Meds and eds and cool designs. (CUNY)

Breaking out of the up-and-down box. (CUNY)

New York City, forever expanding its architectural and medical offerings, is about to add two contemporary healthcare centers to the hospital corridor along the East Side of Manhattan, in a prominent location right on the shore. It will further highlight the city’s position not only at the forefront of the nation’s medical establishment but also within the design leadership.

This morning, Mayor Bloomberg, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, CUNY and Hunter College announced plans to build two new science and medical facilities in a new millio-square-foot building on the Upper East Side. They reflect the Bloomberg Administration’s efforts to expand science and research activity in New York City at a timely moment when the city’s science, technology and research fields are flourishing.

“Thanks to our innovative approach to economic development, today’s announcement is yet another step towards making New York City home to the world’s most talented workforce,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Not only will these two great institutions play a critical role in creating great jobs in one of the city’s growing industries, but they usher in the innovators and medical advancements of tomorrow.”

These two new facilities will allow both Memorial Sloan Kettering and CUNY/Hunter College to move into labs and healthcare units appropriate for the cutting-edge work and care that they both do—and they will look cool doing it. In a deal with the city's Economic Development Corporation, the institutions will pay $215 million for a 66,000-square-foot city-owned site at 525 East 73rd Street, a move the mayor lauded as a prime public-private partnership.

Most of the space will be taken up by Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the world’s oldest and largest private institution devoted to cancer care, which will construct a 750,000-square-foot state of the art cancer treatment facility. The aim of the project is to prompt the development of innovative outpatient treatment programs.

CUNY Hunter College will take up the balance of the space with a new Science and Health Professions building that cover ssome 336,000-square-foot. The project upgrades Hunter’s science and nursing facilities and enables its faculty, researchers and students to work in a location close to its main campus on the Upper East Side. It will also provide efficient and state-of-the-art science and nursing facilities.

And, as well as offering physicians and researchers an inspiring and efficient environment in which to both work and provide care, the new building will lend a lick of paint to New York City’s landscape. The nifty new building, designed by Ennead Architects and Perkins Eastman, is a bold addition to the repertoire of hospital architecture. It also gives Diller Scofidio + Renfro's new medical building for Columbia further uptown a run for its money.

These buildings will aid medical studies and care in New York, and as an added bonus they will decoratively add to its distinctive skyline; what city could ask for two more welcome additions.

The band made the announcement on their website, where you can listen to some of their music, or, there's always MySpace.

Maybe this is a way to make us all feel gut-wrenchingly guilty if we try to download You & Me online. What about those kids in the pediactric center looking straight out of that Jimmy Fund commercial that made us cry in the theater that one time? Think of the children!

Considering the season and everything, we found this recently-shot clip rather fitting. It features 15 prominent people in the fashion industry talking about their favorite charities. From Tory Burch discussing her volunteer work for Memorial Sloan-Kettering to Zac Posen sharing his loyalty to TeachersCount, it may just refashion your view of...fashion.

"I've already complained that coffee is not being served," the mayor said, walking into a press conference this morning at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. Then, turning to Nobel-prize winner Harold Varmus, "But coffee's probably not good for you."

"Sloan-Kettering thinks so," said Dr. Varmus, the hospital's president.

Further evidence of the mayor's addiction to the evil bean! (For the other evidence, read Jason Horowitz's piece in today's Observer.)

By the end of the sleepy press conference, about a new biotech center on the East River, the mayor seemed disappointed that the reporters had stayed on-message. In fact, the only thing vaguely resembling a campaign plug to come out of his mouth was admitting, reluctantly ("I try not to talk about how I give money away"), that he contributed some of his wealth to stem cell research. "We'll take other topics," the mayor said. Freddy's housing plan? The Coney Island carousel? Snakehead fish? "None? Okay, thank you very much."

Then we walked in the cold streets, along Hudson Street, along Bleecker, past antique stores, fruit and vegetable stands and vintage clothing shops with feather boas dangling in the windows. She had lost weight, too much weight. I had liked her bulky. I had liked her big. I had liked the way her face was ruddy with weather and experience. Now it seemed pale, startled, a warrior in retreat. She showed me pamphlets about her work. She gave me newspaper clippings about her doings in her country. I told her I wanted to get a big dog. She told me she wanted time, more time. And time, of course, was exactly what we heard howling in our ears. We felt it nipping at our heels. We knew it was leaning on our backs, causing our eyes to smart and weighing down our feet, slowing our walk, making us stiff with apprehension. Her hair is fine, mine is thick, but chemotherapy could blow all away before our conversation ends.

We avoided the usual verities. "You live on in the minds of your family and friends." We're tough old birds and won't fall for that old saw. You live on for only a brief moment, and then you are swallowed up in the rushing tide of everyday events. You don't live on; rather, you become mythologized by your children, glimpsed in old photographs, but you have vanished in the round, disappeared in the complexity–in the potential for change, for conflict, for holding a hand or whispering in an ear–that was once you. If you do live on in the neurons and the currents of the brains you have nurtured, you don't enjoy it much, you don't even know about it. This is ironic survival, cold comfort, the consolation of the all too easily pacified, and it's not of much use to the living. Fact is, we are gradually erased from memory, even the most famous and historic will be forgotten in the next ice age. Even one's best clothes are destined for the thrift shop, where they will become other than what they were on your back. If Bill Clinton looks at his place in history through a wide enough lens, then he will not worry about the blot of impeachment. Our names will erode in the flow of time, our deeds will pale and no one will care, if there is anyone here to care. I would suggest to the President that this summer he lie down on his back in the grass and watch the lines of the new moon cut sharply into the night. Even the moon may not last an eternity. The Republican Party may try to catch it in a barrel and sell it to the rest of us, but it, too, may in millions of years be nothing more than ash. Alas, poor moon.

As we pushed our way through streets crowded with strollers, with girls in berets and men with scarves wrapped around their necks to keep off the turn-of-the-century chill, we did not evoke the platitude that death is merely the jumping-off point for a jolly hereafter. Neither of us, she of scientific mind, me of skeptical inclinations, could buy that. The movies and the TV are chockablock with images of angels and flower-soaked heaven and ghosts watching over their loved ones. But the more we know of the mind-body fusion, the less probable it seems that the soul without its casing is viable. To expect immortality from such a paltry thing as a human being is to misunderstand, to wish instead of think, to hope instead of examine evidence, to wax sentimental and false and to weaken the mind in the process. Every falsehood we fool ourselves with, every lie we use as a blanket to allow us to sleep, deprives us of honor and honesty and the possibility of shaking a fist at fate, which seems the single way toward nobility, the preservation of a shred of pride. We are only eternal in the pitiful imaginings of those who haven't the nerve to stare up at the vastness of the night sky and accept the tiny portion of organic matter we have been given, granted on loan, on temporary pass, revocable at a half-second's notice. My friend and I are tough enough to know that the selves we are so involved with, the selves that wake from nightmares and remember the names of our second-grade teachers are just dust in the wind, detritus of chemical wizardry, brief combinations of mineral and water, juice and acid, and prone to decay.

My friend and I ignored the shadow but not quite. We talked about kingdoms and elections and the role of women in first-, second- and third-world affairs. We had more coffee in another cafe. I had a chicken salad. She pushed her food about her plate. She is strong like a mountain goat, which in fact is what her name means in her native language. But even mountain goats object to the way things are and the way they must necessarily be. If I had never met her years ago at a conference, then I would not have shared the time with her under the shadow. If I did not recognize the shadow and know that it was mine as well as hers, I would be incapable of the love I feel for her, the bracing way it passes over me, cutting and sweet. When she left me, I turned to see her walk toward the house in which she was staying. Her footing was sure. Her back was straight. I felt the air rush in between us. So it must be …