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 The Editors 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