DSR's previous projects include a building made of mist

Columbia has announced the next step in its plans for Manhattanville. In the wake of a $100 million donation earlier this year, the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been chosen to design the new Business School. The first architects to win a MacArthur Fellowship will draw up plans for two buildings, some of first to join the Jerome L. Greene science center on the new campus.

In a press release issued yesterday, Diller stated: “Our challenge is to support Columbia’s progressive new approach to business education with architecture that participates in pedagogy and that animates a public center within the new campus and its richly layered social and industrial context.”

Although DSR might be more familiar to you as the architects of the High Line, (part 2 opening this spring!), as well as Alice Tully Hall and that cool grass thing at Lincoln Center, the firm has previous connections to the University. Two of the three partners have Columbia degrees: Scofidio has a BA in Architecture, Renfro, a Masters. The firm’s profile also states that they are in the process of designing a tower for the Medical School.

The rest of the projects slotted for the initial phase of Manhattanville expansion are new homes for SIPA, School of the Arts, and for the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering, a public school for high-performing students in Upper Manhattan that opened in a temporary space in 2007, as well as renovations to the University-owned buildings on the south side of 125th Street: Prentis Hall and faculty apartments.