The plan—more than 20 percent of which is dedicated to public space—is defined by permeability: there is no fencing or enclosed quad. The Techwalk dictates its layout, which connects Main Street to the north with Four Freedoms Park to the south. Buildings line the Techwalk, and ground-floor interiors host cafés, exhibition spaces, and lecture halls, activating the pedestrian pathways. The campus will be 2 million square feet when complete, hosting 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty, researchers, and staff.

The campus is designed to be resilient and sustainable, with on-site energy generation and buildings built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Passive House, and Net Zero energy standards. To ensure a holistic campus that could balance the needs of a wide variety of stakeholders, the design team created an innovative scorecard method with nine criteria covering both practical and experiential factors. A New York City Economic Development Corporation analysis projected that the campus will generate more than $7.5 billion in economic activity and spur $23 billion in overall economic activity in the next 30 years.