"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.

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

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.

Mr. Maybe told The Times he believes the new Cornell campus will set the standard for the next generation of university design, even if he has no idea yet what form it will take.

Mr. Mayne said the Cornell project presented an opportunity to contemplate what an academic building should look like in the information age. Should it have the bullpen environments of tech start-ups or the more cloistered layout of established universities? How should it use space to foster collaboration while also carving out areas for quiet reflection?

“There is no modern prototype for a campus,” Mr. Mayne said. “You have to have a completely different model which has to do with transparency and exposing social connectivity and breaking down the Balkanization that happens departmentally.”

There are no snazzy architectural images yet, nor can Mr. Mayne speculate about what shape the building will take or what materials he might use. “I haven’t even seen the site plan yet,” he said. The only certainty is that Mr. Mayne will not inaugurate Cornell’s new campus by designing some kind of ivory tower.

“I like being able to tell you that I don’t have any bloody idea what it’s going to look like,” he said.

Dan Huttenlocher, the dean and provost of the new campus, told WNYC it was Mr. Mayne's cutting edge work in the East Village that helped him beat out the likes of SOM, which designed the master plan for Roosevelt Island that helped beat out Stanford, and Rem Koolhaas, who designed a celebrated new building for the architecture school in Ithaca.

“That building has engineers and scientists and artists and designers brought together into a common space,” Mr. Huttenlocher said, referring to 41 Cooper Square. “Therefore, it really has to respect the different cultures of some different communities and bring them together in some interesting ways.”

mchaban@observer.com

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

Mr. Sciame: I like to say that I sleep like a baby: I sleep for two hours and I cry for two hours. Only kidding. … Any major builder in this town in 2008 is having a very good year. And we’re having a very good year.

How is that possible? It’s been incredibly unsteady; apartments are going unsold.

It has been, but as the builder, we are building that building, and the apartments that you’re trying to sell have been paid for … which is why my year has been good. But two years ago we started to really diversify. We saw this residential market on fire and I knew—anyone could predict—that there would be a downturn. Since the tulip bulbs in Holland, there will be this financial euphoria and then this fall. So we diversified and went into institutional work, not only museums, but Columbia University. … [And] we are making sure there are reserves put aside from the good years.

You’ve built the aluminum-skinned New Museum, Renzo Piano’s Morgan Library and Thom Mayne’s upcoming Cooper Union lab building—and you renovated the Guggenheim. When you walk outside, what do you see?

Just as a painter will see things very differently, because they’re thinking about painting whatever it is they’re looking at, I think that, as a builder, when I walk down the street, I can see through the street. There’s sort of an X-ray vision. What’s behind that limestone? What’s behind that curtain wall? How is that beam supported? You could really just sort of appreciate the way it comes together.

You also built Palazzo Chupi, Julian Schnabel’s amazing red-pink condos on West 11th, but sales-wise it’s done very poorly: His huge duplex and triplex are unsold, and Richard Gere put his place there back on the market.

Julian, he did it the way he wanted to do it, you’ll see no other building like that in the city, and you can either like it or dislike it. … And I think he’s willing to wait for the right price; he’s not in a rush to sell it.

The one recent, well-known building of yours that I happen to dislike is the Cooper Square Hotel, the shiny, almost sci-fi building at the Bowery. Do you take building jobs that you don’t personally approve of?

Hah! It would really have to be bad, O.K., for me to say, ‘I’m not building that building because I don’t like what it’s doing to the skyline of Manhattan,’ let me be honest with you. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder—we have people that love the Cooper Square Hotel! Look, I think I have a very good moral compass. I think I have principles. I’m not going to do something that would be socially totally unacceptable. But I wouldn’t not build a building because I don’t agree with its design, and I also wouldn’t not build a building because maybe it’s not what the preservationists want.

New Yorkers desperately wanted to save the marble-clad modernist ‘lollipop building’ at 2 Columbus Circle. But the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission held no public meetings, and the building was gutted and stripped. Your company did the work. Now it’s an entirely new building and widely loathed.

We were in a touchy situation on Columbus Circle. I mean, here was an Edward Durell Stone building that certain people thought should be landmarked and others didn’t. …

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it may have been better for everyone, including the LPC, had they had a hearing on it. This is only with 20/20 hindsight. … At that time, I didn’t think it was such a bad thing.

And yet you happen to be chairman of the nonprofit advocacy group New York Landmarks Conservancy. How could you be pro-landmarking if you’re a builder and even sometimes a developer?

When I was asked to be chairman of the conservancy, I said, ‘Do you really want a developer?’ And it’s a good question. But having been chairman for two and a half years now, I think it was not a problem at all. I’m passionate about good architecture; I’m passionate about preserving good landmarks, so it’s not hard for me to take that position.

Your new Cooper Union lab building, designed by Pritzker-winning Thom Mayne, will be so green that its skin will have perforated stainless steel panels that move to reduce heat or cold. Is green just a fad?

No, I think that green is here to stay, but … right now green is not cost-effective. A lot of developers are using it because they have concern for the environment. It’s also a good marketing tool, and they’ve been willing to spend a little bit more for it. … As more and more people do it, and more and more innovative ideas come, it will be good.

You tried to develop a radical, slim skyscraper of stacked townhouse cubes at 80 South Street, designed by the experimentalist Santiago Calatrava. It’s still not built. Have you given up?

I think we were ahead of our time. … We’re in a holding pattern. Now, if someone wants to do a conventional building, we’ll probably sell it.

What about Calatrava’s design?

It would have to not be built.

That’s sad!

It is sad, but I’m not going to build anything and fail, and the marketing indicated that there weren’t people willing to buy that. And the last thing I want to do is fail.

The building’s 10 residential townhouse cubes came on the market three years ago at $29 million and up. Did any come close to selling?

We had people from London who were interested, but it wasn’t enough to really make it work.

How much did you have to pay Calatrava for the plans, which won’t be used—$1 million?

It is north of $1 million. We paid a good deal of money.

Which starchitect who you’ve worked with is harder? Calatrava, Piano, Mayne—or even Schnabel at his Palazzo?

I’m going to answer this honestly: I have yet to find an architect of that caliber that’s difficult to work with. These are world-class architects—and in the case of Schnabel, he’s a world-class artist.

You lost a bid to build the World Trade Center memorial, but were eventually brought in by Pataki and Bloomberg in 2006 to shave costs there. What was something that was glaringly wrong about that that you saw?

I think the city, the state, was guilty of cooperation. Everyone tried to cooperate with each other: You had the families as a stakeholder; you had [developer Larry] Silverstein as a major stakeholder; you had the Port Authority as a stakeholder; you had the city; you had the state; you had all of the people in Lower Manhattan, all the people of the city, the country, the world, looking at ground zero and wanting this to be some great project that would answer the horrific attacks of 9/11. So I think that everyone tried to listen to as many stakeholders as possible, and it slowed down the process.

Should there have been a single authoritative voice saying, ‘This is how it’s going to be’?

That’s probably true! If you could have a Robert Moses in 2008, or 2001 when this happened, it might be a good thing. Having said that, many people would totally disagree with me—‘Who wants a Robert Moses?’ Hey, it would have been done faster. Would it have been done better? I don’t know.

What was your experience trying to trim costs there like?

When the governor and the mayor call, you say to yourself, ‘There’s no choice but to do it.’ But having gone through that? If the president calls, I’m assessing the minefields before I get involved.

You’ve been in construction for three decades. How much organized crime have you seen in the business?

Does it still exist? I guess so. … We’re large enough to not have to even think about that. We’re known to be a legitimate company, and that’s the way we’re going to do our business, and we’ve never had that as an issue, thank God.

mabelson@observer.com