The building is located on the Northwest corner of the University’s historic Morningside Heights Campus designed by McKim, Mead and White in 1897. In addition to the design of urban infrastructure and planning, the project adds approximately 4.500 m2 of laboratory space and 2.000 m2 of classroom, office and study space. It also includes a 1.300 m2 research library, a 170-seat auditorium, a public café and a new entrance to the Campus and the University’s Basketball and Volleyball Gymnasium. All the interior design of these new educational spaces was done by Moneo Brock.
CONTEXT
Constructed above the existing Francis S. Levien Gymnasium, the site conditions posed a significant structural challenge requiring that the new building span over the 125 foot wide facility, while maintaining large open floors for laboratories, whose structural slabs needed to be stiff enough for the use of microscopes and other vibration-sensitive equipment.
DETAIL
This structural feat became the defining gesture of this architectural project. By representing the structural frame on the building façade through the application of aluminum fins oriented in parallel to the frame elements, the design reveals the varied geometry of bracing elements in the resultant patchwork of light and shadow. Even as it appears to incorporate a free arrangement of diagonal truss elements, the structural frame is in fact precisely responsive to a series of eccentric loading factors integral to the design of the building volume and to the internal distribution of programmatic elements within it. The building’s campus facade is almost entirely glass, revealing the interior workings of the building and emphasizing openness and a connection to the campus community.
Besides providing critical program spaces for the University, the building also forms a new gateway to the Morningside Campus, incorporating in its northern end a fluid sequence of brightly and naturally-lit spaces along a path between the street corner and the Campus level some 10 meters higher. All this is fit alongside elevator cores and service shafts within a constrained footprint in the building area not already occupied by the gymnasium.
On this project Moneo Brock Studio collaborated with Rafael Moneo Arquitecto.
CLIENT
Columbia University, Lee C. Bollinger, President
LOCATION
Columbia, New York
GROSS AREA
188,000 sqft
ARCHITECTS
Rafael Moneo, Belén Moneo, Jeffrey Brock
ARCHITECTS TEAM
Benjamin Llana, Spencer Leaf, Andrés Barrón
CONTRACTOR
Turner Construction Company
ARCHITECTS OF RECORD
David Brody Bond, Aedas, William Parson
INTERIOR DESIGN
Moneo Brock
MODEL
Juan de Dios, Jesús Rey, Moneo Brock, Rafael Moneo Arquitecto
3D MODEL
Moneo Brock
PROJECT MANAGER
Turner Construction Company, Charles Whitney
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Ove Arup & Partners Consulting, Daniel Brodkin
ACOUSTICAL CONSULTANT
Ove Arup & Partners Consulting, Daniel Brodkin
COST ESTIMATING
Wolf and Company
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT
Rowan Williams Davies & Irvin
LIGHTING CONSULTANT
Fisher Marantz Stone