Growth
Show Quote(From Who’s Your City: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where You Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life)When people—especially talented and creative ones—come together, ideas flow more freely, and as a result individual and aggregate talents increase exponentially: the end result amounts to much more than the sum of the parts. This clustering makes each of us more productive, which in turn makes the place we inhabit even more so — and our collective creativity and economic wealth grow accordingly.”
— Richard Florida
Why NYU Must Grow
Before the University could develop a plan for its physical expansion, it had first to determine its academic goals and priorities going forward. What does New York University seek to be in 2031?
The Case for Space
Based on its vision to create a strong center in New York City that anchors a global academic network, and to do so by enhancing science, maintaining excellence in the arts and the professional schools, and building a stronger sense of community, New York University has established that it will need—at most—an additional six million square feet by 2031.
How NYU Will Grow
In planning for its future, NYU hopes to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit and momentum of the last few decades. At the same time, it recognizes a need for a more disciplined and reflective approach to academic and financial planning, as well as to how it uses existing and new space.
Case Studies
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Soft Matter Research
In 2004, the University created the Center for Soft Matter Research with the hiring of a team of three physics professors from Princeton University, University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Chicago. The Center studies materials which basic units consist of many atoms or molecules, such as biological and synthetic polymers, emulsions, liquid crystals, and nanoparticles. It partners closely with researchers in NYU’s chemistry and biology departments (Arts and Science), mathematics (NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences), biomaterials and biomimetics (NYU College of Dentistry), and engineering (Polytechnic Institute of NYU).
Resources for the Center came from the Partners’ Plan and its funding for cluster hiring to recruit outstanding researchers attracted by the opportunity to work together and build new programs at NYU. While the hiring model has worked well for bolstering scientific research, the Center requires additional space for new facilities and laboratories.
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Center for Genomics and Systems Biology
In 2002, the University established the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, building on outstanding work already under way by NYU biologists. By bringing together some of the world’s leading genomics researchers—who seek to uncover the complex interactions between genes in all organisms—NYU has emerged at the forefront of this new and important field. A new Genomics facility was completed in the Washington Square area in 2010 to maximize the ability of the faculty to conduct cutting edge research.
The Center is currently spread over two disparate and cramped locations. A project to build a permanent home for the Center, begun in 2007 and scheduled for completion in 2010, will add a new 10-story research facility of 70,000 square feet behind the six-story facade at 12-16 Waverly Place—preserving historic context while advancing the sciences. The new facility (third from right in the rendering above) will allow the Center to expand further by attracting six to eight additional faculty members. It will consolidate the faculty into one cutting-edge research home that will have integrated laboratory spaces with room for computational scientists to work beside bench scientists, custom-built research benches, state-of-the-art ground-floor classroom space, and a rooftop greenhouse. The building project allows NYU to compete internationally and to create one of the most advanced teams for genomics research in the world.
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Tisch School of the Arts
The Tisch School of the Arts has a unique need for practice spaces, studios, workshops, and theaters. The school’s Institute of Performing Arts, known for its renowned departments and programs, has produced some of the world’s leading theater artists, actors, designers, directors, and playwrights, and it now has an acute need for additional space. In 1983, the Institute had 500 students and 79,000 square feet of facilities. Today, it has 2,000 students in the same amount of space. The school has planned a transformative expansion and renewal of its facilities for dance; choreography; set, costume, and lighting design; musical theater composition; lyrics and book writing; acting; directing; and stage craft. Such added space would continue to give Tisch students the experience they need to move directly from school into professional Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and regional theaters, as well as world-famous venues.
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Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
With no fewer than 20 undergraduate programs and more than 40 graduate programs in education, performing and visual arts, communication, and health, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development is one of the University’s largest schools. Its graduates are prepared to play indispensable roles in transforming families, schools, neighborhoods, and communities throughout the world.
But the school’s space, occupying portions of six buildings as well as leased or temporary space in six additional sites, can no longer provide for the current uses of the departments that inhabit them, let alone accommodate any expected future growth. Its research capability, in particular, has been significantly reduced because of a lack of space. While the school’s enrollment has grown by 15 percent since 2001, it has had no corresponding increase in its space inventory.
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School of Law Centers
New York University School of Law is home to almost two dozen centers and institutes that serve as models of the kind of interdisciplinary, active research the University will continue to advance in and between its professional schools.
These centers and institutes include programs devoted to criminal justice, voting rights, environmental law, real estate and urban policy, to name just a few, and are operated in conjunction with the Stern School of Business and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, as well as other NYU schools, colleges, and departments. They bring important outside scholars and working professionals to Washington Square, who together with NYU faculty and students conduct vital research, often acting rigorously to improve public and legal policy. New construction already under way at 133-139 MacDougal Street (with the reintegration of a historic theater on that site and shown above, in a 2009 rendering) and renovations at 19 Washington Square North will provide additional space for these centers and institutes, giving them the needed flexibility to meet future demands.
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Health Nexus
A centerpiece of NYU's academic goals for its science programming and professional schools lies in the enhancement of its health corridor, which is along First Avenue just south of the NYU Langone Medical Center. In this area is the NYU School of Medicine, the NYU College of Dentistry and in the next few years the College of Nursing, which will move from the Washington Square area. Future building plans call for a 170,000 square foot building at 433 First Avenue which will house the Nursing College, some expansion of the Dental College and a new bioengineering program.
On top of standard academic needs, these disciplines have substantial requirements for clinical space. Each year, for example, almost 300,000 patients visit the NYU dental clinics—more than any other dental school in the United States and Canada—making it the largest provider of oral health care in the country. The College of Nursing has similar space needs. Furthermore, locating these science disciplines close to one another, along with additional basic science disciplines, will allow for greater research and creative collaboration.
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