New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro has completed a new medical centre for Columbia University that features a vivid orange "study cascade" occupying the whole south facade (+ slideshow).
The Vagelos Education Center is a 14-storey tower that encompasses classrooms, laboratories and a state-of-the-art medical simulation facility.

The roughly 100,000-square-foot (10,220-square-metre) structure was built on a tight Manhattan plot, which required the architects to implement a vertical design. The resulting tower tops out at 220 feet (67 metres).
"It's a very inefficient logic for an educational building," Diller Scofidio + Renfro co-founder Elizabeth Diller told Dezeen. "We wanted to use the restrictions of the site to make a space that's vertically structured in section, rather than planimetrically."
The building ? which she dubbed a "baby tower" ? features classrooms on the north side that were designed as part of a regular structural grid. However, students and teachers have the possibility of reconfiguring these spaces with a range of mobile furniture and partitions.

The south side encompasses a "study cascade" that runs the entire height of the building. The architects defined this feature as a vertical circulation containing a succession of educational and social spaces.
Rust-coloured terrazzo and Douglas Fir wood veneer panels characterise these various environments from the ground-floor lobby all the way to the to...