Columbia University Medical School, NYC, USA
for
ass arch
structure
landscape
role
status
year
DS+R
Gensler
Lerhrer & Associates
Scape
Project Director DS+R
Built
2016
The new 99,000 sf, 14 story tower houses the Medical and Graduate Education Programs while functioning as the principal social/gathering space for student life. The program for the building includes the following principal elements: Ground Floor Lobby and Lounge; Ground Floor Café; Auditorium, Large Lecture Room/Event Space; Classrooms; Administrative; Sky Cafe/ Student Commons; Outdoor South and West facing terraces; Simulation and Clinical Skills Center; Anatomy Lab.
The building design, an international competition winning entry, proposes a new “vertical campus” for the MEB with a carefully considered vertical distribution of program whereby the building’s public and high-occupancy spaces are located in the 5-story base above which the two three-story Academic Neighborhoods are organized around the two-story Floor Commons/Café starting on the 10th Floor.
As a further nuance to this organization the building’s design locates all the social and public spaces in a vertical stack at south face of the building forming a dynamic and expressive “Study Cascade”. This continuous social space, with its multi-story glazed façade to maximize access to light and the spectacular views to the south is unified by an independent vertical circulation system that supports social interaction while promoting the city’s Active Design Guidelines. The “Study Cascade” interiors are complemented by a distributed network of south-facing outdoor “rooms” and terraces that are clad with a rainscreen of light-gray colored Glass Fiber Reinforced Cement panels and wood.
Balancing the bold gesture of the Study Cascade to the south, Classrooms, Clinical Simulation, Administration and Support Spaces are located with a more discreet and subdued expression to the north. The cladding at the north is a combination of light-gray colored Glass Fiber Reinforced Cement panels punctuated by horizontal strip windows designed to integrate in color and scale with the neighborhood’s predominantly masonry structures. An exo-skin of fixed painted-aluminum shading elements improve the energy performance of the glazing while allowing daylight and views. These elements also serve as a frame and sheath from which the south glazed cascade dramatically emerges.
The “Study Cascade” is the principle design element for the MEB and it is at once an interior strategy providing the school with a distributed wood-lined “commons” for informal learning and social interaction, while at the same time achieving the status of an urban gesture that, with the transparent façade to the south, takes the energy of the street and turns it vertical up along the southern face of the building to become a visual landmark at the northern limit of the Columbia Medical Campus
