"Google didn't exist 25 years ago, Facebook didn't exist 25 years ago, even AOL didn't exist 25 years ago," Andrew Winters said on a recent afternoon. The director of capital projects and planning for Cornell NYC Tech, he was giving a preview of the the school's proposed Roosevelt Island campus in a large conference room inside the Wall Street offices of SOM, the master planners for the 12.5-acre project. Thom Mayne, the Pritzker Prize-winning L.A. architect designing the first academic building on the campus was also present, along with a number of other Cornell construction executives.

"The challenge," Mr. Winters continued, "is how do you create a tech campus today that is still flexible enough to grow and evolve for the next 25 years?"

This was not simply a philosophical question. Like all projects large and small in the city, Cornell NYC Tech would be defined by an unforgiving zoning text, a set of parcels, parameters, pathways and public open space, boxes, empty vessels into which the creative designs and desires of thousands of engineers and entrepreneurs would be filled for decades to come. The plan calls for four new buildings just south of the Queensboro Bridge by 2017 and six more by 2038, for a total of roughly 2 million square feet—about the size of the Google building in Chelsea.

The public review process, including specific plans for the first phase and more general ideas about the rest of the project, begins today when the City Planning Commission is expected to certify the project. It then faces half a year of intensive community scrutiny, though recent meetings on Roosevelt Island have shown broad, positive support for the campus. The site is already occupied by a 1930s hospital building set to be decommissioned next year. Once that happens, demolition will commence to make way for the campus.

The new campus may be looking for the future, but the very first problem it must tackle is as old as Noah. Because the project resides on an island, an especially narrow and low-lying one at that, it is highly susceptible to flooding. The first pieces of the campus created, then, was the main pathway, called the Tech Walk, that runs through the middle of the site, roughly along the highest point of the island. All buildings will have their primary entrances on this thoroughfare as a precaution against extreme flooding. "Code requires us to build to 100-year-flood standards, but with global warming, we're preparing for a 500-year-flood, which could become our new 100-year-flood," SOM associate director Colin Koop explained.

The geography of the city continues to define the shape of the campus, but from the Tech Walk, the designers—which also include James Corner Field Operations, the firm responsible for the High Line among other high-flying landscapes—turned their attention to the skyline. A number of important landmarks, including the U.N Building, the Empire State Building, the famous Pepsi sign in Long Island City, and the bridge and its massive piers, created vistas the team wanted to accentuate. They carved paths creating view corridors to these spaces, and filled in between the lines either with buildings, which the designers refer to as "nodes," or grand lawns and plazas, which are the "links" that will be among the campus' myriad public amenities.

"We wanted to create a cinematic experience, with framed views of different things," Mr. Koop said.

The team is also using this as an opportunity to redesign the road that encircles the campus, which is actually so old it does not meet current city requirements. The new configuration will create a wider esplanade along the water, followed by a bike lane (it is a college campus, after all), then a single driving and parking lane after that and a generous sidewalk beyond.

If the entire design of the site is meant to emphasize the river and the views beyond, the challenge for the buildings themselves is to be landmarks, as well, ones that create an unmistakeable presence for the campus without interrupting or overtaking the island on which they will rest. Only the academic building, the work of Mr. Mayne's firm Morphosis, has an explicit design so far. One design decision about it and almost every other building except for the two dorms is that they will be limited in height to five stories, or about as tall as the bed of the bridge. The two dorm buildings will not surpass the masts of the bridge, which reach about 300 feet above the island.

The first phase calls for one of the dormitory towers, a hotel conference center space for hosting events and visiting faculty and a so-called corporate co-location building where students and established tech firms and investors can meet to work. The centerpiece, though, is Mr. Mayne's academic building. Resembling an aircraft carrier from another planet (it even has a similar elongated pentagon shape), the specifics of the design are still being worked out. But like at Mr. Mayne's Cooper Union building, it will emphasize interactivity.

"Hallways aren't hallways anymore," the architect said. "They are the connection points where all the real work gets done, where the chance interactions inspirations take place." A huge atrium, perfectly aligned with 57th Street, will be the focal point of this work, creating a grand entrance for the students, faculty and visitors, and funneling them into a grand staircase connecting the five floors. Every landing has nooks for tables and couches to encourage public work and relaxation. Elevators are pushed to the edges of the building to discourage their use.

A large cafe, open to the public, is just off the atrium—Mr. Mayne joked that Starbucks is the new campus library—and retail will ring the building, providing an amenity not only for students but also Roosevelt Islanders, who are are starved for shopping.

The exact finish of the building is still to be determined, but by far its most striking feature will be a gigantic two-acre solar array, part of the promise to create a net-zero academic building that generates as much energy as it uses (for a tech project, that is an especially impressive task). "The site is challenging and the programming is challenging, but more than anything, net zero is challenging, and that decision has informed every aspect of this design" Mr. Mayne said. "This will be an absolute prototype."

Just like the ideas the campus is meant to elicit.

SOM, the firm that designed Cornell's original entry and one of the world's largest, made the cut. They have designed everything from the Lever House to the masterplan for Columbia's new Manhattanville Campus. Local stars Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, responsible for the High Line and Lincoln Center, were tapped, as was New York fanboy Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Modern Architecture. He has yet to build in the city, but he just completed a celebrated expansion to Cornell's architecture school.

Steven Holl is another local boy on the list, one of the dean's of New York architecture. He has designed a philosophy department offices for NYU, is completing a sports center for Columbia at the northern tip of Manhattan and is perhaps best known for his funky residence halls at MIT. Morphosis, run by LA's Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne, knows a thing about New York campuses, having built the new metallic monolith for Cooper Union in Astor Place. And the ostensible dark horse is Philadelphia's Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a firm that makes some sense given that their most famous work is as designers of all the Apple Stores. Perhaps a giant glass cube for Roosevelt Island?

"We were incredibly impressed by the quality represented in the 43 firms originally considered for designing our core building," CornellNYC Tech Vice President Cathy Dove said in a release. "Our goal is that this first building exemplify sustainable design principles, represent a forward looking attitude and form vibrant and contemplative public spaces that can be expanded through future buildings."

On the sustainability front, the first building will be designed as "net zero," meaning it uses no grid energy, generating or limiting its own use through strategies ranging from solar panels to thermal wells to the right kind of window shades and light bulbs. Successive buildings will not be quite up to that standard but will at least meet LEED Silver standards, a mid-range sustainability benchmark grade—think of it as a compact car but not a hyrbid.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Helen and David. (Image via Hearst Corp.)

With the help of a $30 M. gift from longtime Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University's School of Engineering have established the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the two universities and the Hearst Corporation announced today.

The Institute is inspired by David Brown, Ms. Brown's late husband, a former journalist, publisher, film and theater producer who graduated from both Stanford and Columbia Journalism School.

The collaboration is intended to connect "the best in West Coast technology with East Coast content," according to a joint press release, giving each school $12 M. to endow a professorship. The remaining $6 M. will go toward the construction of a "highly visible signature space at the eastern end of the J-School’s landmark building, featuring a state-of-the-art high-tech newsroom." It will also support graduate and post-graduate fellowships, as well as competitive "Magic Grants" to develop most promising ideas conceived of by Brown fellows. It is the largest gift in Columbia Journalism School's nearly 100-year history.

“David and I have long supported and encouraged bright young people to follow their passions and to create original content," Ms. Brown, who turns 90 next month, said in the announcement. "Great content needs useable technology. Sharing a language is where the magic happens. It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.”

“New York City, as the major center for the television, music, print media and advertising, is profoundly affected by rapidly evolving digital technology,” said Stanford engineering professor Bernd Girod, who is the Institute’s founding director until Columbia appoints his East Coast counterpart. “The Brown Institute will bring together creative innovators skilled in production and delivery of news and entertainment with the entrepreneurial researchers at Stanford working in multimedia technology.”

In December, Stanford withdrew its bid for Mayor Bloomberg’s Roosevelt Island tech campus. The $100 million grant went to Cornell to a 50-50 partnership between Cornell and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; Cornell announced $350 M. gift to back its proposal hours after Stanford dropped out. Carnegie Mellon, one of the rejected proposals, is still working on building an entertainment-tech campus in partnership with Steiner Studios in Brooklyn's Navy Yards.

Along with details of Cornell-Technion’s winning bid, the mayor announced that, in essence, he’s not done yet. The city still is negotiating with several other academic institutions, including Columbia University, Carnegie-Mellon and a consortium that includes New York University, to develop other initiatives in applied science in Harlem, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and downtown Brooklyn, respectively.

The mayor was not exaggerating when he described these developments as a “defining moment” that will prove to be “transformative” as the city recreates and reimagines itself as a leader in the technologies that will define the next century—and beyond.

That transformation, it would appear, will not be restricted to Roosevelt Island. If negotiations with the other academic institutions prove productive, huge swaths of the city could benefit from the financial and intellectual investments inspired by the mayor’s Applied Sciences initiative.

That said, there’s no question that Cornell-Technion will be leading the way. Thanks in part to the generosity of Cornell alumnus Charles Feeney, the famously reclusive billionaire and philanthropist who donated $350 million to support the partnership’s bid, Cornell-Technion will get to work immediately on a plan to construct 300,000 square feet of space by 2017—with the eventual goal of two million square feet by 2037 (this surely is a long-term project). When completed, the facility will be home to 2,500 graduate students and nearly 300 faculty members.

Incredibly, the Cornell-Technion plan calls for classes to begin in the fall, albeit in a temporary location. The program’s future students will have the benefit not only of Cornell’s expertise and reputation, but that of Technion’s as well. Although Cornell’s partner may not have instant name recognition in New York, it is a leader in Israel’s high-technology industry and has a proven record as an incubator of cutting-edge research and development.

Overall, the Cornell-Technion plan calls for an investment of some $2 billion. That includes $150 million dedicated to supporting local businesses as well as math and science programs for 10,000 city kids. The plan will create 20,000 construction jobs and tens of thousands of other jobs in hundreds of new businesses that will be created as a result of the Cornell-Technion investment. The cost to the city? Some $100 million in infrastructure improvements and the value of the land on Roosevelt Island that the partnership will occupy. Not a bad deal.

New York overtook its commercial rivals in the early years of the 19^th century because it had the vision and determination to build the Erie Canal.  Now, two centuries later, the city once again is seizing an opportunity to not simply gain a competitive advantage over rivals, but to reimagine itself. The days when Roosevelt Island was an afterthought, indeed, a place of exile for sick and the discarded, are long over. The days when the Brooklyn Navy Yard employed thousands of blue-collar workers similarly belong to the city’s industrial past.

Now, these locations—and perhaps others—are on the verge of a radical and welcome (and long overdue) transformation thanks to the vision of political, academic and business leaders.

It’s often said that we simply don’t have the kind of leaders who made New York great so many decades ago. But 50 years from now, New Yorkers will look back with awe and affection when they consider the creativity and daring of those leaders who, in 2011, saw the future and made certain that New York was not simply a part of it, but helped to shape it.

Cornell University has taken a 10,550-square-foot chunk of 230 Park Avenue. The Ithaca-based university, which was already subleasing an 8,800-square-foot space in the building, will use its big-city spread to manage its endowment fund. The asking rent for the new space was in the high-$50s. 

"Who wouldn't have Cornell in their building?" Monday Properties' Brian Robin told The Observer. "Small tenants just don't have a lot of options," he added. "Especially when you start approaching the characteristics that everyone would want: quality construction and good quality design."

Cornell was one of the first tenants to look at the prebuilt space, and it didn't take long after it had hit the market for the university to decide it wanted to take it. "We walked through with brokers," Mr. Robin said, "and they knew right off the bat that it's a good deal."

Already a bit of a teacher's pet this year, with LEED Gold certification and a flurry of leasing activity, 230 Park just bagged a couple of more awards. The building recently became one of 11 in the city to receive the BOMA 360 Performance Building for superior management. The Society of American Registered Architects NY Chapter will also honor it with the 2010 Design Award for work on the glittering Gilded Age lobby. 

Cornell was represented by Gere Ricker of MB Real Estate; the landlord was represented in-house by Jordan Berger.

lkusisto@observer.com