The New York Times: The Innovation Campus — Building Better Ideas

Cornell Tech’s future home on Roosevelt Island is leading the charge on innovation in college campuses, The New York Times reports. For what it lacks in traditional classrooms and private offices — opting for a more open floor plan — The Bloomberg Center makes up for in versatility and was designed to encourage collaboration and creativity.

“Being in bigger interactive spaces encourages expansive thinking, while being in a box of a room encourages box thinking,” said Dan Huttenlocher, founding dean and vice provost at Cornell Tech. “Sometimes you need to be in a box to concentrate, but to always sit in a little box is a problem.”

No one has a private office at the Bloomberg Center, the primary academic building, and opaque walls are few. The only spaces faculty members can truly call their own are lockable storage cabinets, with carts for equipment. Traditional classrooms, too, are few — the Cornell Tech curriculum privileges projects over lectures. Instead, there will be options so that people can choose how they like to work, from open-plan spaces by the windows, to a roof deck with a garden, to huddle rooms for groups of five or less.

Read the full article on The New York Times.

Read more about our future campus.