Canted, Cantilevered Columbia Medical School Opens

Description-Defying Vagelos Medical Center Was a True Learning Experience

SOW-Columbia — Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center, designed with a brazenly asymmetrical southern half by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

*Photo by Nic Lehoux*

On Aug. 15, Columbia University Medical Center students and faculty will begin using the description-defying Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center, designed with a brazenly asymmetrical southern half by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. On the southern half of the 14-story building, all the floors cantilever and half of them slope; much of the 100,000-sq-ft building’s concrete structural system is exposed. That posed myriad challenges for the structural engineer, Leslie E. Robertson Associates, and the contractor, Sciame Construction LLC, which said the superstructure took 50% longer to build than a regular, repetitive job.

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Nadine M. Post, ENR's former editor-at-large for buildings, is an award-winning journalist with 45 years of experience covering trends, issues, innovations, controversies and challenging projects. Post has written about many industry giants, including 10 ENR Award of Excellence winners. And she has covered disasters, failures and attacks, including the 1993 bombing and the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. Project stories include the redevelopment of the World Trade Center; the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa; Los Angeles’ Disney Concert Hall; and Seattle's Bullitt Center and Rainier Square Tower. In 1985, Post wrote McGraw-Hill's book Restoring the Statue of Liberty (1986) for the restoration’s architects—Richard S. Hayden and Thierry W. Despont.

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