraps around the building. But only does it give 41 Cooper Square its unique exterior. It also acts as an insulator during the winter, while shielding the building from the sun during the summer. It gives you a continuous surface of form that moves you away from the pragmatics of window wall. And then, in this case, it allows us to shape the building and to give it kind of a very unique form that had a dynamicism we're looking for and had an energy which we're looking for. Anything this building was about the energy of its faculty and students, what they do is produce ideas. One level below the street, you reach the public spaces of the building that include a gallery and the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium. The walls are covered in sound-dampening fine-steel mesh that was hammered by hand in Germany to achieve its wrinkled effect. 41 Cooper Square has some secrets, including the egress staircases that add a splash of color to the otherwise mostly white and gray interior. The building also contains the city's only anechoic chamber, a sound-dampening space where you can literally hear a pin drop. Thanks for joining us on this brief tour of 41 Cooper Square. For more about the building, visit our website at cooper.edu.