Why Build a Fence?

After a two-year hiatus, the Cooper Union’s all-school End of Year Show (EYOS) opened in-person this week. Inside the iconic Foundation Building, sprawling models are in prodigious supply, and the walls are plastered with mylar and vellum sheets. What’s more, the student work covering every surface of the building brims with urgency.

Studios and workshops headed up by leading thinkers like Hayley Eber and Elisa Iturbe present designs that confront the climate crisis head on. Just as urgent is the work of NORA AKAWI’s thesis students, which takes aim at the crisis of capitalism. One student, Tiam Schaper posited an upstate community as cool and dense as any neighborhood in Brooklyn, only without private property: Why build a fence when you can knock it down, making a boardwalk? Similarly, Sanjana Lahiri’s thesis imagines a city where property is held in common in the form of community gardens and community spaces.

The best work at the Cooper EYOS, which marks the end of dean Nader Tehrani’s tenure before he rejoins the faculty in 2023, redefines what it means to be …