Providing a new home that reflects the entrepreneurial spirit of New York City, Snøhetta has completed the Cornell Tech Hotel and Education Center. The project includes two buildings connected by a planted entry plaza and links a 36,5000 square-foot business conference centre with a 196-room hotel tower.
Upon arrival on the campus, visitors are greeted by the softly curving surfaces and glimmering double-height aluminium panels of the 18-storey hotel. V-shaped columns announce a ground-level bar opening that leads into the shared courtyard while continuous soffits run from the entry along the perimeter of the ground level. The four-storey conference centre meanwhile is embedded into the campus and is clad with vertically oriented wood louvres that contrast in a complementary way with the hotel tower’s metallic panels.
Connected physically by the courtyard and a sinuous soffit, the two buildings play off each other visually, catching and reflecting sunlight. Transparent glass panels along the base connect the interior assembly spaces with the adjacent courtyard, extending views from the main campus entry both into and through the building.
Snøhetta Director and Senior Architect Michael Cotton explain: " As we worked through the design, we found that creating a unified base wrapping a shared courtyard offered the best way to bring together the two projects while also providing a functional podium supporting the individual use of each building. What results is a study in contrasts linked by public space: the hotel, tall and slender, uses the public realm to connect with the VEEC, which is low and soft by comparison."
The two connected buildings furthermore share back-of-house services enabling each to optimize the efficiency of their respective programs. The conference center features a large, flexibly designed banquet hall with four multi-purpose classroom spaces, each oriented in axis with views of the campus and city.
By contrast, the modest and centrally located educational building is defined by an organic form, intimate scale and warm materials. Vertical aluminium louvres finished with western red cedar clad the middle two classroom floors. These louvres are spaces and angled to take advantage of views to the city, highlighting the proximity of the project to the urban core of New York City.
