Columbia University's Lerner Hall by Bernard Tschumi

    The project which we will see is the Lerner Hall Students Center here at Columbia University by Bernard Tschumi designed in 1995 and completed in 1999. In this case we can understand some of the ideas of Bernard Tschumi. It is a challenging project because it is in the historical campus of the Columbia University designed in the late nineteen century by McKim, Mead and White.

Lerner Hall © Flickr- username: Chris Tengi

     The building had to respond to the masterplan, which is rather neoclassical and traditional, so there were certain restrictions of where the building had to be positioned, how big it had to be and more or less it had to respect the facades of the near by buildings. Every other building around it is build out of stone and bricks and that is why Bernard Tschumi also had to adapt the same materials. He had a chance to change that and to add certain transgressions of the neoclassical rules in the central section of the project.

First part of the building © Flickr- username: jonbell has no h

      As you can see the building has three parts. It has the front part, the cafeteria entrance and the lobby. It has the middle part with the ramp staircase and study spaces. And it was the back part with some offices and the auditorium of the building. The building is designed using diagrams. The architect looked at all the functions that had to be hosted in the inside and decided how to distribute them in the space using the circulation and the promenade between these spaces as a way to activate the space, as a way to connect these spaces and to create activities, or to create opportunities for the many activities that we have in this building. You can see the sophisticated design of some of the details that hold the facade which holds a suspended structure. Bernard Tschumi kept the traditional language in the front and the back of the building, a rather postmodern approach, as you can see the front has this brick column right next to the cafeteria, but it is suspended, so it tells us that it doesn't actually have much of a structural function in correspondence to its large volume and big shape. The back part is also kept with traditional materials. If we see in the other side where we have the entrance of the university you can see how the building adapts more or less the geometry and the language of the traditional buildings next to it.

Lerner Hall © Flickr- username: djupp

      The only part where the architect was able to add something different and exceptional was in the center. There he uses all the possibilities of the structure, of the new materials, of this new kind of space to design a space which is quite interesting and innovative. In this part we can see these large ramps that are in fact bridges that go from the two parts of the building. None of the bridges touches the ground. All the bridges in the facade go from the first part of the building to the back part and the entire glass facade is being suspended from these bridges.

The bridges in the middle part  © Flickr- username: fling93

     The architect developed a very unique and rather high-tech technology in the central part of the building where the glass is in fact suspended from the bridges and from these ramps that go through the entire building. The ramps themselves are in fact hanging from the top of the building with the suspenders that are in corners of the building and everything that is in between is in fact hanging from the side building. As you see when we approach the building the entire part below the building is completely free of columns so you have this rather large glass facade, curtain wall, that is not held by the structure that is on the floor but is suspended from the structure of the bridge.

  View from 2nd floor ramp © Flickr- username: tamasrepus

      The space has a big skylight at the center and during the day this big skylight let the light go all the way through the floor to the basement of the building. This is a very important social space, this is the students center so a lot of the students had offices around this space. They use it as lounges for studying , they have tables, the have sofas where they can hang out and meet with their friends. So the central space is in fact the core of the building and the most important part of it in terms of social activities. That is why is highly transparent. During the day when the light go through you can have a lot of people standing on the ramps around and studying, preparing for the classes. At night, when there are no classes in the building and not that many people, the building is transparent so we can see from the outside what is happening in the inside.
 

A view from the plaza  © Flickr- username: InSapphoWeTrust

      It is a space that interacts with the campus and between the activities that are inside the building to the people who are passing right in front of it. This is the only contemporary  building in this neoclassical context so we have a glimpse of the twentieth century when it was designed and build from this traditional and historical plaza at Columbia University.