By the fall of 2010, science will have a new home on campus.

The Northwest Corner building, which is expected to cost $179M, will provide 188,000 square feet of space for a number of Columbia's science and engineering departments, currently housed in buildings spread across campus.

University administrators hope that putting the departments under one roof will foster collaboration, as the various disciplines unite to face new challenges. The building is also expected to provide modern lab facilities and help ease the current space crunch.

The building's lead architect, Rafael Moneo, says he tried to understand the original Morningside Heights campus plan, to come up with a design which not only integrates the building into campus, but also opens Columbia to the city outside the gates.

At a reception on Wednesday, he explained his concept of the building. "The McKim, Mead, White, gave me and idea of how the University should be in the city of New York. What is perhaps my very first sense of the thrust of this project for a sense of where the project was."

Although the new building may not look like the existing buildings on campus, the architects are confident in their design.

Mark Wigley, dean of the School of Architecture explained, "if each new building simply superficially imitates existing ones, then the students and the faculty of the new generation are not being respected. What they're getting is a postcard. "

There was one challenge, which the architect and the engineers working on the project turned into an opportunity. Because the gymnasium over which the building is being constructed was not designed to hold any weight from above, the upper floors of the new facility are supported on massive trusses which are in turn supported by columns at the perimeter of the building, leaving a large open space for the campus-level library.

However, the installation of the truss and supporting columns proved to be a major challenge.

Charlie Whitney, a project executive for Turner Construction explained the assembly process: "We had a pretty detailed plan; and you don't want to just drop the building. These are pretty big columns and what we ended up doing was we actually cut the web of each column out and then slowly burnt the flanges, and the building settled."

As construction on the building continues, students and faculty dream about the discoveries that may be made inside.