Correct conclusion but lacking explanation

While the review has accurately (it seems to me) panned the building but it doesn’t explain “why?”

Moneo has intelligently stacked the complex program, imparting great flexibility to the labs, and linked the structure to the chemistry and physics buildings with sky bridges, laying the groundwork for greater interaction to occur among the sciences. The building’s transparency furthers this potential for connectivity. But where the building evidences the architect’s great skill at fostering community, it falls short on forging a meaningful conversation with the buildings around it.

The hulking steel and glass building is a jarring addition to Columbia’s classically planned campus and to its mostly masonry architecture. As styles go, Modernism is a great equaliser, able to fit comfortably with almost any style and capable of restating the rules of classical architecture without being sentimental or historicist. But rather then learn from the past, the Northwest Corner Building has regrettably left it behind.

In almost every way (in its materials, its coloration and its bulk) the building tests the limits of acceptability where it concerns its responsibility to the surrounding urban fabric and the greater public realm.

via www.worldarchitecturenews.com

Yet there is nothing but vague explanation. However this photo nails the problem: 3 Rules are ignored. How could the analysis — prospectively by the client and designer or retrospectively by the reviewer — be any simpler?

 

Even more extraordinary, the site is on Broadway at 120th Street: