Cornell Tech campus - a joint brainchild of Cornell University and the Technion, where educational functions are combined with the development of the technology business - is located on Roosevelt Island in the East River - between Manhattan and Long Island. In 2017, the first stage of the campus, consisting of three buildings, was commissioned, and 300 students are already studying there, however, in the final of the project, the number of students will reach two thousand, and the area will be almost 200 thousand m2.
In the meantime, Bloomberg Center (14,865 m2) caters to all Cornell Tech's classroom needs. It is named after Emma and Georgina Bloomberg, daughters of billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $ 100 million to build the campus. In addition to this Morphosis building, the Weiss / Manfredi Tata Innovation Center commercial and research building and The House student residence tower (by Handel Architects) were commissioned.
The four-story academic building claims to be LEED Platinum and is set to become New York's first zero-energy university building, meaning it must generate as much energy as it spends. First of all, Bloomberg Center is completely powered by electricity and does not use any "fossil" fuels. Power is generated by 1,465 solar panels (3,716 m2) on its roof and the roof of the Tata Innovation Center; a canopy made of these photovoltaic cells protects the building from overheating. Part of the roof is greened, which also helps to cool the structure, as well as take in part of the rainwater, which is otherwise collected in a tank with a volume of more than 150 thousand liters and then used for watering greenery, in a cooling tower, etc. Heat pumps with 80 geothermal wells, each 120 m deep, heat and cool the premises.
The complex uses “smart home” technologies that save energy (sensors of user presence, etc.) and ensure safety. The main machinery is located in the room on the roof to reduce the size of the basement floor, as well as to protect it from possible flooding that is prone to Roosevelt Island. For the same reasons, the ground floor, windows and entrance doors are raised compared to the normal level.
The "green" component is the façade with an increased level of insulation; 60% of it is opaque, but the interiors are provided with natural light. Aluminum panels with a polypropylene glycol iridescent coating, with which it is sheathed, also have a decorative function. They are perforated, but the usually removed metal circles are left in their holes - at different angles, which made it possible to create “pixel images” on the facades that can be viewed from a distance. From the side of Manhattan, it shows its skyline, and from the side of the campus, the gorges in the vicinity of Ithaca, New York, where Cornell University is located. 337,500 circles with a diameter of 5 cm were positioned at the required angle in each case by a welding robot converted for this purpose, into whose memory a "map" of future facades was loaded.
On the ground floor of the Bloomberg Center, there is a cafe open to all residents of the island; the atrium lobby and lecture hall are located on the same level. A large staircase connects all the floors of the building, the “gallery” also serves as a unifying purpose, which facilitates informal meetings, discussions and cooperation of students, professors and researchers. Therefore, there are zones of informal communication, and the end and beginning of the "gallery" are given over to meeting and conference rooms.
Given the rapid transformation that the educational process is undergoing today, the layout includes both traditional classrooms and large study areas, as well as small spaces for group and individual work of various types.
One percent of the budget (totaling $ 130 million) was devoted to decorating the building with works of art. In addition to the works of our contemporaries Matthew Ritchie, Michael Riedel, Alison Elizabeth Taylor and Matthew Day Jackson, created especially for the Bloomberg Center, there is an abstract painting by Ilya Bolotovsky: it was created by him in 1942 for the Goldwater Hospital, demolished in 2014-2015 to give place Cornell Tech.
