Columbia University
Northwest Corner Building
New York, NY

188,000 sf • LEED® GOLD • WITH Rafael Moneo & Moneo Brock Studio

Beginning in 2002, Columbia identified a need to invest in its natural sciences programs, and a subsequent program report further identified the need to promote collaboration opportunities within a new building, to provide links to other campus buildings, and to create campus-wide amenities that would promote student interaction. Recently completed, the Northwest Corner Building has addressed these goals. Located in the densely built Morningside campus, the Northwest Corner Building occupies one of its few remaining building sites. The building spans across a gymnasium in order to maximize the potential of its physically constrained footprint. The facility not only creates the first interdisciplinary science space on the Morningside campus, but also extends its reach via physical bridges to the adjoining buildings housing chemistry and physics, thus completing a connected ring of all the physical science and engineering buildings.

The 188,000-gsf, 14-story building provides 70,000 sf of new lab space for 21 new labs on seven floors. The remaining levels provide space for a new science library, which will free up an additional 30,000 sf in four other buildings by consolidating the libraries of electrical engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology. With the space made available, the new building adds approximately 35 percent more research space to these disciplines.

(Photography by Michael Moran and Wade Zimmerman)