Photographer Iwan Baan has released new images of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's recently completed medical building for Columbia University, which trades a typical educational facility's "boring" horizontal layout for vertical organisation (+ slideshow).
Baan's photos include aerial shots of the new 14-storey building, as well as interior images and exterior perspectives.

The structure, which opened in mid-August, is the New York university's first building entirely dedicated to the medical school.
On its southern facade, the architects included a "study cascade" ? a continuous vertical circulation space that encompasses formal and informal areas for studying and socialising.

"The planning has to do with separating people enough, but congregating them around features that are magnets to move to," Diller told Dezeen. She described the organisation of this sequence as being driven by the attributes of the spaces within above other concerns.

"The cascade's inefficiency is planned inefficiency," said Diller. "It's not about optimisation of every square foot, but optimisation of the quality of light and space that engenders creative and productive work."

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Due to the site's limited footprint, the architects designed the building vertically.

"Most educational buildings are sprawling, flat, and have double­-loaded corridors...