By Matt Chaban 10/19/12 12:25pm

Silicon Alley U

Eric Schmidt digs Roosevelt Island. (Matt Chaban)

Google’s Eric Schmidt Loves FDR, Thinks Cornell Will Gentrify Roosevelt Island

It wasn’t all politicos and power brokers at the ribbon cutting for the FDR Four Freedoms Park gathered at the tip of Roosevelt Island earlier this week. Cornell had a strong showing, too, since their new tech campus will be the park’s neighbor to the north within a few years. Cornell president and jockey David Skorton was there, and so was Eric Schmidt, the Google executive chairman who is serving on a three-man advisory panel for the campus.

Wearing a natty tweed blazer and jaunty blue scarf, Mr. Schmidt was wandering just south of the sloping lawn, near the massive bust of the 32nd president that is a centerpiece of the park, when The Observer caught up with him. “I would say first it’s probably the most beautiful new public structures in America today, it’s so visually arresting,” Mr. Schmidt said. He thought is was a stunning space both to look at and to look out from. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/18/12 1:51pm

on the waterfront

I'm FDR and I approve of this message. (Diane Bondareff)

Pols Can’t Resist Talking Politics at Ribbon Cutting for FDR Four Freedoms Park

It was not all somber speeches at the ribbon cutting for Four Freedoms Park yesterday.

Naturally, this was an event honoring one the nation’s greatest presidents, so there was bound to be some politics in the mix, not just quaint platitudes about FDR and recastings of the Four Freedoms speech as each speaker tried to rhetorically show up the others. What The Observer was not counting on was what sounded like a full-on stump speech for President Obama at the end of Bill Clinton’s remarks from the dais in the park at the tip of Roosevelt Island. He did everything but call out the president by name: Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/15/12 12:01am

Silicon Alley U

5 Photos

Cornell's Island of Tech

For Its Roosevelt Island Tech Campus, Cornell Pursues Some Cutting-Edge Designs by Thom Mayne and SOM

When technology changes at the speed of a microprocessor or the flicker of a screen, in the time it takes to type in a password or hit send on an email, how can buildings be created to contain all this light-speed innovation? That is the quandry confronting the architects designing Cornell and Technion University’s news campus on Roosevelt Island.

“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?” Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/16/12 4:47pm

Silicon Alley U

This place is teaming with baddies. (Cornell)

The Evil Eye! Israel Boycott Comes to Roosevelt Island As BDS Movement Targets Tech Campus

After they came after our hummus, it was only a time before they came for our mobile app engineers.

Anti-Israeli groups set on depriving New York of two of its most important commodities have moved on from the dowdy old Park Slope Food Co-op to the shiny new Roosevelt Island tech campus. What do both have in common? A commitment to the environment and Israeli imports. Curbed has spotted a new group, New Yorkers Against Cornell-Technion, dead set on stopping the new tech campus, Mayor Bloomberg’s biggest achievement since the smoking ban, because of the affiliations of Cornell’s lesser-known (on these shores) partner.

According to the New Yorkers Against Cornell-Technion’s website, Technion is complicit in every nefarious Israeli deed from the settlements to circumcision. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/09/12 10:20am

Starchitects

Mr. Mayne's Cooper Union collossus. (Wikimedia Commons)

Cooper Square Curves for CornellNYC Tech: Thom Mayne Tapped to Design First Roosevelt Island Building

A gravelly voiced Californian who has won “the Nobel of architecture” and an upstate ivy are now poised to transform Roosevelt Island. From Cornell’s shortlist of high-profile designers, the university has chosen Thom Mayne, Pritzker Prize winner and principal of LA-based firm Morphosis, to design the school’s new satellite campus, to be called CornellNYC Tech. Read More

By Matt Chaban 2/28/12 10:52am

Silicon Alley U

18 Photos

Bohilin Cywinski Jackson

Roosevelt Renderers! Top Architects Tapped to Design Cornell Tech Campus

The innovation offered by a new tech campus on Roosevelt Island is not limited to New York’s technology sector but the design one, as well. Almost every bid had soaring renderings and flashy flythroughs, most notably the winning entry from Cornell. Now the upstate university has announced six of the world’s top firms, including a few local favorites, are in the running to design the new tech campus. Read More

By The Editors 12/20/11 7:17pm

opinion

City Hall Picks a Winner

Cornell University and its partner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, have won a highly competitive, global competition to develop a 21st-century engineering school on Roosevelt Island. But that’s not the only good news to emerge from Mayor Bloomberg’s visionary plan to transform the city into a hub of 21st-, and 22nd-, century technology.

Along with details of Cornell-Technion’s winning bid, the mayor announced that, in essence, he’s not done yet. Read More