A new cityscape, 17 years in the making, is rising at the corner of 125th Street and Broadway in the West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. Just beyond a century-old viaduct, on a sliver of a block—where, not long ago, a sign reading “Dear Columbia: No Forced Displacement” hung above a gas station—stands a gleaming structure of metal, glass, and concrete panels.

The Forum, as it’s called, is the third component to open at Columbia University’s new Manhattanville campus. A massive uptown expansion of the school, the $6.3 billion project will transform more than 17 acres, or about 7 percent, of West Harlem into a multidisciplinary academic hub, complete with a master plan by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and SOM that achieved LEED Platinum certification for neighborhood development. Situated at the site’s southeastern-most corner, the Forum—which will host conferences and events and house Columbia World Projects, an initiative to address global issues—may prove a case study of how one of the city’s largest landowners can coexist with a community.