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Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center
Columbia University Medical Center
The Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center is a 107,000-sf, 15-story state-of-the-art medical education facility that links students and teachers, function and experience in an interactive, interdisciplinary learning environment, all while creating a new identity and focal point for Columbia University Medical Center’s Washington Heights campus. It aspires to be an iconic facility that heralds a new era in modern medical and graduate education, attracting the world’s top medical students in the process. LERA led the structural design of the project, in addition to performing special inspections.
Envisioned as a vertical campus of stacked neighborhoods, the building’s main feature is the southern-facing “Study Cascade,” containing vertically interconnected study and social spaces that creatively blend function and experience. The façade is a highly articulated all-glass system that is crucial to the building’s expression. In contrast, the northern half of the building is largely uniform floor-to-floor, and is organized for classrooms and administrative space, in addition to a mid-tower mechanical space that supports Anatomy Labs.
The building’s structural design achieves efficiency by embracing the layout of the stacked neighborhoods. The structural system of the Cascade leverages the natural interconnections that come from the unique arrangement of the program spaces of the vertical campus. Single-story walls and ramps connect and stiffen the cantilevered slabs, allowing for savings in the slabs’ post-tensioning, rebar and concrete quantities.
The main structural design challenge was to find vertical load paths through the Study Cascade while respecting the varied spatial planning of the stacked, 2- to 3-story atrium-like clusters of diversified social spaces. To minimize the structure’s impact on these spaces, the cascade floors are supported by a pair of inclined composite concrete columns that are architecturally exposed and cast with high-strength self-consolidating concrete (10 ksi). These two exposed columns slope from the foundation level up to the 8th Floor, directing loads around a column-free auditorium at the base of the Cascade. The thrusts that result from the changes in direction of the sloping columns are resisted by in-floor trusses constructed with post-tensioning and high-strength rebar.
Completed in 2016, the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center stands as a nearly identical realization of the architects’ vision—rarely does a completed building so accurately reflect its original renderings.
Location
Owner
Columbia University
Architect
Lead Designer - Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Executive Architect - Gensler
Awards
Diamond Award - Structural Systems, 2018
American Council of Engineering Companies New York (ACEC NY) Engineering Excellence Awards
Best in Competition, 2017
Architecture Honor Award, 2017
American Insitute of Architects (AIA) New York Design Awards
Visionary Architecture Award, 2017
Society of American Registered Architects New York (SARA NY)
MASterworks Award - Best New Building, 2017
The Municipal Art Society of New York (MASNYC)
Award of Merit - Higher Education/Research, 2017
Engineering News-Record (ENR) New York Best Projects 2017
Award of Merit - Buildings Category, 2017
Post-Tensioning Institute (PTI) Awards
Second Place: Mid-Rise Buildings, 2017
American Concrete Institute (ACI) Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards
Finalist - Excellence in Institutional
Development, 2017
Urban Land Institute (ULI) New York
Best of Design Award - Facade, 2016
Architect's Newspaper (AN) 2016 Best of Design Awards
Finalist - Architecture + Engineering, 2016
Finalist - Unbuilt Institutional, 2016
Architizer A+ Awards
Excellence in Structural Engineering Award, 2015
National Council of Structural Engineers Association (NCSEA)
Excellence in Structural Engineering Award, 2015
Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY)
Award for Innovative Design, 2015
American Concrete Institute (ACI) Strategic Development Council
53rd Annual Roger H. Corbetta Award, 2014
Concrete Industry Board (CIB)