Photograph courtesy of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

IDC Foundation funding will create the IDC Foundation Art, Architecture, Construction, and Engineering (AACE) Lab at The Cooper Union to serve as a catalyst for integration across disciplines. Building on existing cross-disciplinary initiatives at The Cooper Union, each school’s strengths will be integrated around projects of ‘making’ that create outcomes larger than the sum of the parts of individual disciplines. The shared Lab will create a unique opportunity for students and faculty to engage with each other, formally and informally, advancing a culture of hands-on collaboration in an animated setting, teeming with tools and designed to allow for the organic development of new ideas at the intersections of disciplines. The IDC Foundation AACE Lab will be an open and expansive space, custom-built for equipment and workshop needs in the Foundation building. State-of-the-art equipment and technologies ranging from 3-D printers to robotic arms to virtual reality technologies will be incorporated into this space. Having these new technologies in-house at The Cooper Union will position the faculty and deans to reimagine curricula and give students and faculty the tools they need to research new protocols of fabrication, test out methods for optimization, and develop new materials and methods for practical design and construction applications.