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.

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. 

At 492,000 square feet, the new facilities will provide ample space for collaboration between students in what the school sees as a “non-siloed” new era of business education. The pair of new buildings has effectively doubled the space available at the school’s former Morningside Heights location and together serve as anchors of the SOM and Renzo Piano-master-planned 17-acre campus, which will be completed in 2030.

Situated across from each other overlooking the Hudson River and a new James Corner Field Operations-designed landscaped area known as The Square, each 8- and 11-story building is named after CU mega-donors Henry R. Kravis and David Geffen respectively and hosts a variety of personalized academic and entrepreneurial spaces in addition to two ground-floor areas dedicated towards furthering engagement with the local West Harlem community.

Geffen Hall is distinctive for its “layer cake” appearance created by a fritted glass panel envelope that is thus inset with exposed circulation networks, while across the square, the larger skip truss steel-framed Kravis Hall belies both buildings’ interconnected character with its columnless classroom spaces, sculptural central staircase and alternating open student and faculty floors. 

Each building includes a portion of dining and public retail amenities as well as two 201- and 274-seat auditorium spaces known as the Samberg and Cooperman Commons. The business faculty is now the most expensive of its kind ever built and expects to achieve at least a LEED v3 Gold certification. CU President Lee Bollinger heralded it as a “meaningful moment for our university,” adding that their addition constitutes a “new future” for the 106-year-old graduate program which counts luminaries like Vikram Pandit and Robert F. Smith as alumni. 

“These masterfully designed structures will transform the experience of students who come to Columbia Business School with the goal of becoming prepared to shape the world of business,” he said finally. “And the presence of Business School students and faculty will, in turn, transform the Manhattanville campus, bringing into sharp focus the sort of vibrant academic community we have long contemplated and will now see in its fullness.”