Innovation, Design, Freedom of Expression, Interaction, Collaboration

MYMUP, which stands for "Multi-Year Multi-University Project," is an interdisciplinary, inter-university project which encourages students from diverse backgrounds to find creative yet pragmatic solutions to current, real-life design projects.

The success of MYMUP lies in the freedom given to students to think through and conceptualize their design ideas, and then present them professionally after considering the problem and possible solutions from many different angles.

The fact that MYMUP projects bring together engineers, artists, and architects from institutions with different geographical locations, teaching modes, and philosophies adds to the diverse and innovative outcomes of each project. In past years, Cooper Union has collaborated with Florida International University and with Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, NY) on MYMUP projects.

Group projects explored in EID 111–Design, Illusion and Reality emphasize the interplay among ideas, concepts and values on one hand and the appearance of the design on the other. The projects aim at being vivid demonstrations of how design brings illusion and reality together; how illusion, however conceived, shapes reality, however experienced; and how that reality in turn contributes to reshaping the illusion in a constant interplay – design becoming the stimulator, the moderator, the revealer, the resolver, the means to an end.

The following pages contain information and links about four different MYMUP projects explored at the Cooper Union under the auspices of The Gateway Engineering Education Coalition.