New York University announced today that it would support the designation of the high-rise Silver Towers complex designed by I. M. Pei as official city landmarks.

The three towers were built in 1967 and the Landmarks Preservation Commission indicated today on its website that it has scheduled a calendaring meeting for tomorrow on the two Silver Towers that the university owns and principally house faculty members and a third tower where the university leases the tower to the 505 LaGuardia cooperative corporation.

The three towers surround a large sculpture by Pablo Picasso in a plaza and they are on the north side of Houston Street between West Broadway and Mercer Streets.

In a statement, John Sexton, the university's president, said, that "The planning principles on which we collaborated with local elected officials and community groups are the standards to which we expect to be held. We believe this step is an important one that demonstrates our respect for the 'ecosystem' in which our University exists. Both we and our partners took a major step in developing a relationship of trust last week; we think the action we are announcing today makes real our intention to continue building that trust."

The university had announced an agreement recently with locally elected officials and community groups on principles for a planned expansion of 6 million square feet over the next 25 years.

Subsequently, it disclosed details of some of the expansion plans under consideration including filling in much of the open spaces of two major and famous "tower-in-the-park" housing complexes it owns south of Washington Square Park.

The agreement stated that it will pursue re-use of existing buildings before developing new facilities as well as creating academic and residential centers outside of the Washington Square Park area where it is based and where it has been expanding significantly in recent years.

Mr. Sexton's remarks did not mention the university's plans for another major complex it owns nearby, Washington Square Village, which consists of two very long and handsome slab apartment buildings with colorful facades and sculptural roof elements designed by Paul Lester Weiner in association with S. J. Kessler & Sons in 1960.

"To compromise for the superscale of the slabs and their comparative anonymonity, Weiner and the landscape architects, Sasaki, Walker & Associates, attempted to humanize the open spaces with lavish plantings as well as fountains and ingeniously designed street furniture," Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman noted in their book, "New York 1960, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial."

The university document discussed "filling in the superblock" and presented three "concepts" that would insert new academic and residential buildings between the two Washington Square Village buildings and "attempts to utilize them as a 'buffer' between the new development and the surrounding area.

In the 30-page document presented at an "open house" about its expansion plans last week, the university noted that feedback from the community indicated that "the University must achieve a balance between adding density within its current property footprint and expanding beyond that footprint." The university's document said that it "will seek to utilize and renovate existing buildings prior to seeking development sites for new buildings." It stated that "the South Blocks between Houston and West 3rd Street could accommodate up to approximately 2.5 million additional gross square feet above and below grade," adding that "This is the greatest future opportunity for additional space on NYU-owned property."