Up, Down, Side to Side: Columbia's New Campus Rumbles to Life
The bustle across Columbia University's emerging Manhattanville Campus is offering a rare window on a mega-development that has not only reshaped a neighborhood but has also become a showcase for innovation. "Top-down" construction, double-skin facades, a first-ever LEED designation and even sweeping noise mitigation are making the $6.3-billion campus notable for more than its massive 6.8-million-sq-ft, two-decade scope.
The development—spanning 17 acres of Manhattan mostly bounded by 125th Street, Broadway, 12th Avenue and 134th Street, just blocks from the main Morningside Heights campus—broke ground on infrastructure work in 2008 and has progressed unconventionally since then.
The biggest departure has involved the project team —led by a joint venture of Lend Lease and McKissack Group, along with Mueser Rutledge as foundation and geotechnical engineer—working below grade and above grade on the first three buildings all at once. The two-pronged approach grew from the site's difficult subterranean features, says Philip Pitruzzello, vice president for the campus development effort in Columbia's facilities and operations department.
"The 125th Street corridor out to the Hudson is an area that used to be an estuary, so there's a very high water table and the bedrock is very low," Pitruzzello says.
That led to the team excavating basements and foundations under the nine-story, 450,000-sq-ft Jerome L. Greene Science Center; the 50,000-sq-ft Lenfest Center for the Arts; and a 60,000-sq-ft central utility plant while simultaneously erecting steel for those structures.
The linchpin for the dual effort was first finishing a "bathtub" perimeter foundation and slurry wall system to keep water out, and then drilling deep 8-ft-dia caissons for columns to support a slab on which structural steel rose, says Steven Sommer, senior vice president and principal in charge of Lend Lease Americas. The team even topped out on Greene in October 2013, several months before it "bottomed out" on the building's foundations with the final slab pour in February 2014.
"Top-down is widely used in Boston and in areas that are prone to a high water table," Sommer says. "It saved probably in excess of a year on the overall schedule."
Long Road
The troublesome underground features had curbed high-density development in the area, but Columbia's long-term institutional perspective made the effort worthwhile, Pitruzzello says.
But the obstacles went well beyond foundation issues. One was assembling the site via property acquisitions, and in some cases, through eminent domain by the state government after a 2010 ruling by New York's top court that dismissed a lawsuit challenging the process.
Columbia also navigated an extensive master planning design process, led by architects Renzo Piano Building Workshop and SOM. And in 2007, the school tackled the required battery of government environmental and rezoning approvals—all super-sized given the development's scope—as well as varied efforts to meet with community groups, Pitruzzello says.
Work began soon after in 2008 on the sewer upgrades, wrapping up in 2012, while the slurry wall work ran from January 2011 to October 2013. The team dug trenches as deep as 180 ft below street level, filled them temporarily with a bentonite slurry mix and ultimately with reinforced concrete in panels 3 to 4 ft thick and 9 to 29 ft long, Sommer says.
One wall runs along the southern perimeter of the site; another extends north to 131st St. and west to 12th Avenue, covering areas of future development. "What Columbia did proactively is create the slurry wall for many years to come," Sommer says.
Foundation and steel work began in spring 2012 on the three new structures, all of which were designed by Renzo Piano. The first building, Greene Science Center, topped out in October 2013; the second, the central plant, sits under the Lenfest arts building below grade and will power the whole campus; the third, the Lenfest arts building itself, topped out last October.
While Columbia declined to share project budgets, major donors contributed $250 million for Greene and $30 million for Lenfest. Curtain walls for those two buildings are fully enclosed, with both set to open in the fall of 2016, Pitruzzello says.
"That requires a high degree of teamwork and collaboration and communication," he adds.
Going Platinum
Sustainable construction and design resonates across the entire program, from the master plan to each of the 17 buildings planned, feeding the vision to distinguish Manhattanville from the hulking stone structures on the gated main campus, says Antoine Chaaya, architect at Renzo Piano.
"This [new campus] is open to the city, very transparent, luminous," Chaaya says, citing its preservation of the existing street grid and features from parks to publicly accessible ground floors that welcome the community.
Those features notched the first-ever Platinum certification for a university campus from the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED-ND for neighborhood development pilot, which Columbia earned alongside LEED-NC status for the new buildings. The LEED-ND designation gave credit for proximity to bicycle and greenway paths on the nearby Hudson River, access to subway and bus lines, extensive community outreach programs and plans to widen sidewalks and plant trees, Pitruzzello says.
"One of the challenges … Columbia addressed very well was [how] they committed to very long-term goals for this campus," says Nico Kienzl, director for Atelier Ten, environmental design consultant on the project.
The new buildings also bolster Manhattanville's sustainability profile with an automatic interior shade system and natural lighting for many of the 60 labs in Greene and key spaces in Lenfest, such as its multipurpose rehearsal room and theater, Chaaya says.
The buildings also feature chilled beams, radiant heat on building perimeters, low-flow water fixtures, high-efficiency wastewater pumps and a reflective roof, Pitruzzello says.
The double-skin facade on sections of both Greene and Lenfest—widely used in Europe but seldom in the U.S.— is another prominent feature. The system pushes low-velocity air between two laminated glass panels, creating a layer of insulation. For Greene's labs and Lenfest's theater, the system muffles noise, Chaaya says.
"We had to deal with some acoustic mitigation," he says, citing a need to cut the subway's 88 decibels down to 44. "This challenge you cannot accommodate with a conventional facade."
It also serves as a barrier for extreme temperature by having cold air circulate through the facade in summer and warm air in winter.
The buildings use triple-pane glazing on other parts of the facade where sound and solar heat are less troublesome, Kienzl says. "We have a very differentiated facade for different orientations," he adds. "That was a really complex but fun piece to work on … a productive collaboration."
Clean Construction
Another big sustainable push was reducing the impact of dust, noise, waste, emissions and even rodents from the site.
An 11-ft-high perimeter fence, angled inward and covered with sound blankets around construction zones, muffles the onsite din, while self-adjusting truck backup alarms modulate warning beeps to the ambient noise level, Sommer says. To control dust and emissions, the team has installed diesel particulate filters on all equipment, employs wheel and under-chassis washers on all trucks leaving the site and strives to use electric equipment instead of diesel, he says.
"We have had some contractors roll their eyes," Sommer says. "It's a learning process."
In addition, the team has recycled 95% of debris from 42 demolished buildings on site and is sending all drywall scraps back to manufacturers through a new recycling program, he says.
Many methods the team has used to date will apply to future projects on campus, including a conference and office center already in design and renovations to a former Studebaker auto plant, Pitruzzello says. The work will progress based on academic needs and fundraising capacity, he adds.
"The plan is over multiple decades," he says. "The great thing about the plan is it gives us flexibility to move at different paces."
