Columbia Business School: We Design for a Collaborative Academic Community

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Built EnvironmentBuilt Environment

Industry

Higher Education

Location

United States

Columbia Business School’s new 492,000 square foot, dual-building campus unites students and faculty in Manhattanville’s Factory District. To ensure high acoustic performance in this mixed-use environment, Cerami, part of Trinity Consultants, delivered custom solutions including specialized curtain walls, interior glass partitions, and HVAC noise control — creating quiet, collaborative learning spaces with openness and transparency.

Challenge

Both buildings are constructed with a “layer-cake design,” each utilizing custom curtainwalls and interior glass partitions to achieve a sense of openness and allow as much natural light into the space as possible. However, the site for the business school sits near the west side highway and elevated train lines, which poses many environmental noise challenges. It was imperative to mitigate noise impact from these external sources and recommend properly attenuated glass for the building’s facade. Cerami’s acoustical team conducted an extensive review of the exterior glazing to ensure proper interior noise levels were achieved and create a comfortable learning environment for the students.

 

Solutions

The school’s internal spaces are organized around intersecting networks of social and collaborative learning environments throughout the communicating stairs. To ensure proper sound separation between floors, Cerami’s acoustical team worked closely with the design team to develop tailored acoustical designs for the programming. Furthermore, careful consideration was provided for the glass partitions in lecture halls to control acoustical separation and optimize interior room acoustics for maximized speech intelligibility.

Services Performed

The team designed custom curtain wall systems for acoustic isolation and developed interior glass partitions to balance sound control with transparency. They engineered solutions to mitigate HVAC noise and vibration, providing effective sound isolation for classrooms, offices, meeting rooms, and open collaboration areas.

Results

Columbia’s dual-building campus now anchors the Factory District with quiet, comfortable, and open collaborative spaces. Cerami’s acoustic design ensures students and faculty enjoy high-quality soun environments that match the school’s vision for connected, modern learning.

492,000 sq ft

Campus

HVAC

Noise Control