English As a Second Nation: Down on the Corner, Out in the Street

José Rafael Moneo standing within the Columbia campus in front of his first New York project. Photo from the New York Times.

Early reviews are trickling in about a new landmark taking shape in upper Manhattan, Columbia University's new interdisciplinary science building. The tower balances on pillars above a very active gym and fitness center at the corner of Broadway and 120th Street. The design by José Rafael Moneo places a largely glass facade toward the campus interior, but the architect reduced the transparency of the street-facing glass by cladding the tower with a grid of panels striated with diagonal slits on either side of the outer trusses. The textural effect recalls the landscaped hedges that top the group entrance hall of Rafael Moneo's expansion at the Museo Prado. The lowest story remains incomplete and unformed, but it is supposed to hold an inviting public cafe. For a multimedia tour of the construction site visit the campus newspaper's website.

An architect's rendering of the building from 2007 showing the corner of Broadway & 120th Street.

The corner marks the convergence between Columbia, Teachers' College, Barnard, and Union Theological Seminary, and the architectural expression of self-importance for each institution means that no doors presently face onto this space. The presence of a public entrance or convenience on this spot would be a welcome, humanizing addition to the neighborhood. The more troubling relationship for the new structure is one of form and scale.

Columbia's main campus, stretching from 114th Street to 120th Street, largely conforms to McKim, Mead & White's fin de siécle plan for an enclosure of classical learning within classical, brick-faced architecture. The university has largely upheld these two tenets, with the exception of a Renzo Piano-designed student union and a handful of non-Western courses appended to the undergraduate core curriculum. However, the science building has no red brick materials or references to classical architecture. This is the disjunction that prompts former Columbia professor Barry Bergdoll to declare the building "provocative." Bergdoll is also right to acknowledging that the project creates a new focus on the north end of campus. Perhaps the visual role of this building will become clear with the construction of Columbia's new, and somewhat controversial, science-heavy campus in Harlem.