Renzo Piano Building Workshop has cantilevered the gallery and performance spaces at the top of this off-white arts school, which was designed for Columbia University's new campus in Upper Manhattan. Renzo Piano Building Workshop has cantilevered the gallery and performance spaces at the top of this off-white arts school, which was designed for Columbia University's new campus in Upper Manhattan.

Piano collaborated with architecture firm SOM on the masterplan of the wider site – a former industrial area sandwiched between two elevated transport arteries – and designed several buildings for the campus. The Italian architect's first, a light-filled neuroscience research facility named the Jerome L Greene Science Center, opened at the end of last year.