Cast and Place Selected as City of Dreams Pavilion Winner

POSTED ON: April 4, 2017

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The 2017 winners of Figment’s City of Dreams Pavilion include Cooper Union’s own Powell Draper and Max Dowd (AR ’15) as part of Team Aesop. A competition that focuses on sustainable design, City of Dreams is based on Governors Island and seeks to elevate projects that consider the environmental impact of architectural construction. Inspired by Max Dowd’s 2015 Thesis work at Cooper Union School of Architecture, Team Aesop’s project, titled Cast and Place, rethinks the role of waste as an aesthetic and material inspiration. Created from 300,000 melted discarded aluminum cans sourced from local non-profit Sure We Can, the project uses the same clay that Governors Island was constructed with as a mold to create a lattice-like pavilion for outside leisure activities. The project is slated to open to the public this summer on the island.

Powell Draper
  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.