Elizabeth Diller of the New York architectural firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro will design two buildings for the Columbia Business School on the Manhattanville campus, the University announced last Wednesday, Jan. 12.
The buildings will be located between 130th and 131st streets west of Broadway and will be constructed for an estimated cost of $500 million.
“They [Diller Scofidio & Renfro] have achieved beautiful, important architectural successes that have been thoughtfully integrated into the surrounding urban fabric. This is the essence of what we are trying to create on Columbia’s new, open campus,” University President Lee Bollinger said in a press release.
Part of the funding will come from Henry Kravis, Business ’69, who donated $100 million to the Business School last October—the largest gift in the school’s history. One of the two buildings will be named the Henry R. Kravis Building.
“Our new facilities will be specifically designed to foster collaboration, communication, and an education that reflects the way business is conducted in the 21st century,” Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard said.
As co-chair of the Business School’s Board of Overseers, Kravis was part of the committee that made the selection of Diller Scofidio & Renfro. At a press conference last October announcing his donation, Kravis said he envisioned a more flexible environment for the school once it leaves its current space in Uris Hall.
“When I went to school, business was all about a professor standing and lecturing,” Kravis said then. “Now, business is all about, ‘I want to know your thoughts—challenge me.’ You have to have flexibility so you can move walls, have small rooms, big rooms.”
The announcement mirrored those ideas. “Our challenge is to support Columbia’s progressive new approach to business with architecture,” Diller said in the press release.
The firm’s co-founder, Ricardo Scofidio, is a graduate of Columbia College, class of 1960, and Charles Renfro holds a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Renfro has been on the faculty at Columbia since 2000.
The firm’s work includes the redesign of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and the construction of the High Line, the urban park on an elevated railway in Chelsea.
This announcement follows the choice of several other high-profile architects for the University’s projects. The recently-finished Northwest Corner Building was designed by Rafael Moneo, while Italian architect Renzo Piano, known for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, is handling the overall Manhattanville development.
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