Columbia World Projects is a Columbia University initiative to join the resources and discourse of the university with those of the government and private sector to address today's most pressing issues.  Currently housed in a small office on the Manhattanville campus, this studio proposes a full campus in the Hudson Valley where institute members and guest can engage with one another to create viable change. The goal of this project is to not only design a useful and beautiful backdrop to these discussions but to create a resource and economic driver for the local community. 

The 250 acre site is located just north of Kingston, NY and was once home to a massive IBM Computer's plant built in the 1950s.  A cornerstone of Hudson Valley’s once great industrial era, the computer plant was finally closed in the early 1990s and now lays in heaps of rubble.  Using a matrix of site drivers, the campus takes guidance from the surrounding built and natural environment.  Taking into consideration the hundreds of trees scattered across the site, the winding western edge of Esopus Creek and its various flood zones and the divisive train tracks and commercial districts to the east.  Coupled with a thorough program analysis and a substantial focus on public engagement, the result is a series of buildings that are integrated into its surroundings while still being poised for expansion and urban infiltration.

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“Sometimes we form groups, centers, or institutions to encourage connections between different faculty members, schools and departments to focus closely on particular challenges. What universities have not done yet is create institutions that aim, across a broad range of specific topics to connect academic work and broad capacities of the academic community with organizations and parties beyond the academy that posses the power and influence to transform all this into concrete consequences benefiting humanity.”

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- Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia Univeristy

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