But it is far from secondhand because of Popova's extraordinary way of building space and her exquisite touch.
For example, a 10,000-square-foot lot would be able to contain 3,250 square feet of building space.
The campus will comprise more than two million square feet of building space at a cost of over $2 billion and will serve more than 2,000 students.
The corporation's chief operating officer Caroline Thomson said yesterday she had ordered a 30 per cent reduction in the amount of building space which the BBC occupies.
According to the USGBC, Leed has been used to certify 13.8bn sq ft of building space in more than 150 countries around the world.
The Green Building Council estimates that the amount of building space addressed by the new core and shell standards is 16 times larger than the owner-occupant market.
Cornell proposed a campus with 2.1 million square feet of building space at a cost of more than $2 billion, accommodating more than 2,000 students, with classrooms, laboratories, housing and a conference center, among other facilities.
In the new arrangement, which has been under discussion for months, Cornell would construct the campus, which could eventually grow to 2 million square feet of building space, and cost more than $1 billion.
The town, which already owned 100 acres of former hospital land, will take ownership of more than a million square feet of building space, including dormitories, a dining hall, theater, gymnasium, and even a morgue.
A few years ago, its directors sold off half of its undulant 240 acres and planned to reduce its 800,000 square feet of building space by more than half.
