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Renzo Piano Building Workshop puts the finishing touches on 600 W. 125th residential tower for Columbia University

2023-12-27T18:36:00-05:00

Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) is progressing towards the completion of its new 600 W. 125th Street off-campus Harlem housing project for Columbia University in collaboration with CetraRuddy.

Once complete, the 34-story dorm is set to host 142 apartments for graduate students and faculty with another 5,000-square-foot McDonald’s retail location included at the ground level. Thornton Tomasetti is in charge of delivering the building’s facade system. The construction has been engineered to meet LEED v4.0 Gold certification standards and culminates in a total of 177,000 square-feet, including its terraced podium.

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The project is being realized just a few blocks south of the southern edge of Manhattanville, Columbia’s sometimes fraught 17-acre multiphase development that has to date included three other RPBW buildings (the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, Lenfest Center f...

DS+R’s Columbia Business School building opens in Manhattan

2022-02-26T09:00:00-05:00

The important next step in Columbia University’s aggressive campus expansion project has been inaugurated this week with the opening of its new Columbia Business School, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with FXCollaborative, in northern Manhattan.

The school’s fourth incursion into the blocks north of 125th Street marks the end of the first phase of its controversial Manhattanville development scheme.

Columbia Business School and The Square. Photo: Iwan Baan.

Kravis Hall, 12th Avenue Retail facing Riverside Drive Viaduct. Photo: Iwan Baan.

Earlier pushback against the two-decade-long effort had been unable to derail the CU’s largest-ever expansion, which has been steadily taking form after a series of community reinvestment efforts brokered between the school and its neighbors in the mid-2010s.

Construction on the new school building began in 2016 after the firm won an international competition for the $600 million project in 2011.

Kravis Hall Facade. Photo: I...

Renzo Piano about the "idea of openness as an antidote to terrorism"

2017-05-30T13:46:00-04:00

For Renzo Piano, every building should tell a story. The 79-year-old architect is as busy as ever with a workload that spans from Los Angeles to Uganda. With no signs of fatigue in a nearly 50-year career, Piano doesn’t struggle to find meaning in each new project. “I’ve wanted to make buildings since I was a kid,” says the Italian-born architect, who fondly recalls spending time at construction sites with his dad.

CityLab recently sat down with Piano for a conversation that, among other topics, touched on urban peripheries, Columbia University’s new Manhattanville Campus, and "the importance of designing buildings that reject paranoia in a world increasingly concerned with terrorism."

A Manahattan Pianoville, for a new neighborhood by the river

2016-11-13T14:12:00-05:00

a triumph of postindustrial classicism by the ultimate deluxe architect. More a craftsman than a visionary, he conjures steel membranes and glass scrims that seem to float free of their tethers. With beams as fine as pencil lines, he draws planes that seem flatter, volumes more graceful, and angles righter than anyone else’s. ..a mini-city so perfectly ordered and ruthlessly pleasant that by rights it should exist only in the mind.

Justin Davidson visits the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. As the first architectural marker on the new 17-acre Manhattanville campus, which RPBW masterplanned, Davidson looks for clues to the future/past of the new campus/city...