No Love for Piano; Plus, The Effect of Expansion

James Russell, the architecture critic for Bloomberg News, pans Renzo Piano's design for the proposed Manhattanville expansion campus of Columbia University. Affirming the "site's historically valuable industrial buildings" and calling the new plans bland, Russell finds Piano's choices aesthetically incongruous with a community already hostile to the university's ambitions: "The size and bulk of the proposed buildings make the streets anything but inviting to the surrounding neighborhood."

Meanwhile, the New York Observer reports on the official environmental impact statement about Columbia's plan. The impact statement's authors affirm community members fearful of rising rents: "While it is impossible to quantify the exact number of at-risk residents who would be indirectly displaced as a result of the Proposed Actions, there is the potential for the indirect residential displacement impact within the primary study area to be significant and adverse."

Bloomberg News: Columbia's $7 Billion Expansion Plan by Piano Fails to Thrill
New York Observer: The Columbia Effect, Detailed