Mort Zuckerman and a rendering of Columbia’s Manhattanville campus

Construction crews at Columbia University’s 17-acre expansion project are working on a 450,000-square-foot research institute endowed by Boston Properties CEO Mort Zuckerman that will be dedicated to understanding the human brain, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, slated to open in 2016, will explore several areas of neuroscience, including human behavior and diseases of the brain. It is the first of 15 buildings in Columbia’s new $6.8 billion Manhattanville campus…. [more]

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim Museum

A massive collection of Frank Lloyd Wright artifacts is moving permanently to New York City. Approximately 23,000 architectural drawings, 40 large-scale models, 44,000 photographs, 600 manuscripts and nearly a third of a million pieces of correspondence by the famed architect were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art and Columbia Unviersity’s Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, the New York Times reported. [more]

La Casa Italiana (credit: PropertyShark)

A new lawsuit against Columbia University does not seek money, but rather changes in order to bring a building more in line with the donors’ intended goals, the New York Times reported.

The property in question is La Casa Italiana, at 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, a city landmark built in the 1920s by an assorted group of Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans. The structure, to which Columbia University has a 500-year lease, previously served as a center for Italian education at the university. [more]

Lee-Ann Pinder and Chipped Cup cafe

Like the reputation of the founding father for which it’s named, Hamilton Heights is undergoing a revival thanks to surrounding economic conditions, Crain’s said. The addition of Columbia University’s $6.3 billion expansion, City College of New York’s $600 million science campus, the $15 million renovation of Alexander Hamilton’s 210-year-old home and the growing popularity of Trinity Cemetery are attracting more young people to the area between 135th and 155th streets west of Edgecombe Avenue. [more]

From left: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger

Columbia University will build a new center for data sciences and engineering with $15 million in help from the city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger announced today. The new institute, which will be located at Columbia’s Morningside Heights and Washington Heights campuses, will be funded in part by the city’s Applied Sciences NYC initiative, which also brought CornellNYC Tech, the new Roosevelt Island project, to fruition. [more]

Renderings for the Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Columbia medical school building, slated to rise in Upper Manhattan

There was a time, a long time, when it seemed as though the firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro wasn’t doing much of anything. The architects gave lectures to like-minded vanguardists, designed art exhibitions and made art, or something like it. And they conjured up numerous projects that never left the drawing board.

Then, all of a sudden, they became incandescently hot, and now they seem to be everywhere. You could be excused for thinking that there was not a cultural project on New York’s architectural horizon that they do not have a hand in. They have reconceived Lincoln Center’s public spaces — not counting the buildings themselves —and have greatly improved and made more pleasant the public’s interaction with that 50-year-old cultural superblock. This firm was also responsible for the two completed installments of the High Line, and for the third one that is still a year or two away. [more]

A model of Fordham University’s under-construction law school, which is scheduled to be finished in about two years

From the June Issue: Throughout the past year, some of New York City’s most conspicuous real estate ventures have been buildings developed by institutions of higher education — a sector that’s undergoing a massive (and very public) infrastructure expansion. But projects on such an imposing scale do not go up in this town without a great deal of controversy. [more]

The March collapse at 606 West 131st St. (credit: DNAinfo)

A Brooklyn-based contractor that was once connected to organized crime is hitting back at Columbia University with a lawsuit after the school fired it from a demolition project following a fatal accident.

Breeze National — a demolition firm that’s torn down high-profile structures such as Shea Stadium in Queens — alleges in a suit filed Friday in New York State Supreme Court that Columbia wrongfully terminated it without cause after a worker was killed in a March accident at the school’s Manhattanville development site. [more]

The March collapse at 606 West 131st St. (credit: DNAinfo)

Following the collapse of a West 131st Street building in March, Breeze National, the Brooklyn-based, mob-connected demolition company that was running this project and others for Columbia University’s expansion, has been taken off the job, the Daily News reported.

As The Real Deal previously reported, one of the buildings the company was demolishing at 606 West 131st Street collapsed in March, killing one worker and injuring two others. The family of Juan Vicente Ruiz, Sr., the worker who died in the accident, is suing Columbia University, alleging that the construction site was unsafe. [more]

From the May issue: Good news for graduates: While there are still more applicants than job openings in New York City real estate, sources say conditions are getting better. “The hiring environment has improved substantially from the last couple of years,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University. “It’s not as strong as it could be, but there is definitely more interest out there.”

Chakrabarti said he’s seeing an uptick in the number of real estate investment, financial and private equity firms now looking to hire Columbia students. (He declined to name specific companies recruiting at the school, however.) Meanwhile, at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, 60 companies attended the institute’s recent job fair, up from 40 last spring, the school said. [more]