Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech Wins 2019 AIANY Design Award

The Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech was recently honored with a 2019 AIANY Design Merit Award for Architecture. In their deliberations, the jury highlighted the balance of spaces of different scales: "It's both the strong exterior form that actually uses two volumes, and then on the inside, an interesting variety of well-scaled interior spaces that are really well choreographed, creating this kind of cascading experience weaving through. In these kinds of academic buildings the scale is really important, and the jury felt that they truly captured the appropriate scale. Intimate spaces and larger spaces were all beautifully knitted together."

The 235,000-square-foot building, developed in partnership with Forest City New York, features expansive, light-filled circulation spaces equipped with terraced lounges that encourage social interaction. Its chameleon-like facade captures changing light conditions and reveals panoramic skyline views, and its 24,000 square feet of photovoltaic panels and elevation above the 100-year flood plain signal Cornell Tech's commitment to designing with an eye towards the changing climate. Together with Morphosis's Bloomberg Center and Handel's House at Cornell Tech, the Tata Innovation Center has helped to establish Cornell Tech's one-of-a-kind Roosevelt Island campus as a hub of innovation and a beacon for resilient design over its first one-and-a-half academic years.