[1] Finalists included Peter Eisenman, Helmut Jahn, Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, and the winner, Rem Koolhaas.

Koolhaas tracked movements of students across the lot, which led to diagonal passageways as the center's interior thoroughfares.

They also connected to a new cafeteria in a renovated 1953 Commons building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Creating this connection involved battles with believers in the purity of Mies's designs who wished the Commons to continue to stand alone.

Koolhaas's firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture hoped to develop a retail corridor along 33rd Street, at the southern edge of the lot.