Grove of academe

Architectural Review, The, August, 1997 by Catherine Slessor

Columbia University in New York's Morningside Heights is one of America's most venerable institutions. From the 1960s onwards, McKim Mead &White's formal Neo-Classical campus has been accretionally extended on the east side of Amsterdam Avenue. Linked by an elevated bridge to the main campus, the eastern site includes the Jerome L. Greene Hall (designed by Max Abramovitz in 1963) housing Columbia's Law School. Reflecting the uncompromisingly functional values of an early '60s educational programme, Greene Hall lacked any kind of social and amenity spaces. It also did little to enliven or respond to the public realm, taking the form of a rather austere block mounted on a podium, which presented a bald, blank wall to West 116th Street.

This state of affairs has now been tactfully addressed by James Polshek's new addition to Greene Hall. The low slung, three-storey rectangular volume replaces the bald podium and extends along West 116th Street to anchor the corner of Amsterdam Avenue. With its sleek horizontal articulation - strips of steel framed granite alternating with ribbon windows shaded by aluminium brises-soleil - the new intervention forms a sharply elegant counterpoint to the vertical stone mullions of Abramovitz's building above. Moreover, it provides the Law School with a clearly identifiable front door, sheltered by a glazed, delicately scallop-shaped canopy.

Inside, the refined restraint of the exterior is carried through into a series of cool, honorific volumes connected by a three-storey atrium. The ground floor is remodelled as an extended lobby and breakout space for existing classrooms and lecture halls. A ceremonial stair leads up to the main piano noblie level containing a new cafe, student activity spaces and the renovated law library. Wrapped around the narrow atrium is a generously proportioned volume, with handsome, comfortable seating (like an immensely civilised airport lounge), where students can meet, talk and study. Carefully orchestrated changes in scale and levels of intimacy encourage a range of social and academic interaction, from a student faculty debate to individual contemplation. Elevated above 116th Street, the lounge areas command good views of the surrounding campus and the bustle of Amsterdam Avenue below. Light diffuses through the horizontal brisessolelion the long south elevation and a glazed ovoid roof turret, animating and illuminating the spaces. A new student cafe occupies the south-east corner, with a small external terrace for use in clement weather.

A thin wedge of services and circulation separates the lounge areas from the renovated law library, marking the distinction between the formal study zone and the more informal spaces of the lounges. Detailing is spare and elegant, characterised by a consistently thoughtful use of materials that manages to avoid the featureless anonymity of upmarket hotels or office lobbies. Through a responsive and enlightened approach to a potentially awkward programme, Polshek had created a set of dignified, luminous, welcoming spaces that sensitively enhance an important institutional building.