Photo © James Ewing
Knowledge gets crammed into the brain or vaporized in the cloud, but the institutions that feed on it need plenty of actual space. As NYU devours the Village, Columbia infiltrates Manhattanville, Fordham grows new towers, and Cornell annexes Roosevelt Island, it sometimes seems as if Manhattan is turning into a single giant campus. The track record for all this educational architecture is dramatically mixed, and two modestly scaled new buildings a ten-minute walk apart could almost be opposing characters in a two-person play. One school tends to its neighborhood, balancing fresh needs with history; the other treats property as a bank account.