The Northwest Corner Building

Columbia University’s Northwest Corner Building accomplishes several goals the University identified over time: Invest in its natural sciences programs, promote collaboration opportunities within a new building, provide links to other campus buildings, and create campus-wide amenities that would promote student interaction.

The Northwest Corner Building occupies one of its few remaining sites of the densely built Morningside campus. The building spans across a gymnasium in order to maximize the potential of its physically constrained footprint. The facility not only creates the first interdisciplinary science space on the Morningside campus, but also extends its reach via physical bridges to the adjoining buildings housing chemistry and physics, thus completing a connected ring of all the physical science and engineering buildings.

The 188,000-gsf, 14-story building provides 70,000 sf of new lab space for 21 new labs on seven floors. The remaining levels provide space for a new science library, which will free up an additional 30,000 sf in four other buildings by consolidating the libraries of electrical engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology. With the space made available, the new building adds approximately 35 percent more research space to these disciplines.

The 21 new wet labs are planned to maximize flexibility and have the ability to house vibration-sensitive equipment. To ensure that this new building engages the whole campus, it also includes classrooms, a 150-seat lecture hall, the science library, and informal gathering and café spaces.