The Wall Street Journal: “Conceived by the Bloomberg administration, Cornell Tech was envisioned as a $2 billion, 12-acre campus devoted to the marriage of academia and business in the hopes of engendering a new class of tech-savvy biz kids. Phase One was officially completed on Sept. 13, with the first three buildings (costing $700 million) up and running for some 300 students and (to date) three corporate giants—Citigroup, Two Sigma Investments and Ferrero, an Italian chocolate company.”
“The new campus buildings and their land-sculpted surrounds set a new bar for architecture. Priorities have been upended. While expensive new campus structures usually make bold visual statements, at Cornell Tech sustainability and landscape, not ambitious form making, lead the way.” For example: “At four stories and 160,000 square feet, the Bloomberg Center—designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis—is wrapped in an animating metal screen scalloped in soup-lid-size scales that turn a golden or lagoon-ish green hue depending on how they catch the light. It helps to cool and minimize waste at a building that aims to achieve the new holy grail of energy usage: net-zero.”
“Beneath the prow are a cluster of built-in outdoor seats and tables. A path sweeps past the other two buildings—a dorm and office-cum-incubator—into an open plaza and lawn with a seemingly endless array of seating arrangements and table options. The buzz potential is palpable … Beneath the lawn and plaza, there’s a rain-harvesting tank and 80 geothermal wells. Gardens perform bio-filtration services; pavers absorb overflow … When the campus is completed by 2043, there will be 2,000 students and 10 buildings. Cornell Tech puts the island at the heart of where ideas in business and architecture are headed.”
