The 61-year-old Transportation Building located at 370 Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn, long home to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s administrative offices, will soon be getting a much-needed facelift. The boxy and grim-faced building—most recently called “an eyesore” by borough president Marty Markowitz—will be transformed into The Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), a new emblem for Brooklyn’s emergence as a center for innovation.
International architecture and design firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates provided renderings of what the future space might look like, although the school has yet to choose an architect or finalize a design.
The renovated building will provide an official home for NYU’s new CUSP program—a joint venture between higher education institutions and tech industry mainstays including IBM, Cisco and Siemens—providing students and faculty with approximately 150,000 square feet of office, administration, classroom and high-tech research space. An additional 40,000 square feet will be earmarked for the creation of incubator spaces for spin-off companies and special office spaces for tech leaders.
These tenants will be connected by a highly visible “network”: a line of shared spaces such as conference centers, common labs, new media spaces, cafes, fitness centers and public gathering spaces, where the academic and business community can mingle alongside the residents of Brooklyn.
The activities within will also be strikingly expressed through a new façade. Visible from any angle, the clear glass ‘linear network’ running through the building will pulse with life 24 hours a day. The rest of 370 Jay Street will be wrapped by a shimmering façade of faceted metal panels that weave across the building, picking up both the reflections of light from the sky and activity from the street.
The development of this state-of-the-art center is projected to be complete in 2017, although CUSP classes will begin in the fall of 2013. For more information, visit http://cusp.nyu.edu.
