New York City Accepts Cornell University & Technion’s Bid for Applied Science Campus

New two-million-square-foot campus will be among the most technologically-advanced, energy-efficient academic hubs in the world.

Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology announced that the Cornell University-Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Consortium was selected to build an 11-acre Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island.

Cornell/Technion consortium will also receive $100 million in City capital

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) teamed with the institutions to design the proposed two-million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus, which will provide housing and academic facilities for up to 2,500 students. The Cornell/Technion consortium will also receive $100 million in City capital to assist with site infrastructure, construction, and related costs.

 ”… an iconic destination and meeting ground for entrepreneurs and scientists”

SOM’s design for the proposed campus dovetails with the consortium’s goals of preparing future tech leaders and entrepreneurs for the growth of 21st century businesses and industries. The design creates a place of work and research that will meet the collaboration, productivity, and creativity needs of future talent. The campus will be an iconic destination and meeting ground for entrepreneurs and scientists, with a multi-story pedestrian network, over a half-million-square-feet of public gardens and amphitheaters, a 150,000-square-foot photovoltaic array that would be the largest in New York City, and an interactive sustainability strategy that will boast one of the country’s largest net-zero energy structures.

Indoor/outdoor connectivity between academic spaces and flexibility in the campus’s open plan will be key to attracting the best talent from around the globe and creating a citywide core for innovation.

New ideas demand new architecture. We have set out to design a school of enterprise as well as knowledge – an institution dedicated to the productive use of technology, not to the development of technology for its own sake. Keeping this mission in mind, we have designed a campus as bold in construction, look, and feel as it is in purpose. It will be a place of enormous intellectual and practical vitality, and, at the same time, a striking visual statement of the spirit of innovation and openness that defines New York City.

 ”… a living, learning applied sciences community”

This is a spectacularly rare opportunity to imagine a new campus from the ground up – and to do so in the heart of a great city. In terms of its urban design, architecture, landscape design and sustainable strategies, this campus will be an exemplar – a living, learning applied sciences community whose design supports and reflects the fundamental ideals of research and innovation.

The selection of the Cornell/Technion consortium marks a major milestone in New York City’s Applied Sciences NYC initiative, which seeks to increase New York City’s capacity for applied science and transform the City’s economy by creating tens of thousands of new jobs. An economic impact analysis completed by the NYC Economic Development Corporation projects the new campus will generate more than $23 billion in overall economic activity over the course of the next three decades and create nearly 600 spin-off companies.