Bricks and mortar boards

Columbia Business School’s proposed new Manhattanville campus in New York. The $600m project will form part of Columbia University’s multibillion dollar redevelopment of 17 acres in West Harlem. “There are very few spaces in New York to start such a grand project from scratch,” says Glenn Hubbard, the dean.

Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business is due to complete its $60m McCord Hall this summer. “We needed functionality,” says the dean, Robert Mittelstaedt, of the design, “but beyond this we wanted to make a statement.”

Expanding its West Coast presence, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School moved to new premises in San Francisco in 2012. Today, coffee is consumed by students rather than packed at the historic Hills Brothers building below the city’s Bay Bridge.

Fudan University School of Management will begin construction of its new Shanghai campus early in 2013. Dean Lu Xiongwen says the expansion, with a budget of almost $200m, is necessary to meet growing demand for MBAs in China.

Harvard Business School, whose MBA has been consistently ranked among the top programmes in the world, is expanding its facilities to accommodate growing demand for executive education programmes. Work has started on Tata Hall, overlooking the Charles River in Boston.

The Swanston Academic Building is home to the RMIT College of Business in Melbourne. Completed in July 2012 at a cost of more than $200m, the project is the largest and most expensive undertaken by RMIT.

The foundations of Essec Business School’s new Singapore campus will be laid in February 2013. To open in 2015, the building is “a figurative bridge between European and Asian cultures”, says Pierre Tapie, Essec’s dean.

The Mohali campus of the Indian School of Business welcomed its first students in April 2012. The campus, home to four new research institutes, forms part of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh’s vision of a “knowledge city” in the Punjab.

Rutgers Business School is investing $85m in its New Brunswick campus building, scheduled for completion in August. “We need to attract the creative students that are starting the companies of tomorrow,” says Glenn Shafer, dean of the New Jersey school.

The University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business completed a $70m expansion of its Vancouver home in 2012. The development incorporated the rejuvenation of learning spaces as well as a colourful new façade.

London Business School has bought Old Marylebone Town Hall, to be renovated for classes in 2017. “This landmark fits our image of substance in beautiful buildings… we’re very privileged,” says Sir Andrew Likierman, LBS dean.