Just because it's a summer Friday doesn't mean our best and brightest starchitects are taking the day off. Heck no. In fact, today's papers have reveals on not one but two new buildings designed by headline-grabbing talent for our humble metropolis. First we head up to Manhattanville, where Columbia's campus expansion has now been given the legal go-ahead, much to the chagrin of Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reports that the first academic structure that will rise in the new West Harlem campus will be a "luminous building" designed by Renzo Piano, and be dedicated to brains. Specifically, the nine-story Jerome L. Greene Science Center will mix "psychologists, economists, artists and philosophers as well as other scientists, who will work together to decipher the brain from new angles." Those drunken holiday party hookups are going to be wild.
Meanwhile, down at the West Side Rail Yards on 30th Street, the High Line has definitely reached its saturation point of high-profile buildings when the Times unveils a new Diller Scofidio + Renfro building that most people didn't even know was being planned. The Culture Shed, designed in partnership with the Rockwell Group, will be 22,000 square feet of gallery space between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues right where the High Line turns left to wrap around what will one day be the Hudson Yards megaproject. Maybe.
The five-story building will also have "two translucent sheds" that can be rolled out into a plaza to expand the exhibition space. And what will be exhibited? Let this hilariously overdramatic sentence explain: "According to someone involved with the project who was not authorized to describe it and spoke only on the condition of anonymity, the building would be primarily, but not exclusively, for visual art." Give that snitch the chair!
· West Side Project Wins Grant for Urban Design [NYT]
· Columbia Builds on Brains [WSJ]
Loading comments...