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Northwest Corner Building takes shape
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The skyline of the Morningside Campus was filled out this fall, nearly 115 years after the University began construction in this neighborhood. A glass and aluminum-clad tower designed by renowned Spanish architect José Rafael Moneo now rises 14 stories above Broadway at 120th Street, on the last major lot to be developed on the original six-block campus.
The Northwest Corner Building will be home to researchers working at the intersections of chemistry, engineering, biology, and physics. It will be connected via suspended walkways to abutting science buildings Chandler and Pupin, in order to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. Construction is scheduled to be complete by the fall of 2010.
The building, which is estimated to cost $179 million, will enliven a rather sleepy section of campus. An unadorned, 30-foot-tall brick wall has long loomed over the sidewalk on Broadway just south of 120th Street, encasing the Dodge Fitness Center. The ground level of campus there rests atop the fitness center, two stories above the street and concealed from passersby. There’s no campus entrance within 450 feet in any direction.
The Northwest Corner Building’s main entrance will be a large windowed lobby on this street corner, with escalators leading up to a café and to a high-ceilinged science library. The café and library will be surrounded with windows, such that academic activity will be visible from the street. The new building thus will be unique to the Morningside Campus in that passersby will be able to easily view academic life on the inside.
Moneo says that by opening up this corner of campus he aims to create a passageway to the 17-acre campus extension that Columbia is planning to develop in Manhattanville, further northwest at 125th Street, over the next two decades.
“The north side of campus has always been Columbia’s backyard,” Moneo says. “I want to enhance the University’s presence here and connect it to the city.”
