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 NORTH CAROLINA
STATE BOARD OF COMMUN
ITY COLLEGES
LIBRARIES
CAPE FEAR COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
 it=

iif
 CAMPUS

ARCHITECTURE
 CAMPUS
ARCHITECTURE
BUILDING IN THE
GROVES OF ACADEME

RICHARD P. DOBER, AICP

McGraw-Hill

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dober, Richard P.
Campus architecture : building in the groves of academe / Richard
P. Dober.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-07-017185-8
1. College buildings—Designs and plans. 2. Campus planning.
3. College facilities—Planning. I. Title.
LB3223.D599 1996
378.1°96° 2—dc20 95-53779
(Cie

Copyright © 1996 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by
any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.

L294 507 990 ISGPAKGP OOLDODS

7

ISBN 0-07-017185-8

The sponsoring editor for this book was Wendy Lochner, the editing supervisor was
Jane Palmieri, the designer was Silvers Design, and the production supervisor was
Suzanne W. B. Rapcavage. It was set by Silvers Design.

Printed and bound by Quebecor/ Kingsport.

All photographs by Richard P. Dober unless otherwise credited.

McGraw-Hill books are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales
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the Director of Special Sales, McGraw-Hill, 11 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011. Or
contact your local bookstore.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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 CONTENTS

Preface ix
Acknowledgments Xli

CHAPTER 1. PROSPECTUS 1
Modern Campus Architecture: Prelude and Promise 1
Emergence, Decline, and Enigma 11
Selections and Emphases 34
Revitalization, Restoration, Regeneration 47

CHAPTER 2. BUILDING TYPES as

Functional Diversification 53
Athletic and Physical Recreation 60
Classrooms and Faculty Offices 67
Visual and Performing Arts 71
Campus Centers 77
Support Facilities 84
Libraries 87
Laboratory Buildings 104
Modularity, Systems, and Building Complexity 114
The Almighty Wall and Great Walls = 127
A Horizon View = 136
Campus Housing 138

CHAPTER 3. CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE DEFINED 157

Chaos or Control: Architectural Enigmas 159
Fundamentals 160
Trolling Through the Sea of Definitions 166

UN
 Campus Architecture 174
Buildings Not Campus Architecture = 177
Campus as Landscape 177
Symbol 186
Philosophy 189
Instructive 192

CHAPTER 4. PARADIGMS AND PROJECTS 195

A Principle Reinterated 195
Paradigms 196
Choices and Decisions 205
Klauder’s Clarity 213
New Forms/No Apologies 214
Mies 216
Gropius 216
Saarinen the Elder 218
Demise and Resurrection 221
Origin of Species 225
Paradigms and Projects: A Taxonomy Applied 228
Groves 231
Closed Quadrangles 231
Courtyards and Atriums 235
Plazas 239
Greens and Lawns 246
Open Quadrangles 252

Bibliography 253
Index 255

vi Contents
 bPaReh eA i

HIS BOOK describes, defines, and documents campus architecture,

designs that serve and celebrate uniquely our time, taste, temperament,
and technology. Organized to give guidance and inspiration to all respon-
sible for improving and extending the extraordinary physical heritage bestowed by
earlier generations on our colleges and universities, the book focuses on building
types insufficiently represented in many critical annals and reference works. We
record with pleasure for peers and professionals the practicable and the visionary,
the process and the product. We underscore the receptivity of the American cam-
pus for new ideas as evident in its best campus plans and building designs as well
as the emerging commitment to the conservation of architectural legacies and the
natural environment.
Obviously a vibrant mix of many influences, campus architecture can be inter-
preted and explained in many ways. Buildings can be evaluated by their appearance,
by how well they function, by their siting, and by their contribution to their over-
all physical environment. Stretching over time as they do, a selection of campus
buildings can also be construed and narrated as a history of building technology, or
interior design, or theory actualized. A book elucidating the works of great people—
a Michelin-like guide to memorable places—this book is not, though reference is
and should be made to landmark structures and sites. Some of these are the quirky
and quaint residue of lost causes, both the degeneration of traditional architecture
and the demise of modern idioms. Buildings of originality and substance will get
their due, as well as examples they inspired, a few unremembered because they are
in the hinterland and have been less exposed to publicity. Threaded through the
exposition will be a plea for campus landscapes, the consummate companion of
admirable buildings. Pieced together, our amalgamation and assimilation of defini-
tions and descriptions is intended to yield an efficacious synthesis which may dis-
close precedents and principles useful in shaping future campus architecture.

1x
 Critical judgments and recommendations, aside, for the casual reader and pro-
fessional alike, our account should also give cause to appreciate college and uni-
versity architecture as a three-dimensional record of aesthetic achievement, ranking
with agoras, forums, cathedrals, capitols, opera houses, and railroad stations as cul-
tural monuments indicative of their period and its aspirations. Some of the docu-
mentation we will cite will also include a critical gloss on the parade of styles. Our
view of the march by is necessarily selective, not encyclopedic. Of special interest
is the emergence of mid-twentieth-century Modern architecture as a suitable vehi-
cle to serve and support the extraordinary growth in higher education which
occurred in the same years (and the prelude and aftermath). How propitious?
Noted one knowledgeable observer in 1930: “But let us look back at the universi-
ty buildings, anywhere, everywhere, even the ones being built today; and unfortu-
nately we will know that no breath of Modern rationalization has disturbed the dust
back where learning begins.” The sequence and impact of change in attitude and
substance surround the core of our discussion.
Here, then, is one leading question: If diversity and variety are desirable traits,
are there features that all good college and university buildings share in common—
transcendental features that are associated with campus architecture? That question
is at the core of our inquiry and suggested design direction. After examining build-
ing types and their features, we will then attempt to establish a definition of campus
architecture which fits the overview of cause and effect and changing circumstances.
This, in turn, leads to descriptions of paradigms and exemplary projects. Among
thousands of possible case examples, those chosen were selected to chronicle typi-
cal situations, a range of functions and geographic areas, a variety of institutions,
and an assortment of amenities and ambiance. The commentary is salted with
quotes which reveal intransigent intentions and transitory convictions—how
delightful and instructive to observe and appreciate the shifting sands of aesthetic
canons, how marvelous to see colleges and universities providing the cause and
venue for innovation and invention, how rewarding to experience the great work
noveau et anciens ensemble. Throughout we give evidence that colleges and univer-
sities will continue to be patrons, providers, and proprietors of campus architec-
ture. Forty percent of the American population has spent one or more years on
campus, a percentage likely to increase (that statistic alone supports the subject’s
importance).
This chronicle is followed by a discussion and outline of the essential procedures
for creating new campus architecture and reconstructing legacy buildings and sites.
The material includes homage to the variety and vitality of existing bastions of
authenticity as well as comments on some schemes whose design expectations were
never (or not yet) realized. In addition to new buildings and sites, the representa-
tive group of projects also covers the revitalization and regeneration of older struc-
tures and landscapes. Having matured, most American campuses will not remain
vital if they neglect to maintain their hard-won architectural heritage, both the built
environment and binding greenery. We conclude with sources and an index.
Campus Architecture also completes the author’s trilogy, almost 40 years in the
making. The first work, Campus Planning, laid out methods for melding the new
and old constituent components of a campus plan so each would contribute to an

x Preface
overall development concept. Campus Design indicated how such concepts could be
infused with a distinctive sense of institutional purpose and locale through place
making and ‘place marking. Campus Architecture gives guidance and support for par-
adigms and projects—buildings, landscapes, and site features, which, through sys-
tematic planning, programming, design, and construction, connect the broader
visions of institutional purpose and place with three-dimensional specificity. It is
hoped that all three books will serve as an illuminating account of how the plan-
ning and design professions affected higher education during a historic growth peri-
od and will encourage others to articulate and disseminate in the years ahead addi-
tional ideas and concepts about campus development as an environmental art,
charged with social and cultural significance and worthy of the special efforts that
such architecture requires from all who participate in its formulation.

Richard P. Dober, AICP

Preface x1
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Arthur J. Lidsky and Charles A. Craig provided a place, encouragement, and many
reasons for starting and completing this book. Professional colleagues and institu-
tional staff responded generously and promptly to my request for information, pho-
tos, and drawings. Given their busy lives and many demands on their time and
their other obligations, I am particularly grateful to the following: Elizabeth Ahern
(Finegold, Alexander + Associates, Inc.); Calvert W. Audrain (Art Institute of
Chicago); James Baird (Holabird & Root); Jean Marie Bath (Hardy Holzman
Pfeifter Associates); Peter Blankman (Union College); Stanley G. Boles (Boora
Architects); Kate Brannelly (Earl R. Flansburgh + Associates, Inc.); Ignacio F.
Bunster-Ossa (Wallace Roberts & Todd); Sandy Burrows (Lycoming College); Ian
Caldwell (Imperial College of London); Jill Capanna (Anshen + Allen); Dixi
Carrillo (EDAW, Inc.); Lois Carleton (Sir Norman Foster and Partners); Ginger
Hall Carnes (Palo Alto College); Perry Chapman (Sasaki Associates, Inc.); Karen
Clark (The Colorado College); Cami Colarossi (Goucher College); Geralyn M.
Comeau (Shepley Bulfinch Richardson Abbott); Roger Courtney (EDAW, Inc.);
Keith Covey (Carleton College); Alan K. Cubbage (Drake University); Charles E.
Dagit, Jr. (Dagit + Saylor Architects); William D’Elia (Kaplan * McLaughlin «
Diaz); Ann Dumas (Perkins & Will); Janet L. Durkin (Smith College); Esherick
Homsey Dodge & Davis; Brian Falk (High House Studio); Laurence H. Fauber;
Moe Finegold (Finegold, Alexander & Associates, Inc.); Ira Fink (Ira Fink and
Associates); Robert D. Flanigan, Jr. (Spelman College); John Giboney (Pomona
College); Kenneth A. Gifford (State University Construction Fund); Janis D.
Gleason (Emory University); Karen Handle (Wabash College); Patrick C.
Harrington (Boora Architects); Jennifer Harris (Pasanella + Klein, Stolzman +
Berg); Kevin Hart (Simon Martin-Vegue Winklestein Moris); Paul Helpern
(Helpern Architects); Kevin Herd (The University of Iowa); Clint Hewitt
(University of Minnesota); Bonnie J. Hill (Hamline University); Indiana
University; Greg Johnson (The University of Iowa); M. Elaine Justus (Benedictine
College); Cindy Keig (Oklahoma State University); Kent State University; Billy
Kingsley (Vanderbilt University); Arvid Klein (Pasanella + Klein, Stolzman +
Berg); Barbara Lago (The University of Mississippi); Julie Liffrig (University of
Maryland at College Park); David J. Loftus (Portland State University); Michael
A. Macewicz (Clark University); Rodolfo Machado (Machado and_ Silvetti
Associates, Inc.); Eugene J. Mackey III (Mackey Mitchell Associates); Greg
Marshall (Rice University); Frederick W. Mayer (University of Michigan); Grover
C. Meetze, Jr. (Little & Associates Architects); Linda C. Michaels (Kenyon
College); Marita Miller (Bowdoin College); Susan Millhouse (Kaplan + McLaughlin
* Diaz); Dell Mitchell (Perry * Dean * Rogers & Partners, Architects); Maryville
College; Leslie E. Morris (Elmira College); James T. Murphy (Illinois College);
Joan E. Nelson (Stubbins Associates, Inc.); David J. Neuman (Stanford
University); Ron Nief (Middlebury College); Nina Pascale (William Turnbull
Associates); Jeanne E. Pasqualini (Connecticut College); Tom Payette (Payette
Associates); Tom F. Peters (Lehigh University); Jessica Pieters (Baylor University);
Elaine E. Pittaluga (Washington University in St. Louis); Marianna K. Preston
(University of Delaware); Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Kristin Rojcewicz
(Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates); Vicki Kayser Rugo (Sasaki Associates Inc.);
Philip R. Scaffidi (Scaffidi & Moore); O. Robert Simha (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology); Cliff Silver (Concordia University); Linda L. Steele (Hollins
College); Elizabeth Stirling (Rock Valley College); Chris Stratton (Franklin Pierce
College); Diane Strauss (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Charles
N. Tseckares (Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc.); Ursinus College; Patti Valentine
(Saint Mary’s College); Felipe Vasquez (University of California, Irvine); Mrs.
Terry Walters (Furman University); Jan Watts (The University of Akron); Linda
L. Weber (Leonard Parker Associates Architects, Inc.); William Jewell College;
Diane Wilson (University of Nebraska, Lincoln); Carol Wooten (Brown
University); Graham Wyatt (Robert Stern Architects); Gerrit Zwart (Shepley
Bulfinch Richardson Abbott).
At Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates, colleagues Dorothy Atwood, Mary
Bush-Brown, George Mathey, and Pekio Vergotis were most helpful in securing
information and cheering the work onward. Karen Berchtold and Dori Mottola
made major contributions in getting the manuscript and graphics ready for the pub-
lisher. At McGraw-Hill, Joel Stein and Wendy Lochner served as senior editors
and supported this effort from the beginning, and Jane Palmieri served as senior
editing supervisor; Chuck Hutchinson’s sound advice was crucial and always avail-
able as the book took shape.
As they have in the past, my wife Lee and children Patrick and Claire gave com-
fort and encouragement throughout the book’s genesis and completion. Their con-
structive and uplifting comments and queries brought energy to an occasionally
sagging author. The book is dedicated to Howard R. Swearer, mentor and friend,
and to Mary Hannah Dober, Class of 2016. If all goes well, her generation’s life
on campus will be better, one hopes, because her grandfather persuaded family,
friends, and colleagues to assist in creating this book. I thank you all, those specif-
ically mentioned and others whose names and contributions I may have inadver-
tently overlooked.

Acknowledgments X11
 ii : ' |
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Pake@ Sept Gee U'S

...To enlarge shrunken souls, enliven dying

spirits, and enlighten dim eyes...
Peter Shaffer

MODERN CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE: PRELUDE AND PROMISE

Modern here, in particular, refers to the period, work, and influences of Walter
Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Eliel Saarinen and the legion of practi-
tioner-teachers, students, and professionals associated with them after World War IL.
These three trees, their several branches and many leaves (and sometimes a few
viable and complementary grafts such as Louis Kahn and Jose Lluis Sert) produced
a body of accomplished work, in quantity and quality, unparalleled in higher edu-
cation. During those formative decades, rejecting bland and worn out conceptions
of traditional styles, the main body of college and university designers found,
embraced, and articulated a visual language which soon gained universal acceptance
as a signal and emblem of institutional vitality. If the first crop were hesitant her-
alds of new attitudes, less convincing than the rhetoric that stimulated their gene-
sis, the second crop displays an elegant range of shapes and forms whose visual
delight would remind us of the attractions such designs had for those seeking a
neoteric expression for new institutions, as well as older colleges and universities
expanding with vision and vigor to educate a seemingly ever larger percentage of
the college-age population.
As to prelude, the aesthetic adventure called Modern, applied to educational
buildings on the American scene, does not begin significantly, however, with higher

MassacHusetTts HALL, HARVARD University, 1718. (facing page, top) (Source: Harvard University)
ARIZONA STATE UNiversity, FINE Arts CENTER, 1988, ANTOINE PREDOCK. (facing page, bottom)
Campus buildings stretched over two and a half centuries, celebrations of time, taste, and technology. The
American higher education spectrum was informed by ideas from other countries, as well as homegrown
concepts. In combination, the variety and diversity are testimony to the vitality of the institutions served
and symbolized by architecture and a tribute to designers engaged in expressing aesthetically the forces
of continuity and change.

Prospectus l
 education buildings, with some notable exceptions, such as Joseph Urban’s New
School for Social Research (New York City). There, an unconventional curriculum
was wrapped in an architecture unlike almost all educational buildings from that
period. These anomalies aside, the records would suggest that the prize for being
first in enabling the Modern aesthetic to be built extensively belongs to elementary
and secondary school architects and their clients. John Irwin Bright (Chairman,
American Institute of Architecture, Committee on School Buildings) saw the future
clearly, writing in 1929, “Beauty...is present in an arrangement of plan which
reduces waste of motion and leads to economy in mass. It can be further defined
as the proper regard relationship of form and function...a commonsense adjustment
of the building to the needs for which it is erected.”
George Howe and William Lescaze were the first to bring into fruition “mod-
ernist commitments to educational and architectural experimentation.” Their Oak
Lane School project (Pennsylvania, 1929), conceived and built in five months,
gained prominence as the first Modern school building in the United States.
Nominated by the press as the “Le Corbusier of America,” Lescaze’s Oak Lane
work and a subsequent school in Croton, New York, were characterized as “Clean
surfaces and simplified detail. ...Exterior...a direct expression of the interior. ...Large
areas of floor space develop into bold, flat-decked masses unencumbered by over-
powering roofs...openings distributed where required with freedom gained by the
use of steel.”
Examining the trends in 1939, Talbot F. Hamlin found California to be the
hatchery and nest for the “most radical experiments in school design,” with west-
ern architects more “daring in their attack on the school problem than their east-
ern colleagues.” Hamlin cited Franklin and Kump’s elementary school (Fresno,
California, 1938), with its “generous glass areas and its human and personal scale.”
The low-lying, flat-roof structure, white trim, and entrance portico supported by
two steel poles was a photogenic statement of the Modern canon. Equally so, was
Richard Neutra’s Experimental School for the Los Angeles Board of Education.
The side facing the lawn demonstrated Neutra’s belief that “The new materials and
structural methods available today permit, when used unadulterated, a natural and
more intimate relation to the out-of-doors and a consequent full benefit of its health
factors.” Neutra discovered his building components, he once said, in “Sweets
Catalogue, a building supply source for architects and engineers...(industrial prod-
ucts) as inspiring as a healthy forest to a Norwegian carpenter.” The factory-fab-
ricated components, “plentiful in America,” were the “raw materials for a certain
technical style of construction,” which Neutra advocated. Influential educators saw
his designs as “an architecture which children can really understand and love.”
Critics praised “the liberating feeling, which is the ‘forte’ of all modern design in
space.” School boards also discovered that “Modern was cheaper than traditional”
styles, a politically pleasing circumstance in the Depression years. That aspect was
not left unarticulated in pressing Modern on the unpersuaded.
Sheldon Cheney’s The New World Architecture (AMS Press, New York, 1930)
abbreviates and states enthusiastically the source and character of the design eman-
cipation, “an architectural revolution more fundamental than any in seven cen-
turies.” For Cheney, “a new reach has been made toward a strictly rational twen-

2 Chapter One
tieth century beauty-in-building.” The physical attributes he listed were: “geomet-
ric simplicity, absolute honesty in the use of materials...total independence from
known styles of decoration, a new massiveness and precision; clean lines, hard
edges, sanitary smoothness.” Ironically, Modern’s liberating aesthetic would come
from Europe at a time when totalitarian governments were being formed and solid-
ified; ironically, the Modern architectural language, attractive to young American
school designers, had its origin in their own country. “American grain elevators,
silos, power plants, and automobile factories,” were to the Europeans, remarked
Cheney, “ strong examples of direct thinking and creative handling of new mate-
rials in response to new needs.” Happy to see Modern being considered for school-
house architecture, Cheney was appalled at higher education’s reception of the new
ideas. “Where one might easily expect some independence...from the falsities and
prejudices of warmed-over Italian-French culture,” one finds, “deceit, servile-
mindedness, and picking at the bones of antiquity.”
Royce Hall, the University of California, Los Angeles, flagship building, circa
1927, was his bete noire. “A joke,” he disclaimed, “not without tragic deeper impli-
cations, that for a hundred years the modern-living Californians are to be saddled
at one of their highest cultural institutions, with these cramped relics of medieval
picturesqueness, instead of machine-like buildings, open and suggestive of the func-
tions they serve.” Parenthetically, the California Monthly (1929) reported that “The
Chemistry and Physics buildings (built at the same time as Royce), of course, are
finished plainly, in strict accordance with the needs of the sciences which will be
housed in them. They were designed as laboratory buildings of the most modern
and practical type, without waste of time or money on decoration which would be
useless and inappropriate.”
Compare then the early Modern school buildings and two of their first collegiate
counterparts, with their self-evident visual relationships, and construction in the
most unlikely geographic locales. In a casual visit to Maryville College, fifteen miles
from Knoxville, Tennessee, one discovers the 1950 Fine Arts Building. Amidst a
jumble of buildings, whose indeterminate character leaves no lasting impression as
significant architecture, the design stands out as an authentic rendering of hard-
edge, flat-roof, steel-frame, glass-paned linearity—no compromises with, or refer-
ences to, earlier traditional styles. About the same time, at Indiana University, a
new student dining hall asserts and announces Modern’s arrival at a public insti-
tution where architectural imagination had not yet advanced as far as the curricu-
lum being offered or the quality of research and community service.
Cause and effect? Critic Frank G. Lopez (1950) proposed that “Familiarity
breeds acceptance.” Yesterday’s surprise designs, i.e. Modern, “scarcely causes a
raised eyebrow today, particularly since the war.” Retrospectively, though America
had come of age politically, and its ascendancy as a world leader in the plastic arts
was increasingly manifest, higher education did not rush to adopt the mantle of
Modern architecture. Some of this reluctance was the simple fact that many of the
first Modern campus buildings were not well executed. Experimental detailing,
construction practices atypical for the region, an unusual mix of materials—all these
real-life factors affected construction quality and design receptivity. Sophisticated
judgment was not required to recognize a bumbling Modern campus building.

Prospectus 3
 FOWLER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, FRESNO, CALIFORNIA, 1938. FRANKLIN
AND Kump, Jr. A
ornamented, stylistic school gives way to a new vocabulary of rooms
plicity would seem to be welcomed and pleasing in the doldrums
ondary justification. Significantly, Kump would later Gesign that extraordinan
Community College.

EXPERIMENTAL PUBLIC SCHOOL, Los ANGELES BOarD OF EDUCATION, 1939. RICHARD NEUTRA. bottom) Thoug
some to be a “radical imposition on teachers and staff” the projec
ridors, and stairways. Hundreds of schools constructed in the t—Wor
pos
Modern architecture.

4 Chapter One
MaryviLte COLLEGE, FINE ARTS CENTER, 1950. SCHWIEKER AND ELTING. (top) Flat roof, utilitarian, unadornec, with an
unmistaken resemblance to schoolhouse architecture. There were no attempts to harmonize the building with nearby structures. The
design was a declarative sentence:acurriculum devoted to the arts should be sheltered in a building that itself is a work of Modern
art. Such occurring in the hinterlands when it did is one of the features of American higher education: an unexpected bubbling to the
surface of designs audacious for their time and place. (Source: Maryville College)

Rocers Il DormiTorY DINING HALL, INDIANA UNiversiTy, 1946. (bottom) Designed by Burns and James as a gracuate stu
dent dining hall, the concrete-slab, cement block painted exterior, aluminum-frame windows, and protruding flat, hard-eage roof are
the signatures of early Modern. An opening day brochure stated these “were some of the finest student housing units to be found any-
where—scientifically planned for maximum health and comfort. The dining hall, a popular social center is the last wora in mogerr

Rogers Il is any indication. It looks more like an expensive, sea-side resort hotel.” (Source: Indiana University
NIUNDANE, MALADROIT CAMPUS BUILDINGS.
stesso

Prospectus 7
 Equally disheartening were the feeble attempts at landscape, in the beginning,
that is, for later works would be magnificent representations of this communal art.
Diffidently, apologetically, at the launch of Modern, A. R. Nichols, ASLA (1931)
stated: “America has learned to build beautiful and efficient school buildings. She
is, however, still in the process of learning to place these buildings in a proper set- *
ting...missing is landscape development...the opportunity for mental recre-
ation...the creation of an environment that reflects the desire for beauty in all
things.” Two decades later, Garrett Eckbo would stake out the landscape architect’s
province, assistance in the creation of the “unified picture or environmental expe-
rience, a completely synthesized composite of all physical elements as they are seen
together at one or more times.” The ideal of composite, the blending of landscapes
and buildings, will be examined later as a major factor in defining campus archi-
tecture.
The idea that a Modern building was “an instrument of education, a machine
for learning” also stirred fears about its intrinsic merits as a style for campuses that
gave special regard to and promoted traditional values and routines through archi-
tecture. How tenacious was the hold of tradition when the professional literature
and practice were encouraging a design journey whose destination had not yet been
fully identified? At St. Benedict’s College, Atchinson, Kansas, conventional Tudor
Gothic had fostered and furthered the institution’s ideals. The College’s 1910
administration building, with its sculptured facade, could be read by the initiated
as being the essence of collegiate life. The carved figures represented “scholarly
monks, a host of whom had distinguished themselves in the fields of arts and sci-
ences.” Whereas these gestures to history informed the earlier design, the footsteps
of the Modern could be heard in the 1930 campus expansion.
The dichotomy and tension of recognizing modern technology and materials and
the holding power of symbolic values, architecturally expressed, comes into view at
St. Benedict’s with a clarity that exposes the uncertainty implicit in seeking a new
design direction. The dean responsible for guiding the College’s new construction
(1929) urged a “blending of the best features of modern methods...with the chief
characteristics of the different periods, retaining as much as possible their original
symbolic significance.” The College informed its public that the designs were
“wall-bearing construction. ...All floor slabs are of reinforced concrete. ... The roofs
are all of steel and tile...all interior door frames are steel...hot water
heating...plumbing and piping arranged for accessibility. ... The aim throughout the
building was to reduce maintenance to a minimum and assure perfect comfort in

University OF Miami, 1945. ROBERT Law WEED, ARCHITECTS. (facing page, top) The first
post-World War IlAmerican campus constructed extensively in the Modern architectural style. (Source:
University of Miami) :

SAINT JOHN'S UNiversiTY, COLLEGEVILLE, MINNESOTA, STUDENT DORMITORY, 1953. MARCEL

BREUER AND HAMILTON Smit. (facing page, bottom) From semitropical Florida to cold winter
Minnesota the studied, white geometric facades were recognizably Modern architecture. Breuer’s doorway
was a masterwork of simple materials composed like a bas-relief a sculptural beauty of light and shadow
captured in Shin Koyama’ photo. Images such as these were published around the world, accelerating the
interest in and acceptance of the canon as appropriate for college and university buildings. (Source: Marcel
Breuer and Hamilton Smith)

& Chapter One

Prospectus 9
 all seasons.” The massiveness of the structure was intended to embody the ideas
of “defense, safety, permanency.” The exterior expression was to be arranged as a
three-dimensional case study of “the ideals, aspirations, and the culture dominant
at the period of their construction.” Medieval models could rationalize quixotic
design decisions. Wrote the College’s representative, in explaining unique aspects
of the 1930 scheme, “in earlier times...residence quarters for the retainers, the
workmen, and the artisans...were usually constructed from the left-over material,
which was poorer in quality and in architectural design than the main buildings.”
Thus the use of exterior brick was rationalized in the designs, “of the extreme
north wing, the quarters for the kitchen attendants.”
Within three decades historicism was on the shelf. Benedictine institutions such
as Saint John’s University (Collegeville, Minnesota) were truly building in the style
of the time. The Atchinson campus, now Benedictine College, itself soon after had
a reasonable version of Modern wrapped around “one of the largest Catholic under-
graduate libraries in the country...with a rare books collection that is the envy of
any on the east coast.”
Calming the agitated, and espousing the new at the time of transition, an influ-
ential publication indicated that the question of style (traditional versus Modern)
was “not a question of glorifying the functional aspects. ...Harmony among cam-
pus buildings is not a matter of repetition of existing forms and details, but may
be achieved by skillful handling of materials, texture, color, and siting...contrast
can be an asset to many a dull campus—particularly when the ivy sheds its leaves.”
While the metaphor was botanically unlikely, the idea of simple Modern being an
antidote for dull Georgian and dismal Gothic gained acceptance, especially when
the distance between good and bad traditional architecture was palpably evident,
though there were not yet sufficient Modern buildings to set critical standards and
expectations.
Economies in construction were a factor in acceptance, as noted earlier.
Professional journals argued that a “building lacking the complex surface ornament
of Collegiate Gothic costs relatively less” than its Modern counterpart. Praising
Philip Johnson’s designs for the new Trinity College campus (1952), the treasurer
saw the project “whipping high building costs without sacrificing values of func-
tion, quality and beauty.” Ironically, the St. Benedict’s 1930 scheme was defended
as an organic design. Like its medieval counterpart it had design features and suf-
ficient architectural complexity to permit starting or stopping construction “at such
time or times as (the building committee) finances dictated” without the loss of
design integrity. Like minimal sculpture, some of the better Modern buildings did
not have this inherent quality. Marcel Breuer’s work (see p. 9) seems complete as
built, and would seem less if some piece were missing. Neutra’s and similar work
were not so constrained.
To reiterate a point worth making again, the economics of Modern had a pro-
motional appeal that is not to be lost in an historic appreciation of aesthetic phi-
losophy. Neutra demonstrated that convincingly in an astonishing group of 150
schoolhouses he designed for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico from 1943 to
1945. There, the cost of simulating pseudo-Spanish Colonial architecture was
impractical and imprudent. Neutra’s concepts for utilizing standardized building

10 Chapter One
components beneficially matched need and resources. He also divided the educa-
tional program into modularized spaces and configured these into elements which
could be assembled “in different arrangements for different sites.” His philosophy,
models, and drawings inspired those working at the new site for the University of
Miami. “Uncorseted by yesterday’s bi-axial symmetry, (the University) was able to
develop a site plan suitable for contemporary architectural treatment,” editorialized
the Architectural Forum (1945), thus bringing into being the first American campus
constructed extensively in the Modern style.

EMERGENCE, DECLINE, AND ENIGMA

A nation that has many new buildings to erect and plenty of money to spend
upon them 1s sure to develop characteristic architecture. It may be good or bad
or simply commonplace, but nothing can prevent its being clearly expressive of
the tastes, culture, ideals, and capacities of the Nation. The style of the new
buildings will be an index of its artistic taste; the purposes for which they are
erected will reveal dominant interests and illustrate the character of its civiliza-
tion....Recent foreign observers have expressed amazement at the magnitude,
number, buildings, equipment, endowments of our universities....No one, indeed
who studies the record can fail to be impressed.
A. D. Hamlin
Architectural Record, 1906

...these persons will admit that of the money that has been spent and is being
spent throughout this country for college buildings, but a small portion goes to
produce those of real architectural worth, nay even of practical convenience...how
heavily our institutions are encumbered with archaic buildings, poorly designed
and even worse built, monumental annoyances, the kind of blot upon the scene
that evokes the unholy impulse in some secret breast to pray for fire.
Charles Z. Klauder and Herbert C. Wise
College Architecture in America, 1/929

On many campuses where modern architecture has already taken root, the new
buildings have been received enthusiastically by the people who use them most—
students and faculty. This apparent ease of acceptance on the part of the acade-
mic community augers well for the future. If at times the pace of architectural
progress seems painfully slow, encouragement may be had from the thought that
today’s college students are the donors, trustees, alumni, and clients of tomorrow.
Harold D. Hauf
Architectural Record, 1950

A group of buildings at Baylor University typifies the national scene after World
War II, as American higher education began a surge that increased enrollments
fivefold, created more than a thousand new campuses, and added about a hundred
thousand new buildings to the campus inventory. During that surge, inexorably,
countrywide, the novelty called Modern became the quotidian style, the acceptable
norm, and, having run its course, made room in attitude and appraisal for a later
generation to devise new ideas and concepts. Early Modern purged the system.
Middle Modern, with its move away from sanitary surfaces and interest in textured

Prospectus I]
Pat NeFF HALL, BAYLOR University. (top)
A reasonable interpretation of collegiate
Georgian. (Source: Baylor University)

D. K. Martin HALL, BAYLOR UNIVERSITY.

(bottom) Feeble attempts at using the Modern
idioms. (Source: Baylor University)

CoLtins HALL, BAYLOR UNiversiTy. (facing

page, left) The style invalidated, expediency
reigns. (Source: Baylor University)

New SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH,

1930. (facing page, right) Joseph Urban’s
landmark structure, the first important Modern
higher education building in the United States.
Not all were happy with the result. Philip
Johnson thought it“ an illusion of a building in
the International Style rather than a building
resulting from a genuine application of the new
principles.”

Re Te %.

12. Chapter One

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Prospectus les
LOWER-CASE SANS SERIF. (above) Typography,
furnishings, textiles, new designs reinforced the
Modern canon, creating in the best projects a
memorable visual unity and in the worse cases a
sense that severity perhaps rose more from eco- i
nomic necessity than taste.

Biotocy Institute, UNiversiTY OF PARIS,

|
1930. (right) Germane Debre’s exquisite version
of Modern architecture, planned collegially, and
constructed on a tight site; simple forms, limited
materials. A seminal project, overlooked by most i
historians and commentators, deserving citation
as a top-ten significant university design.

and sculptured effects, demonstrated the range of possibilities. Late Modern, with
more elaboration and segmentation of building forms, laid the foundations for
today’s contemporary campus design and architecture. About this evolution, more
will be written later.
At the launch, Baylor and many institutions were an aesthetic vacuum waiting
to be filled with something better than the bland and wornout traditional styles
which expediency was imposing relentlessly in response to immediate needs for
expansion. The University’s flagship building, Pat Neff Hall, is a standard and rea-
sonable late-nineteenth-century example of Collegiate Georgian. The design con-
cept was a programmatically sound solution for enclosing general university func-
tions, serene in its composition and secure in its symbolism. In D. K. Martin Hall
(1953) the decline is evident in the paste-on treatment of reductive columns to
establish symmetry and the brickwork to suggest a visual relationship to the older
building. Collins Hall three years later shows the ultimate impoverishment of a
once-vibrant architectural form and the indifference to and ignorance of other pos-
sibilities both in the United States and abroad. In contrast, Germane Debre’s
Biology Institute, University of Paris, 1930, stands as a master work of Modern
brick architecture and a seminal building in collegial facility planning. Working
with a committee of 30 academics, each with unique laboratory requirements
(including a constant-temperature laboratory 40 feet underground and _roof-top

14 Chapter One
botanical garden), Debre organized the building into a handsomely scaled compo-
sition of eight interlocking volumes. The window patterns and simplicity in detail-
ing were harbingers of an aesthetic that would fill the American campuses with
thousands of Modern buildings, few better than Debre’s.
Though not guided by the architectural equivalent of a Papal bull, it was gener-
ally understood that, with Modern, simplification was the new norm. Although
some campus buildings were affected by the last gasp of regional, romantic revival-
ism from the 1920s (Moorish in Florida, Spanish in southwest Texas and California,
Neo-Georgian in the Northeast), and forms of Classicism were not disdained, the
architectural ideas seeded in journals and museum exhibitions germinated abun-
dantly and pervasively. Peeling and paring decoration, using concrete poured and
planked, bolting factory-made porcelain-green panels to steel frames, such modern
strokes were understood to have social and cultural meaning—away with the past,
welcome the new. And so too, in the parallel arts, figurative wall decor and cam-
pus sculpture gave way to abstraction. Textiles abandoned embellishment for linear
patterns. The typography used on campus signs dropped serifs for modern type
faces. Stuffed sofas and Victorian desks were replaced with Formica and molded
plywood Scandinavian furniture. The interior of a dormitory room in the 1960s was
as different from the 1930s as was the building that enclosed it.
Kansas State University—a middle-America institution, geographically, intellec-
tually, and culturally—illuminates the shifts in aesthetic attitudes and the resulting
changes in built forms over a century. At the beginning of public higher education,
schoolhouse architecture was proportionately enlarged for collegiate purposes and
encased in cut limestone found in the region. Peaked roofs and doorways were rem-
iniscent of courthouses and libraries of the same vintage and district. A century
later we find, on the Kansas State campus for example, a cluster of buildings with
flat roofs, and hard-edge building forms, with varying combinations of solid masonry
walls and glass in idioms recognizably the Modern era. Some of the Kansas State
buildings are compromised by stylistic indeterminacy, 1.e., designs not sufficiently
independent of the earlier generation, nor complete statements of the new idiom.
Fortunately, the use of cut limestone straddles a century of campus design; the
materials were a placemarking gesture that connected the generations symbolically
and visually.
Materials bind and separate time and aesthetics in architectural design. At
William and Mary College brick architecture is the visual link connecting genera-
tions of buildings in variegated interpretations of the founder’s Georgian architec-
ture. Modular, baked clay is thus the defining component of the campus design.
Southward, at Duke University, with a tweedy textured stone associated with
Collegiate Gothic, provides the palette for continuity in exterior expressions.
Westward, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an adobelike surface gives buildings at
the University of New Mexico a distinctive design accent. On the Pacific rim, at
Stanford University, the red tile roofs and amber surfaces of the first buildings
serve as the design continuum for structures that are visually differentiated by
function and architectural taste at their inception.
New life for old forms has many attractions for institutions devoted to continu-
an
ity and change. But well selected materials alone, of course, do not determine

Prospectus 1
 NINETEENTH-CENTURY KANSAS COURTHOUSE. (right)

NINETEENTH-CENTURY UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.

(below) Courthouses and universities are cut from the
same cloth but stacked and arranged individually in
response to function and the architect's determination to
give each a desirable distinction in the style of the era.
(Source: University of Kansas)

NINETEENTH-CENTURY KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY.

(facing page, top)

1960 Kansas STATE University. (facing page, bot-

tom) Roof lines and walls, from complexity to simplicity,
signaling changes in building technology and aesthetic
forms. Cut-stone provides the melding, merging, genera-
tion-binding architectural element, inducing a memo-
rable sense of place.

16 Chapter One
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Detait, WILLIAM AND Mary University. (fac-

ing page, top) Seventeenth-century design, possi-
bly Christopher Wren.

DETAIL, STADIUM GATE, WILLIAM AND Mary

University, 1930. (facing page, bottom)

DETAIL, STUDENT HOUSING, WILLIAM AND

Mary University, 1970. (above)

DETAIL, LIBRARY EXPANSION, WILLIAM AND

Mary University, 1980. (left) Brick architec-
ture, with varying interpretations and homage to
the seventeenth-century icon building, provides a
fascinating spectrum of changes in taste and
design direction. The aesthetic impulses satisfied
architecturally over the years are instructive in
their variety and continuity; some solutions stale
and others refreshing.

Prospectus 19
 DETAIL, TOWER ELEMENT, MUHLENBERG
COLLeGe Liprary. (right) With the opening of a
new library in 1991, this 1920s homage to educa-
tional values and traditions has been recently
redesigned as an administrative office and class-
room building. (Source: Muhlenberg College)

Tom Tower, CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE,

OXFORD, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. (bottom)
Designed by Christopher Wren, the form and
detailing have inspired numerous renditions of
Collegiate Gothic, that which Matlack Prices fairly
called the “illusions of the charm and historic
association of scholastic architecture.” From
Princeton's greens to the swamps of Houston,
Texas (Rice University), to the heights overlooking
Puget Sound (University of Washington), the
style’s advocates and designers constructed extra-
ordinary architecture-as-stagecraft. For site com-
position, facades, enticing spaces inside and out,
few Modern or contemporary designs equal
Collegiate Gothic tactile beauty.

20 Chapter One
adequate architectural solution. Bricks can be piled up in abstract forms or arranged
to meet the expected canon of a traditional style. Once, Collegiate Georgian was
regulated “as that of a sonnet or a Shakespearean stanza, and the artist has liberty
in only certain directions, and must not violate the laws.” Audacious designers,
playing with the forms or in battle with creative urges, will tweak the laws (such
as they are) for different ends, sometimes in faithful emulation of traditional archi-
tecture and at other times as gestures to the past. As depicted in the sample of
William and Mary facades, given a range of buildings constructed over several cen-
turies in brick, coded and connected to the tradition, there will be winners and
losers.
The Kansas and William and Mary buildings are indicative of a cycle of influ-
ence and exchange that occurs periodically in designing campus buildings. Ideas
from the past, or near present, are summoned to serve and minister the future, sum-
monses extraordinarily rich in their physical texture and semiotics. These ideas
appeal as documents of aspiration and cultural attitudes, such as Muhlenberg
College’s version of Christopher Wren’s Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford. Here
a reverential architectural style pays homage to values linked with historic educa-
tional institutions and their physical forms. Arguably, the interpretations of tradi-
tional styles rise and become popular because they are honest manifestations of their
period and values, then decline in critical regard when sentiment more than pur-
pose keeps the style in favor, and then rise again in revival and reinterpretation. The
second resurrection may be an earnest attempt to provide visual continuity, a dis-
dain for the current situation, or, retrogressively, a cautionary sentimental reaction:

And always keep a hold of Nurse

For fear of finding something worse.
H. Belloc

Modern architecture was proclaimed as sentiment-free; honesty was its intended

essence. On first appearance some feared its iconoclastic novelty “which has caused
such havoc elsewhere and which produces such undesired results wherever its ten-
dencies are being felt today,” editorialized Architectural Record. At the same time,
1925, other magazine commentators were inspired by Modern “buildings with
severe lines attained along with what seem to be economical uses of material and
labor.” Like traditional styles that had crossed the Atlantic—Georgian, Gothic,
Spanish Renaissance—the Modern idiom could be and was reinterpreted in homage
to the originator’s values, with varying degrees of honesty and sentimentality. The
transposition seems manifest in Mies van der Rohe’s dialog with glass and steel at
the Illinois Institute of Technology (1950), Philip Johnson’s variant (University of
Saint Thomas, 1957), Arne Jacobson’s rendition (Saint Catherine College, Oxford,
1960), Bush-Brown, Gailey & Heffernan’s Library (Georgia Institute of
Technology, 1957), and Murphy and Mackey’s Monsanto Laboratory of the Life
Sciences (Washington University, 1965). All metamorphise a design theme beauti-
fully introduced by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jenneret for the Swiss Student Hostel,
Paris 1932. Here, as James Gibbs did for Collegiate Georgian in the eighteenth cen-
tury, Corbu established a vocabulary of forms and materials (masonry framing,

Prospectus rs|
S s Ss S i) = i)
s
SWISS STUDENT HOSTEL, UNIVERSITY OF Paris,
1932. Le CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JENNERET. (facing
page, top)

SAINT CATHERINE COLLEGE, OxForD, HOUSING, 1960.

ARNE Jacosson. (facing page, bottom)

ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CLASSROOM,

1950. Mies VAN DER ROHE. (below)

UNIVERSITY OF SAINT THOMAS, CLASSROOM, 1957.

PHILIP JOHNSON. (bot tom) (Source: University of Saint Thomas; photographer:
Frank L.. Miller)

Prospectus 2 ox)
 ie

oe

C
24 hapter One
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, LIBRARY,
1957. BUSH-BROWN, GAILEY AND
HEFFERNAN. (facing page, top) (Source: Georgia
Institute of Technology)

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, LABORATORY OF

LiFE SciENcES, 1965. MurpHy AND MACKEY.
(facing page, bottom) (Source: Washington
University)

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, PSYCHOLOGY LABO-

RATORY AND CLASSROOM, 1987. THE
STuBBINS Associates, INC. (above) Gone by
the late 1980s were the flat, geometric facades of
early and middle Modern. Leading architects
favored designs in context. In this instance aspects
of the older Vanderbilt buildings were utilized,
including rusticated base and cornice and deep
shadowed punctured brick wall. (Source: Vanderbilt
University; photographer: Bill Kingsley)

LYCOMING COLLEGE, SCIENCE BUILDING,

1990. Hayes LARGE ARCHITECTS. (left) The
modulated structural bay is broken at the end to
give the facade a pronounced inflection. Hard
edges are softened. (Source: Lycoming College)

Prospectus 2:4h
 minimal detailing, and the calibrated curtain wall) used worldwide in twentieth-
century college and university architecture. When honesty faded into sentiment,
some of the later work did not have the vitality of the originals. And as a style,
recent award-winning college and university work suggests its current displacement
by other idioms.
Sentiment versus honesty fuels the age-long debate between those who are con-
tent with continuance and those itchy for something new, advocacies that color dis-
cernment and animate campus decision making. The paradox of seeking approval
for being among the first in line (and thus being a valuable three-dimensional cul-
tural statement, regardless of execution) versus being an adroit example (but a quo-
tidian version of an older style) gives many accounts of how campus buildings come
into being an enigmatic flavor uniquely their own. Ever at play are human instincts
and judgments. The more controversial the building, and however praised on first
arrival, the more likely it seems “destined, as the vacillating reputations of build-
ings before it can testify, to fall in and out of favor,” said critic Joseph Hudnut.
Compare Lowell House (Harvard University, 1938) and Canady House (Harvard
University, 1978). Lowell fills the Cambridge skyline and streetscape with exultant
Collegiate Georgian—a tribute to Colonial times. The cupola, fenestration patterns,
red brick and white wood, the massing, the substance, and the detailing look attrac-
tive in all seasons. Canady House is a praiseworthy example of stripped-down
Modern, with a severity so stark that it might be argued it comes closer to the
Puritan values of Harvard’s founders than the splendid stagecraft architecture
which is Lowell House.
Lowell is sentiment, Canady is honesty. In a collegial setting who determines the
preferment, and why? Trustees, donors, review committees, staff—the process and
procedures of collegiality and shared governance—give considerable time and effort
to vetting designs as they evolve from a preliminary interpretation of the program
to construction drawings. Those influencing design decisions are usually aware of
precedence in styles and their succession. Abstracting and categorizing an enormous
group of buildings constructed the past 40 years, the discerning observer, seeking
some order, should be able to see that form follows function, ferment follows form,
and fusion follows ferment, i.e., the progression from early Modern to late Modern.
At the start of the chain we have simple buildings dictated by programmatic
requirements and an adherence to Modern’s initial credo. A search and desire for
a more elaborate visual expression (ferment) brings into being buildings with tex-
tured surfaces and sculptured effects. Late Modern (i.e., fusion) recalls the sani-
tized surfaces of early Modern and/or seeks and expresses in shapes and forms
selected aspects—but it is not a literal emulation—of traditional buildings and mate-
rials. Fusion irks purists, is dismissed by critics who see it as a failure to advance
a new aesthetic, and delights connoisseurs of the idiosyncratic. Ever present among
the disdainful, at each stage, is the expectation that some larger design concept will
eventually mediate Hudnut’s “discordant notes of abandoned trails of different
kinds of architecture” or failing in that regard that building additions, or greater
density, would obscure the tours de force that later generations find tours de farce.
Three libraries, each about a decade apart, help visualize these differences. The
Crosby Library (Gonzaga University) is a standard version of early Modern with

26 Chapter One
Lowett House, HARVARD UNiIveRSITY,
1929. (left) Stagecraft Collegiate Georgian pro-
duced by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott
and incorporating centuries of nostalgia and sen-
timent for an architectural setting that com-
mands the Cambridge skyline.

CANADY HALL, HARVARD University, 1972.

EzRA EHRENKRANTZ. (below) An honest building
in expressing time and technology and in fitting
into the Harvard Yard's brick architecture. In the
background, another essay in sentimentality,
Memorial Hall, 1866 to 1878. An ambitious proj-
ect, an exceptional building, now being restored
for honest reasons (the best architecture of its
period and the scene of extraordinary historic
events, meetings, and personalities).

Prospectus vA
 its plain surfaces and three joined boxes: the major functional space, the rectangu-
lar and pronounced entrance component, and the utilitarian enclosure plopped on
a flat roof. The Clark University Library disaggregates a number of internal func-
tions and expresses them in an exterior organization recognizably not traditional
and not early Modern. As ferment, this example continues to be a heady brew. The
Kenyon College Library makes a convincing gesture to Collegiate Gothic and
Modern antecedents in its fusion of shapes, smooth surfaces, and exterior materi-
als. All three buildings are part of a planetary system called /ibraries. Functions and
internal space organization are comparable, but each is as different perceptibly as
Saturn, Venus, and Mars.
Does the architecture of higher education follow some logical order of cause and
effect, which if stated and understood could sharpen discernment, give direction
for fostering new architecture, and help establish the aesthetic ground rules for con-
serving an architectural heritage worth protection? When does it become obvious
that a style has lost its vitality? Surveying the scene in 1926, architect James W.
O’Connor was convinced that “important buildings of today, certainly, cannot look
as banal or as absurd fifty years from now as similar buildings of fifty years ago
look today. It is more, too, than a mere matter of changing fashions. We sincerely
believe that our architecture is better intrinsically than ever before.” Of the projects
he cited in the Architectural Forum, none would be listed these days as buildings
worth direct emulation. All—with their studied massing, generous configurations,
and textured detailing—are worthy of preservation and reuse as legacy buildings.

GONZAGA University, Liprary. (right) By the

1960s the early Modern boxlike architecture had
achieved status and recognition as the suitable
expression for a central campus building.
Quotidian versions could be found coast-to-coast;
the familiar had not yet declined into disfavor.
(Source: Gonzaga University)

Ciark University, Liprary. (facing page, top)

In this iconoclastic work from the 1970s, architect
John Johanson disaggregated forms and features,
keeping the simplicity of materials but with aes-
thetic ferment that brought into question other
early Modern’s tenets. The principle of form follow-
ing function was endangered by idiosyncratic
designs. Architecturally Pandora's box was opened.
Modern passed into history as its first advocates
lost status as leading-edge designers. (Source: Clark
University)

KENYON COLLEGE, LIBRARY, 1980. SHEPLEy,

BULFINCH, RICHARDSON AND Assott. (facing
page, bottom) Designers and clients calmed the
ferment with designs that combined the simplicity
of early Modern and the visual character of adja-
cent campus buildings, i.e., architecture in context.
The fusion was an appealing antidote to the
severity of early Modern and the extreme expres-
sions of fermented designs. (Source: Shepley,
Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott)

28 Chapter One
ee we

Prospectus 29
 Good design counts. Good designs endure. Illuminating then are the side-by-side
examples, maladroit extensions to older buildings, where the mantle of being
Modern is insufficient to disguise an opportunity to join new and old with har-
mony and subtlety that does honor to both.
A series of buildings at the University of Washington, Seattle demonstrates the
hazards of designs inaugurated with laudable aims and doomed by ineptitude in
handling the canons, and the aftermath, when better hands and eyes are engaged
to elevate building design to architecture. Illustrated on page 31 is the University’s
1920s art building. A sentimental rendition of collegiate Gothic, the structure is
pleasantly proportioned and detailed, textured, intelligently inserted on its site,
with a welcoming portal—characteristic of a good campus building irrespective of
style.
Sired in the late 1950s, the University’s drama-TV building encapsulates a rel-
atively new art form in an unambiguously Modern building. The design was
intended to signal progress in both curriculum and architecture. The signal is
strong in rejecting collegiate Gothic, in repulsing faux detailing from monastic
sources, in flattening the roof, in sharpening the hard-edge corners of the facades.
It is adventuresome in attempting to express visual connections with the textured
brick fabric, white trim, and the abstracted Gothic window. The awkward mass-
ing, the ill-proportioned and ungainly placement of windows and doors—seeming-
ly factory components, not crafted—and the meager front door are clues as to why
these kinds of interpretations of Modern gained few enthusiasts for its continuance,
once the style served as a purge for traditional styles.
More convincing, better architecture is Edward Larrabee Barnes’s Allen
Library (1991)—high-quality fusion, with its shapes and forms and subtle mason-
ry detailing. The front door is easy to find. The tilting wing is an iconic touch,

30 Chapter One
THE ALLEGORY OF UNCERTAINTY. (facing page)
A functionally reasonable building solution, bur-
dened with an architectural expression of new and
old in a severe contrasting conjunction that favors
neither.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE,

1920s Art BUILDING. (above) High-style
Collegiate Gothic.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE,

1950s Drama-TV BuiLpiNe. (left) An honest
gesture of early Modern but dull and unconvinc-
ing in execution.

Prospectus Jl
 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE, LIBRARY, 1991. EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES. (top) Shapes, forms, and subtle mason-
ry detailing combine attractive visual features from the collegiate Gothic and the simplicity and directness of the Modern canon.
(Source: Edward Larrabee Barnes; photographer: Mary Levin)

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE, PHYSICS/ASTRONOMY, 1994. Cesar PELLI. (bottom) The vocabulary
of contempo-
rary design—disaggregated but linked forms, with materials reminiscent of older campus buildings—the ensemble
becoming an
emphatic one-only design. (Source: Cesar Pelli; photographer: Mary Levin)

32 Chapter One
Aupitorium, New York University, c. 1957. Marcet Breuer. (top) (Source: Marcel Breuer)
Aupitorium, EASTERN MICHIGAN STATE UNiveRSITY, C. 1957. (bottom) Architecture versus a building, both in the Modern
architecture idiom: simplicity in materials and hard-edge designs, but evidencing the visual differences between a building (quotidi-
anand dull) and architecture (capricious and vibrant). Topographic changes give Breuer’s work an additional panache, which is no
excuse for the Eastern Michigan vacuous site and building composition.

Prospectus fe)
 which appears in many campus buildings as a signal, if not symbol, of late-twen-
tieth-century architecture. Cesar Pelli’s physics/astronomy building (1994) relies
less on shapes that recall the past and more on materials. In both instances the
University has achieved a desired goal: buildings uniquely shaped by program,
distinctive in their design features but joined in a family resemblance to other
University structures.
Contemporary campus architecture (a phrase we apply to recent works from the
mid-1980s onward) struggles with finding solutions of this quality. On one hand,
there is an anxious affection for sentimental but skillful interpretations of an accom-
plished past. On the other hand, there is an attraction, but ambivalence, for encour-
aging honest attempts to pioneer a new route. With the winds of critical regard and
institutional choice blowing from many directions, the ship called decision making
needs a rudder. We offer one, recalling and illustrating two versions of a universi-
ty auditorium built in the early 1960s in the Modern idiom. At New York
University, Marcel Breuer’s concept scintillated with the forms and materials asso-
ciated with the style. Coterminously, another version of a Modern auditorium at
Eastern Michigan University gave evidence that any style rendered without skill is
a design to be rejected, however enticing its doctrinal basis or patron’s bias toward
encouraging a new direction.

SELECTIONS AND EMPHASES

The shuttlecock of continuity and change in campus architecture, in response to
program requirements, cultural attitudes, and aesthetic values, weaves an interest-
ing and generally multitextured fabric on most campuses. Through collegial
processes the dreams and ambitions for a striving architecture are often settled by
requisite matters such as funding and communal tastes—the fate of typical campus
architecture. Intellectually, higher education depends on balancing the forces of
continuity and change, a fundamental we will revisit in defining a campus archi-
tecture rooted in reality and imagination. We will see the results of the warp and
woof, continuity and change, in the grand schemes, individual projects, and the
fragments and pieces that constitute memorable campus architecture.
Understandably, in our overview and selected projects, judgments must hop,
skip, and jump through time. What was the design intention at genesis? What is
the current assessment? What do the cited examples offer for the future? While
scanning a spectrum of college and university buildings, our answers to these lead-
ing questions may be different, instance by instance. Where answers are congruous
(good then and good now), the diadem of regard and respect should be apparent in
the commentary and captions. In the main, we prefer that groups of campus build-
ings be likened to an orchestra, not a collection of instruments. Solos should sustain
and carry the score forward, not be an interruption and occasion for expressing tech-
nical skill. However, there are times and places for the virtuosic, the startling and
unexpected, which genius sometimes evokes to shake up the mundane and expected.
We will suggest when, where, and how such agitation might be welcomed.
Unquestionably, campuses exhibit an inherent capacity for growth, renewal, and
revitalization; elevating, ennobling, enlarging, enriching ideas and _ interests.

34 Chapter One
“Gathered here are the forces which move humanity and make history...conspicu
-
ous monuments...that mark the progress of civilization...that fit new thoughts to
new conditions,” wrote landscape architect Ernest E. Walker, Jr. (1936) in an early
appreciation applicable to today’s circumstances. Walker advocated an understand-
ing of the “topographic individuality of the site” and “the position of all objects of
natural and historic interest within...generating points round which (an) ultimate
scheme of development will crystallize...the perfect orchestration of Nature, Art,
and Science.” Good architecture has been doomed by inattention to Walker’s dic-
tum. So too, of significant consequence in the robust years of our focal period, were
attitudes about site development, especially landscapes. “Consult the genius of the
place...and as you work, it designs,” wrote Alexander Pope in an expository poem
with advice that remains cogent and relevant for all seeking appropriate designs.
Illustrated on page 37 is a lesson worth noting. At the University of Denver,
University Hall and University Library, two fine, late-nineteenth-century designs,
have remained awkwardly positioned and inadequately landscaped from their open-
ing date, to the detriment of the overall campus design and their individual build-
ing character. In contrast, genial and expectant, the faculty and students are shown
gathered to march up the hill to the new temple of learning superbly worked into
the terrain, Kentucky State College, 1911. By the end of the century the ambitious
and well-sited architecture had a settled look and a commanding presence. Here is
a fine image of place—location, building, legend—which the Hilltoppers now cel-
ebrate, eponymic, on T-shirts and campus banners. The architectural command?
Meld structure and site with a sensitive examination of how each will contribute to
the betterment of the other.
As a theme articulated more fully later, buildings and greenery intermeshed 1s
the defining characteristic of campus architecture. An honored tradition in the evo-
lution of campus development—indeed the essence of great college and university
architecture, the occasional neglect of this basic principle has diminished design
concepts and projects otherwise commendable. Landscapes and terrain are, or
should be, consequential influences on the architectural design. No ground is neu-
tral, all have some tangible quality worth finding and using. Generally building sites
are accepted as they are and integrated into the overall design or mediated. The
smaller the campus the more likely the latter will require careful determinations,
there being less space to maneuver or carve out grandiose prospects and landscape
features.
In either instance, large campuses or small, one witnessed and remembers two
polar approaches to the challenges and opportunities of site development at the
time when higher education was expanding and Modern architecture was its ser-
vant: those who visualized their designs as essentially free-standing objects, and
those who saw them as being situated in some larger and articulated milieu. The
attitudes can be seen in how designers worked up their ideas in models and draw-
ings. Looking back, should we be surprised that air-brush drawings produced a
building concept as light-weight as the medium or that certain popular and pre-
vailing stylized site drawings failed to capture and express the continuum of ter-
rain and building—the specificity of place, that good architecture possesses in every
style, period, and region? Building designs judged best of their times in the 1950s

Prospectus oo
OPENING Day, KENTUCKY STATE COLLEGE,
1911. (right) The college assembled to march up
the hill and to celebrate its new building. The
melding of site and structure produced a land-
mark design and provided the institution with its
image and institutional eponym: The Hilltoppers.

KENTUCKY STATE COLLEGE. (below) Landscape

matured, the building and site are now engaged
as campus architecture in a satisfying site solution
and service as institutional symbol.

University OF DENveR, C. 1890. (facing

page, top)
FERRUM JUNIOR COLLEGE, C. 1960. (facing
page, bottom) Splendid and dismal building
designs doomed by indifference or uninformed site
sensitivity.

36 Chapter One
oo

Prospectus 37
ryee) S ~~5 = ~ =) s S
and 1960s were studied works in all dimensions. Leading offices encouraged col-
laboration between all who might affect the outcome: campus planners, facility pro-
grammers, building design, site engineers, landscape architects. Later, informed by
the environmental movement of the 1970s, the integrative view of building and site
design endures as a basic principle.
The issue of tools, techniques, and collaborative efforts that assist design con-
ceptualization is no second-tier consideration given the arrival and application of
computerization. For as has happened occasionally in all architectural periods, a
fascination with the modes of expression may warp a designer’s interest in prob-
lem solving and generate schemes which are enticing as graphic art and exterior
expression but devoid of connection to specific needs, site, and_ heritage.
Worrisome—with the advent of computer-assisted design—is the architectural
equivalent of the sound-bite, a few exterior gimmicks that convey a recognition of
a fad and fashion at the expense of and as substitute for a more reasoned and com-
prehensive design analysis and outcome.
However, computerization offers an exciting potential for quickly melding data
and information from many sources. Intricate and physically complicated campus
buildings can be modeled to determine, evaluate, and then revise inexpensively the
detailing and spatial relationship of building components previously left unexam-
ined, given the fees and time available in typical office practice. Graphic systems
can merge site reality with the designer’s imaginative future through three-dimen-
sional pictorialization that heretofore was almost inexpressible. Multiple explo-
rations of alternatives, using the speed and complexity of the computer, become
especially meaningful for mature campuses with their rich fabric subject to alter-
ation with in-fill projects, the clarification of circulation routes, and the reshaping

THREE-DIMENSIONAL REPRESENTATION 1950

TO 1960. (facing page, top and bottom) The
better architectural firms were able to help their
clients and members of their design teams to see
and evaluate the three-dimensional consequences
of site character and its landscape potential.
Disillusioning and disabling were feeble attempts
to display such relationships.

COMPUTER-GENERATED BUILDING DESIGN

STUDY, BOSTON ARCHITECTURAL CENTER,
1995. Troy RANDALL. (left) Plans, section ele-
vations, cut-away views, site arrangements—
computer modeling enable the designer to explore
an extraordinary range of possibilities and on
completion of the design to create presentations
that previous media and techniques could not.
(Source: Boston Architectural Center)

Prospectus oy
 of open space patterns. Variations in massing and facade treatment, the simulation
of moving through the proposed spaces—all these are within economic reach of the
computer-assisted designer. Campus landscapes, too, can be shown in “before” and
“after” versions, seemingly real-life.
Whether traditionally drawn or computerized, images of place that communicate
and reflect site realities help raise confidence in the project conceptualization, and,
as confidence rises, projects get built—within limits, of course. Whether a sensitive
handling of topography and a gorgeous landscape would have produced a more
graceful setting for the Gerhard Hall, University of Mississippi, or helped other
comparable expedient designs, scaleless and forbidding, cannot be ascertained after
the fact. But in such instances of dismal and dull architecture, one should never
discount the redemptive powers of a building addition, as in the singular and strik-
ing physical recreation annex at Middlebury College and the more complicated and
ingenuous Carleton College Library expansion.
The core of the current Carleton College Library was constructed in 1955 with
a building design and site concept that neither forecasted a desirable trend nor
engendered a fondness among those who had to look at and use the building. By
1980, Carleton had risen to the top of the heap nationally among independent, res-
idential colleges, acquiring the “largest collection of books in an undergraduate
institution between Ohio and the West Coast,” but a collection rapidly disinte-
erating due to “lack of air-conditioning in the summer (and) dry, uneven heat in
the winter.” Further, the building was disastrous in terms of heat loss, lighting,
leaky roof, improper glazing, the types of functional space available and their rela-
tionship to each other, and building circulation. At the front door the physical
image of moat and drawbridge, truncated facade, and the visceral sense that struc-
ture was slipping down the sloping terrain were additional features earning attention.
Given the compelling physical conditions and the necessity of providing reasonable
accommodations for a prestigious faculty and highly qualified and motivated student
body, the issue of library improvement could not be postponed.
Led by the administration, monitored by a building committee, the library’s
technical experts conducted and completed programmatic and physical studies that
indicated that the existing library could be reconstructed, and with new space
become a contemporary library, uncompromised functionally, at less cost than a
new building. Of great advantage was the library’s central location, and a site that
permitted the construction of a new entrance and sandwichlike additions on two
sides—redemptive architecture. What once had been a dreary lobby became a dra-
matic, well-lit public space that gave access to interiors that were rearranged and
furnished to “provide an atmosphere that is conducive to study, encourages schol-

Site REALITY AND CONSEQUENCES.

GERHARD HALL, UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI, STUDENT HOUSING, Cc. 1960. (facing page, top)
Post-World War II campus buildings often suffered from inadequate site development, though admittedly
some would garner no kudos even if well situated and landscaped. (Source: University of Mississippi)

REDEMPTIVE ARCHITECTURE, MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE, 1989. (facing page, bottom) Moser, Pilon,
Nelson's sparkling contemporary addition to the bland Memorial Field House. The fitness center's glass
walls overlook the nearby play fields and distant views of the Green Mountains, (Source: Middlebury College)

40 Chapter One
Prospectus 41
WILLISTON LIBRARY, MOUNT HOLYOKE arly pursuits, and fosters the academic excellence that is the primary goal of the
COLLEGE, 1991. GRAHAM GUND. (above)
A functional challenge and a beautiful response.
College.”
Library expansion was met in three-piece solution: The two projects (and others to be cited) illustrate significant changes in atti-
new space was added to join the existing library tudes and approaches in architectural design on mature campuses at the end of the
and a connected classroom building; the latter
was renovated for additional library purposes.
twentieth century. In these instances, qualitative improvements not large enough to
Stylistically, the existing buildings combined four warrant new building were realized through expansion. The attachments are
kinds of traditional detailing and features; a tex- designed to give relief to the plain and ordinary, to help the larger building work
tured amalgamation that contradicts canon but
delights the eye. The new piece draws its inspired
better programmatically, to overcome design or space deficiencies which earlier
facade from that context. The bridge permits budget-cutting measures imposed, or to take advantage of a central site for higher
pedestrian circulation through the site, while utilization. These additions also signal an embracement of a new campus aesthetic
lightening the necessary horizontal juncture, giv-
ing room for the design transition from one solid
that can be unfurled as a banner of institutional progress, that which the British
element to another. (Source: Graham Gund) now call “accretional modernism,” a revolution in taste that captures the past but
does not destroy, as in Graham Gund’s radiant solution to Mount Holyoke
College’s library expansion.
Of the same “redemptive” spirit is Frank Gehry’s Information and Computer
Sciences Engineering Research facility at the University of California, Irvine
(1985), not an addition, but a pivot for turning in a new direction. Gehry’s Irvine

42 Chapter One
CARLETON COLLEGE LIBRARY, 1956. MAGNEY, TUSLER AND SETTER. (top) One of the first college libraries in the Modern style
in the Midwest. Three boxes and moat, four floors, cascading down hill; at the time audacious architecture. (Source: Carleton College
Archives)

CARLETON COLLEGE LIBRARY EXPANSION, 1983. SOvIK MATHRE SATHRUM QUANBECK AND DONLYN LYNDON. (bottom)
The front door character is dramatically changed with the moat removed, with new space and renovated space bringing the library
into the twenty-first century. Brickwork recalls visually other buildings in the vicinity. (Source: Carleton College)

Prospectus 43
 building can also be read as a historically important dividing line between the last
burst of Modern and the profusion of different styles that followed at campuses
wanting a change in appearance and canon. Carefully planned as a new campus in
1960, the first stylistic imprint at Irvine was a series of bulky, white concrete struc-
tures arranged along spokes that intersected at a central park. As conceptualized by
William Periera the sugar-cube building designs were popular in the 1950s coast-
to-coast. The Charlotte College (North Carolina) version made great calendar art,
a pristine beauty extensively publicized as a striking, honest, declarative rejection
of vestiges or homage to traditional styles. Their holding power as an acceptable
design, however, proved to be ephemeral.
“Monumental, Parthenon-modern,” judged critic Leon Whiteson, condensing
the plus and minus of what was considered at Irvine on opening day an architec-
tural triumph. Irvine became a new campus with a distinctive ambiance in a hurry.
Seemingly floating in parched greensward, the buildings in the original architec-
tural composition were, however, unconnected to any readily appreciable overall
campus design concept—except as an abstraction in the master plan drawing. In a
relatively short time, their bland features were excoriated as symptomatic of a style
in its terminal stages, totally unsuitable for a university seeking a competitive image
intellectually and visually. “We need a different sort of architecture here,” com-
mented one Irvine administrator; “it’s time for highly individual and resourceful
designers,” said another. Hence, Gehry.
A small building spatially (18,000 square feet), a big building aesthetically,
Gehry’s design presaged the new attitudes about what should constitute campus
architecture at Irvine. His three pavilions solution shelter classrooms, engineering
laboratories, and administrative spaces, respectively. The architect’s signature-style
can be found in the minimal massing and mundane materials and the ramps, stair-
ways, canopied porch, and the mix of glass panes, galvanized metal, and multicol-
ored surfaces. If the new architecture were intended to be a shock therapy for the
ills of 1960 Modern, then Gehry succeeded. “I don’t have to like it,” stated Irvine
Chancellor Jack Petalson, accepting the furor that the building’s design engendered,
as long as “people come to see” the architecture as a welcoming signal for empow-
ering the new attitudes. In scanning Irvine’s architectural evolution, one speculates
whether in time the first Modern buildings and the immediate chronological suc-
cessors at Irvine might meld in the public’s eye into one aesthetic phase—as did
variations of Victorian architecture. If so, is the idea of visual unity in twenty-first-
century campus design plausible, possible, pleasing, pretentious?
In one of those anecdotes so becoming to higher education, Periera, advising the
University as master plan consultant, is reported to have favored Gehry’s scheme,
saying “Its time for the next generation to have its say.” His counsel was respect-
ed, and in the decade since Irvine has commissioned a cadre of designers who have
given the University the reputation of promoting and building audaciously and
provocatively in contemporary styles definitely not Modern as usually defined.
One may expect many more such examples such as the Middlebury, Mount
Holyoke, and Carleton additions in the coming years as budgets dictate the econ-
omy of an appendage and tastes encourage modifications in the original building
appearance. To a significant extent the once-praised simplicity of some Modern

44 Chapter One
 LA
"1
aa em, immrii
Lad Serre
Th Pe
see tt
UU ee ae A a se ge

CHARLOTTE COLLEGE, NORTH CAROLINA, C. 1960. A. G. O'DELL, JR. (top) (Source:A.

G.O'Dell, Jr.)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, C. 1960. WILLIAM PERIERA. (bottom)

Prospectus 45
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, 1985.
FRANK GEHRY. (above left) (Source: University of
California)
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON,
c. 1980. (above right)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, 1985.
FRANK GEHRY. (right) (Source: University of
California)
The Fullerton building evokes the attractive sim-
plicity of early Modern, functions enclosed in one
form. The Irvine building disaggregates and
expresses the activities individually. Compared to
the earlier development the client achieved his
objective for Irvine: “a different sort of architec-
ture.”

46 Chapter One
campus architecture may be subject to Gothicization, an old term for new symme-
tries, piecemeal additions and protuberances, odd angles and decorative exterior
effects analogous to that which queens, princes, and magnates did to Romanesque
architecture in Europe and, later, the impositions and changes made by their
Baroque successors to their elders’ earlier masterworks. Some argue that these
approaches are a fine antidote to Modernism’s extremes; others would claim the
conflation of styles reflects higher education’s usual reluctance to venture into an
artistic realm not sufficiently defined among peers and patrons as beneficial and
appropriate for colleges and universities. As to the latter, events at Irvine would
indicate that occasionally a change in direction may yield widespread benefits: sig-
nally a competitive, public presence and support gained for designs which other-
wise might not be considered. If shedding an image was the objective, then Irvine
succeeded. In the first half of the 1990s Irvine was the campus to visit, to see, and
to enjoy as a pinnacle of architecture, California unfettered—nonpatrician buildings
with plentiful panache, polish, and pulchritude.
As noted, the irresistible urge to invent, innovate, and improve architecturally
runs deep in institutions dedicated to creating and finding knowledge and promot-
ing change—causes and effects we will trace more elaborately later. Always, of
course, that urge does not have to be fulfilled at the price of abusing the physical
heritage. Some mediation in campus designs and buildings can also be achieved
through new landscapes. Greening the campus for visual and symbolic reasons can
have many advantages: completing a design concept by extending the building
design themes through site development, creating a new look in the building sur-
rounds, and/or planting the landscape as an armature and context for a full-range
of projected architectural solutions not yet ready for implementation. Thus, from
the sidelines, one observes with admiration particularly those colleges and universi-
ties that promote a continuity in campus design with new buildings developed in
tandem with new greenery. With the binding landscape, the ensemble emerges as a
comprehensive and expressive environmental experience. Without a suitable site and
setting, a building is not architecture. We will see how such can be accomplished.

REVITALIZATION, RESTORATION, REGENERATION

The campus expresses (architecturally) something about the quality of its academic
life, as well as its role as a citizen of the community in which it 1s located. The
campus also represents many different things to various groups of people who live,
learn, teach, or visit there. It plays the role of home, museum, place of employ-
ment, social center, park, arena for dissent, and forum for the search for truth. All
these functions must be designed not only for today but also for the future.
Roger B. Finch
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1971

Architecture, like politics, is very much “the art of the possible.” Dons may live
in ivory towers, but they do not often build them. So in universities...architec-
ture is always a compromise between the visionary and the practicable.
Howard Colvin
Unbuilt Oxford, 1983

Prospectus 47
 in
In the main, most of the 15 million students projected for American campuses
the first decade of the twenty-first century will be educated on the existing 3600
campuses. The physical settings that serve this population will be improved in sev-
eral ways. Existing buildings will be restored and rehabilitated, many with addi-
tions and wings that alter their appearance for functional and aesthetic reasons—
again, redemptive architecture. A significant and impressive group of new build-
ings will be constructed so as to complete long-range plans as well as to replace
structures beyond salvage and to help institutions compete for and retain students
and faculty, in order to maintain pace with peers and/or to symbolize institution-
al advancement. The architectural improvements will trigger a renewed interest in
campus landscape.
Undergirding and overarching the more visible and changing aspects of archi-
tecture as art will be the confirmation of an ideal: function shaping form. The
Modern movement claimed this as an essential tenet in its creed. All great archi-
tecture has been similarly informed. Cathedrals, churches, and chapels changed in
response to new rites and rituals. Late-twentieth-century hospitals and prisons are
different from their ancient predecessors because new attitudes, routines, and tech-
nology require new solutions, which functional architecture handles best. Let the
inside be arranged for purpose; let the outside proclaim its locale and situation; and
then let the design expression signify institutional aesthetics as determined by the
times, culture, and collegiality—such seems a reasonable stance.
Of course, as to what will constitute appropriate campus architecture, beyond
being a three-dimensional paean to institutional purpose, place, and ambitions—
constructed on a satisfactory site—there will be no lack of opinions, or examples of
the fit and the fitful. One generation’s great and extraordinary building may be seen
by another generation as an exercise in aesthetic futility. Ironically, in recent years,
the rapidity of change in design innovations seems to have outpaced the ability of
professional criticism to summarize cause and effect into a unified theory that at
least explains, if not evaluates, what is occurring. Nonetheless in the histories of
campus development and in current events one can trace the flowering of archi-
tecture of higher education, the weeds, the buds, and nosegays, i.e., edifices mis-
placed in their environment, ideas in process and not fully realized, and collections
of buildings lovely in every aspect that counts. We will examine that garden to
screen out and digest ideas worth applying in emulation or in devising new archi-
tecture. From this information some simple methods will be synthesized which,
when applied, will give every project thus conceived a chance to flourish for its
own reasons and at the same time contribute to, and be fortified by, its surround-
ing physical setting. For convenience and coverage, most examples will be shown
in terms of their exterior appearance.
What follows is an overview of college and university construction so as to rec-
ognize and apprehend typical building types, trends, and complexity. As indicated
earlier, the sampling is selective; necessarily, inasmuch as each type itself could fill
a book of descriptions and evaluations. The examples chosen highlight seminal con-
cepts, their changing character, and the present-day situation with regard to pro-
grammatic issues which are affecting building and site design. The sampling

48 Chapter One
enables us to trace, again, how traditional architecture gave way to austere Modern
designs. Thus, generic simplicity was followed by a period of elaboration in exter-
nal appearances, then fragmentation of the building into connected pieces
and/or
the warping and bending of plan form to escape from the earlier generation’s
box
and rectangle solutions, and/or extrusions and extensions that are witty or world-
ly elements that give a building a uniqueness it might not otherwise possess. Along
the way we will see the rise and fall of current-wall architecture and the imposi-
tion and then rejection of poured concrete—the latter an allegory of the Modern
transformed into brutal expressionism, whose hard-edge declarations now have few
admirers. As indicated, such styles were succeeded in many places by an interest
in mining and mimicking traditional designs, under the rubric and rationale of join-
ing new and old with architecture in context. These were most successful when
rich-fabric nineteenth-century Collegiate Georgian, Collegiate Gothic, and
Victorian buildings inspired a transferable design vocabulary. The Challange?
Viewed comprehensively, architectural concepts and styles visible in the panora-
ma of college and university buildings, within one lifetime, seem to have an ever-
shortening life cycle. Response to functional requirements is one cause, adjust-
ments in institutional missions another, fashion a third. Further, the purgative
value of rejecting quotidian work in anticipation and preparation for a design direc-
tion not yet imagined, or for nurturing another and better round of revivals and
reinterpretations, cannot be ignored or discounted in understanding how college
and university buildings come into being. Above all, there is the verity that archi-
tecture is the tangible record of cultural human progress or retrogression. If the
buildings of higher education this past century are Joseph Hudnut’s “human doc-
uments casting a remorseless light on the civilization of the times and on the qual-
ity of mind of their creators,” ”» then campus architecture, with its extraordinary
variety, has been a faithful expression of the goal of enlarging and diversifying
higher education.
How much so? Admittedly critical judgment can be warped and strained by read-
ing into designs connotations and meanings never intended. And as we will see, the
architect’s own words may not explain sufficiently the final results. But surely
William George Tight’s path-finding effort to establish a regional architecture at
the University of New Mexico (an amalgam of native and Spanish Colonial fea-
tures) must rank high as a three-dimensional expression of his wish to have all the
state’s population see the University as a welcoming place for diverse interests,
sexes, races, and creeds. Tight lost his presidency fighting that cause. His first
designs (the University heating plant) were as naive as his political sense. Later
John Gaw Meem demonstrated the art of architecture in his elegant versions of
Tight’s Pueblo style, and detail counts, as Meem demonstrated on the Albuquerque
campus. Thus the recent lobby at the Wriston Art Center (Lawrence University)
is fine architecture and a welcoming beacon and invitation for all to enter and enjoy
the arts as participants or observers. An early view of Princeton substantiates the
claim that openness is a time-tested quality of commendable and appropriate cam-
pus architecture. How disappointing to see such qualities lost in or forgotten in
grand designs as well as smaller projects.

Prospectus 49
 HEATING PLANT, UNIVERSITY OF NEW
Mexico, c. 1898. WittiAM GEORGE TIGHT,
PRESIDENT AND DESIGNER. (fight) In the
Jeffersonian tradition: an architecture to serve and
symbolize the people. (Source: University archives
courtesy of Joe C McKinney)

LOBBY DETAIL, LAWRENCE UNiversity, 1992.

CENTERBROOK ARCHITECTS. (bottom) For the
punditic, a design loaded with contemporary
design codes. For everyone, an inviting, welcoming,
and attractive ambiance. (Source: Lawrence
University)

PRINCETON UNiversity, 1838. (facing pe

top) A welcoming view of campus buildings and
greenery. (Source: Princeton University)

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, 1960. (facing page

bottom) A building for the arts, with some aspects
of art missing. (Source: University of Ka

50 Chapter One
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ISS OIE IBYEIN CG; IP YTB

It may be reasonably inferred that buildings already in existence in any and all
periods, having had similar requirements with those that occur in present problems,
will have created and used so-called styles which have in them architectural
expression of value at all times for work of the same kind.
C. Howard Walker
Expression—the Collegiate Style, /93/

Stretched along the road that separates it from the medical buildings is the long, low,
steel, glass and brick home of the natural sciences laboratories. Nestled against this
brick and steel spine, lie vestiges ofscience past. On one side the old physics building,
large and austere with a red tile roof slowly turning black, and tall, narrow windows
that belie the high ceiling dark rooms within...around the mall punctuated at one
end...lie the squat, functional, ceramic brick and concrete buildings of the engineering
and management schools, almost defiantly ugly as though to emphasize that
appearances are secondary to reality...(adjacent) Gothic stone buildings beside
awkward Victorian red brick construction...home for the humanities and social
sciences...Beyond 1s the flashy, contemporary law school building, its black one-way
windows revealing as little inside as a state trooper’s sun glasses.
David Kolb
The Modern American College, /98/

A “building” is defined as a roofed structure for temporary or permanent shelter of

persons, animals, plants, materials or equipment.
Postsecondary Education Facilities
Inventory and Classification Manual,
Washington 1992

FUNCTIONAL DIVERSIFICATION

That fount of all plausible explication, the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannia, says that “the end of building is convenience; the end of architecture as
an art is beauty, grandeur, unity and power.” Old Main, Kenyon College (1827)
(illustrated on page 55), and the previously cited Memorial Hall (1872), Royce Hall
(1929), and Breuer’s work at St. John’s University (1953) meet those expectations.
Modern architecture was heralded as the logical end of that progression. The canon
would guide all designers to useful and attractive solutions; philosophically one
style would fit all conditions. Its simplicity, however, was deceptive. Unfortunately,
propelled by expediency, many institutions in the two decades following World
War II constructed stodgy solutions and specious structures disguised and puffed
 as Modern architecture. Not atypical, from that period, is the Lafayette College
Science Building (illustrated on page 55), which displays aspects of the Modern
idiom and may exemplify functionality. However, by any standard it hardly repre-
sents the art of architecture, though touted originally as an “adventuresome.
design,” stripped as the building was of the iconic detailing of older styles. Other
buildings from the early 1950s, once truly rousing, ground-breaking Modern
designs, are now also relegated to footnotes in historic surveys. Some, good designs
for their times, hold attention because of their association with their designer, such
as Eero Saarinen’s Divinity School building and chapel at Drake University. And
there are a few tantalizing period pieces, neither traditional nor Modern, such as
the Hollins College Chapel, a quirky rendition of Collegiate Georgian. Like
Wordsworth’s “authentic tidings of invisible things,” the 1958 design could be read
retrospectively as a prelude to post-Modern architecture, a la Michael Graves.
In scanning a sample of Modern campus buildings built from 1945 to 1970, and
in reading skewering screeds such as David Kolb’s impressions of Case-Western
University, the phrase Modern is more a slogan of emancipation from traditional
styles rather than the title for a rigorous codification of design terms and appear-
ances. Diversity reigned and reigns. As early as 1931, Architectural Forum writer
Kenneth K. Stowell editorialized that in higher education, “Uniformity of product
is no longer the object being sought. The mediocrity of mass production of grad-
uates gives way to developing individuals to realize as fully as possible their poten-
tialities, mental, physical, social and spiritual. The environment (sic) atmosphere
and facilities provided are considered as important as the subjects in the curricu-
lum. The architecture must be in accord with and contribute to those educational
aims.” Here, then, was the educational argument for setting aside introspective tra-
ditional styles and adopting open-ended Modern. Unquestionably some designers
would and did use the aspects of the Modern canon as a license for pursuing quo-
tidian nontraditional work; others would accept the canon as a departure point for
a striving level of creative interpretation. Astutely, Antony Part, British Ministry
of Education, captured the alpha and omega of swarming but mediocre emulation
as well as sparkling solo flights. During his year-long tour and evaluation of
American architecture in 1950-1951, Part saw “Fashion...raising the level of per-
formance, but also holding experimentation within narrow limits....The truth
seems to be that the modern building, being a more individual affair in every
respect than its predecessors, requires a greater degree of skill in the designer to
make it successful.” True then, and true now, particularly when examining the
exceptional variety of building types that constitute campus architecture.
At the start of higher education in North America, functions and buildings were
simple: housing, chapel, classroom, library, dining, and a suite of rooms for the
administration, usually the president and bursar, occasionally all sheltered under
one roof. Pictured on page 57 is Texas Christian University’s oldest building, circa
1878; another illustration is a view of the inaugural building at Southern Methodist
University, constructed a number of years later, Jeffersonian in spirit and form.
These nostalgic photos expose the hard times which many institution’s faced in giv-
ing shape and substance to the founder’s aspirations. Some failed, most succeeded.
The landscape surrounding and approaching SMU’s flagship building (now

54 Chapter Two
OLD Main, KENYON COLLEGE, 1827. (top) (Source: Kenyon College)
SCIENCE BUILDING, LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, C. 1960. (bottom) (Source: Lafayette College)
Two projects in visual contrast, separated by a century of technology and an eon of taste and skill, displaying the perceptible differ-
ences between architecture and a building.

Building Types 55
 Dedham Hall) grew gracefully, and the building has been restored and recon-
structed several times for varying academic activities. TCU’s first structure is NOW
only an archival memory.
Not all began impoverished. Kenyon College’s Old Main, for example, was sub-
stantial architecture by any benchmark. Architecturally one of the best from the
first assortment crop was Benjamin Latrobe’s Old West (Dickinson College, 1803).
His detailing and materials have been copied or interpreted in several later
Dickinson buildings, a visual continuity that strengthens and ennobles the
Dickinson campus design. The custom of shared space continues today in
Massachusetts Hall (1713), with the Harvard University president’s offices on the
lower floors and student bedrooms above, an anachronistic homage to the past at
the world’s richest university; the custom endures in Swarthmore College’s Parish
Hall (1865), where the functional mix is maintained as a symbolic statement of
institutional integrity.
College size was, of course, the major determinant in configuring multifunction
buildings. One building served all at the start, then growth in enrollment, diversi-
fication in subject matter, and then many buildings, or incremental expansion. The
latter has generated some visually fascinating architecture. Center Hall, Wabash
College (1854-1871) was designed and built in three phases, each to help keep the
academic activities under one roof. An historic example of the Italian Renaissance
Villa Revival style, the building originally included “library, Chemical Laboratory,
Science Lecture Room, literary societies, and chapel.” The “villa” design is a good
example of style as signal. The building size and location impressed on the Indiana
community the College’s presence and functions and its determination to be rec-
ognized as a contemporary institution with its choice of style, at that time unique.
How steadfast such signals? Gradually new buildings were erected for the sciences
and the library, none in the villa mode, which had gone out of fashion. A 1926
campus plan study determined that the “historic development of campus and com-
munity” would be best expressed architecturally by “Early American of the
Classical Period.” The architect’s sketches and notes showed how Center Hall
could be transformed to send new signals, “at small cost by changes to the roof
and tower.” It would be, the designer wrote, “an interesting example of how,
through careful architectural study, an existing building of permanent value can be
preserved.” The Depression stilled the creative thought. Center Hall has been
remodeled several times inside. The exterior remains intact, preserved as original-
ly designed, as it should be as an honest example of regional period architecture.
Today, typically, each prime college and university activity is encased in one or
more of its own buildings. Thus Illinois College, established in 1829, grew from 1
building to 23. Promoted as a prototype of a small New England College campus
transplanted to the Mid-west, the school currently enrolls 900 students. The col-
lege expansion can be read qualitatively and quantitatively in an air view drawing
of its period architecture: roofs, facades, materials. Not all signals are on the exte-
rior. The latest at Illinois College is “a multi-purpose learning center, [which] fea-
tures a dramatic atrium, a college living room.” Modest in scale, important in their
locale, the two Wabash and Illinois buildings are examples of architecture as an
institutional time clock. Situated among many buildings, the overlay of function

56 Chapter Two
ec deenean ite ee

TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY, C. 1878. (top) Start-up building. (Source: Texas Christian University)
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, C. 1948. (bottom left) (Source: Library of Congress)
SOUTHERN METHODIST University, C. 1915. (bottom right) First architecture. Two from Texas, architectural evidence of varying
degrees of success in obtaining funds for the initial construction; both landmarks of faith and confidence in higher education. The
SMU vista and building form obviously owe origin to Jefferson's Charlottesville campus.

Building Types orN

DRAKE UNIVERSITY, CHAPEL AND CLASSROOM,
Cc. 1958. SAARINEN AND Swan. (above)
(Source: Drake University)
CHAPEL, HOLLINS COLLEGE, C. 1958. (right)
(Source: Hollins College)
Same period, disparate aesthetics. Drake a forgot-
ten masterwork. Hollins, perhaps a design worth
reconsidering as a harbinger of Post-Modern.

CENTER HALL, WABASH COLLEGE, 1854 To

1870. WILLIAM TINSLEY. (facing page, top) An
historic Indiana college building, now a national
landmark, a rare existing example of the Italianate-
Villa style. Frequently remodeled, the exterior
remains, through fortunate circumstances, as envi-
sioned a century ago. (Source: Wabash College)

CENTER HALL, PROPOSED MODERNIZATION, C.

1930. (facing page, bottom) Redemptive archi-
tecture, architect's arrogance, changing cultural
values? Designer Jens Fredrick Larson believed a
new look would best communicate 1930 collegiate
purpose and local tastes. The Depression post-
poned implementation. The idea was not later pur-
sued. How vulnerable are Modern classics? When
should conservation of heritage override function-
al necessity and rational maintenance decisions,
or a groundswell of changing architectural taste?

58 Chapter Two
 rt
: if eee
qt
amasTiit

4
l4

Building Types 5)9

 and fashion in these buildings reinforces not only the site-specific sense of place
but also announces what cultural and aesthetic values were important when the
buildings were constructed. Of large, single-purpose structures, two by Perkins and
Will (shown on pages 62 and 63) exemplify how site and context may help deter-
mine external appearances and demonstrate how skilled hands can avoid the curse
of signature architecture. The latter misfortune occurs when the creativity of a
fashionable designer is commissioned to produce a building recognizably his or her
style but otherwise deficient in conceptualization. The remedy is care and caution
in defining project function, size, site, budget, and expectations.
We turn now to examining variations in building types so as to see and appre-
ciate a source of architectural distinction, i.e., functional diversification. As to cat-
egorizing and describing building types by function, prime activity are key words,
inasmuch as many campus buildings continue to be multipurpose. As one would
expect, the range of activities has expanded. For example, a working group orga-
nized to classify college and university facilities (National Center for Educational
Statistics, 1992) identified about 60 discrete kinds of functional spaces (rooms)
associated with postsecondary education buildings. Sixteen such functions appear
in a sample survey of early-nineteenth-century buildings. Fifty-four functions
appear in a comparable group of late-twentieth-century buildings on the same cam-
puses. No surprises here. As we have seen, higher education became more diverse
and differentiated in teaching, research, and community service, and so too did its
architecture. The comments that follow, necessarily selective and abbreviated, illu-
minate the diversity and shed light on current issues and solutions. For conve-
nience in description, we begin with athletic and physical recreation facilities.

ATHLETIC AND PHYSICAL RECREATION

At Brown University athletic and physical recreation functions once could be
housed in a single building. By 1990 a full range of sports and recreation would
require separate facilities for swimming, basketball, ice hockey, and a multipurpose
field house, each with a distinctive appearance and form. Professional journals as
early as 1926 acknowledge “that the architect has a real problem in planning such
an exacting building.” The Architectural Forum (1931) published a “practical com-
pilation of the modern trends in planning, design and construction of buildings for
intercollegiate athletics.” How helpful? Apparently the subsequent battle of style
versus function left mortal wounds. The American Athletic Institute (1947)
deplored “the tragic prevalence of errors in the construction of facilities.” Because
of such things as “the absence or ignorance of desirable standards, the failure of
designers and program specialists to pool their knowledge, the policy of false econ-
omy and the tendency to imitate grievous mistakes have been made and repeated.
The result has been monstrosities that have persisted for generations.”
Be that as it may, the programmatic aspects of such buildings were soon settled
authoritatively, leaving the design response to stretch the architect’s imagination. A
checklist prepared by the American Athletic Institute (1970) addressed the earlier
deficiencies, setting criteria for 27 indoor activities requiring specialized spaces.
Each had their regulated criteria for the size and configuration of interior spaces.

60 Chapter Two
 S , COLLEGE AVENUE e e
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buildings
ILLINOIS COLLEGE, 1995 CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT. (top) As the college grew and educational purposes changed,
of taste and tech-
increased in number and were diversified functionally. The campus is an architectural clock, tracking the evolution
New England campus
nology. The generation-binding design theme: a site composition and landscape developed in homage to
design paradigms. (Source: Illinois College)

(bottom) Another click on

ILLINOIS COLLEGE, ATRIUM, KIRBY LEARNING CENTER, 1992. STONE, MARRACCINI, PaTerRSON.
styles. (Source: Illinois College)
the architectural clock, with an interior demonstrating further diversification of building types and

Building Types 61
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NORTHWESTERN UNiveRSITY, TARRY RESEARCH AND EDUCATION BUILDING, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, 1990. PERKINS AND
Wit. Biomedical research, clinical studies, and basic sciences are enclosed in a 17-story, 272,000-square-foot edifice in downtown
Chicago. The low element to the building's right is a steel and glass atrium, giving access to the new and adjacent university buildings.
The architect's challenge, designing a distinctive new high-rise in Chicago, ranks with rowing backward across the Atlantic in a wash-
tub. The Perkins and Will solution is a dignified essay in limestone, painted aluminum wall, and glass. The elements, an echo of older
skyscrapers, denote a sense of place and are sufficiently varied to express contemporary design ideas. Most important, the building's
interiors were engineered and organized to meet biomedical teaching and research standards. Flexibility—the key to building
longevity—is optimized through a central vertical utility shaft, threaded through the structure like a tree trunk and extended limbs.
(Source: Perkins and Will)

62 Chapter Two
CATHOLIC University, VITREOUS STATE LABORATORY, 1986. PERKINS AND WILL. The five-story, 93,000-square-foot scientific
facility is devoted to research in novel glass technologies. The public side of the building gives a strong edge to a paved campus open
space. The glass, metal, and panel materials are in keeping with the building purpose. The forms and composition of the facade are
intended to suggest the classical features of the surrounding buildings—granite Romanesque. A precast panel, lightly textured and
solid granite at the base, provide the visual connection. The seating and lighting elements reinforce the allusion. Not visible are the
engineering solutions for energy conservation and the handling of low-level radiation and other exacting environmental require-
ments for glass surface catalysis and experiments with optic fibers. (Source: Perkins and Will)

Building Types 63
 And stretch the imagination must, because of the awesome dimensions of the build-
ing type: 55 percent of all space in the facilities will require high ceilings for bas-
ketball, volleyball, badminton, tennis, and gymnastics, experts say,
Spanning of tall, voluminous space, free of columns, has stimulated audacious
structural solutions. The first nontraditional designs after World War II unfortu-
nately had a lumpen quality and were often miserably sited. As at Montana State
College, the potential of a graceful surrounding landscape and relationships to the
central campus was lost in the need to get as much parking as close to the front
entrance as possible and the fear, not unfounded, that the new structure, the first
modern university building of its kind in the region, would overwhelm its neigh-
bors. Questionable as to being a style suitable for modern times, the earlier tradi-
tional gymnasium and field house solutions did possess a commanding presence and
visual character worth admiration, especially when trees, paving, and path arrange-
ments could help scale down elephantine structures and connect them visually and
functionally to nearby play fields and adjacent campus buildings.
Facility designs at the University of Iowa summarize evolving institutional atti-
tudes about athletics, recreation, and physical education and the corresponding
design concepts. When erected in 1926, the University of Towa field house was the
“largest structure of its kind in the world...5.5 million cubic feet of space...seating
12,000.” Its fate reveals two trends: a new facility was constructed for varsity ath-
letics and spectator sports; the old building was remodeled in 1985 for general
recreation and physical education; to this was added, in 1989, a second recreation-
al facility the size of a conventional college gym. The result is equal time and space
for both men and women team sports and substantial facilities for students, facul-
ty, and staff. The original field house and addition are brick boxes, more building
than architecture. The new sports arena nestles into the ground, its size disguised,
its frontage scaled to human dimension, its facade announcing hints of its ingenious
interior structural system.
Land available and surrounding ambiance, not scale mediation, was the affecting
design consideration at Georgetown University, a field house extensively built below
grade with the roof engineered for play fields. Multiple use, the image of being
“leading edge,” and the economy of construction led Elmira College to construct
three linked geodesic domes in 1972. Should Buckminster Fuller require a monu-
ment, these will do: gymnasium, hockey, and field house situated in a greensward.
The gym encloses the acre and a half of courts, lockers, offices, and classrooms.
The field house was expected “to host stamp shows to horse shows when not being
used for field and track events.” Such multiuse has helped rationalize the costs of
constructing many new, large, indoor spectator facilities. Those bothered by what
they perceive to be the “dangers of big-time athletic” programs are assuaged with
the notion that the local basketball arena will be used for convocations, special
events, and performances that might not otherwise be possible indoors on campus,
As to stimulating new thoughts about leading edge architecture, revealing, cogent,
and sull timely is Henry Noble McCracken’s 1928 study of “suitable concepts” for
a new facility at Vassar College, where he was president, leading the charge for a
comprehensive sports and recreation program. McCracken was concerned with the
notion that too often sports are seen as the province of “the specialized athlete rather

64 Chapter Two
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66 Chapter Two
than for the whole community.” He hoped that a new kind of building would
encourage greater participation. “Games,” he said, “are a happy combination of wit
and will, strength and agility. Cooperation and organized attack upon problems are
taught, together with the control of temper and the sublimation of suppressed
desires.” It was his goal that “after a generation or two had grown up under the
stimulation of (his proposed gymnasia) we may be as fond of sports as the English.”
After studying “over thirty gymnasia,” McCracken advocated “the drafting of plans
for a facility at Vassar based on the idea of a country club.” The 1990 student recre-
ation center at Vanderbilt University measures up to that ideal. The scheme includes
a lap pool, racquetball and squash courts, jogging track, and climbing wall, and “spa-
type natatorium.” The exterior “reinforces the heritage of the Vanderbilt brick and
limestone buildings with contemporary materials.” In contrast to a visual heritage,
McCracken advocated “a building design suggesting an English manor and farm out-
buildings” which would bring the various “sports spaces into a harmonious archi-
tectural relationship.” Admirably, Helmut Jahn’s athletic facility, Saint Mary’s
College, Indiana (1977), required no cultural or stylistic allusion, with its antilumpen
configuration, elegant detailing, and contemporary materials.
On the horizon are innovative facilities which are “apt to be new applications
and new combinations of previously tried elements,” for the building type has not
exhausted its run programmatically or physically. Some old advice from Fiske
Kimball (1930) thus remains germane, “there are certain definite principles and
certain definite trends which produce inevitable similarities and differences in all
cases. For this reason knowledge of what has been done and what is being done
elsewhere is of inestimable benefit to those in charge of new projects of this kind.”
With additional facilities on the horizon, appropriate, then, are some concluding
words about the fate of redundant gymnasia whose architectural character and cam-
pus history merit preservation and adaptation for new uses. Possibilities range from
a campus center (Carleton College’s version is commendable in every respect) to
Brown University’s proposed conversion of its historic Sayles gymnasium into spe-
cial function classrooms. In both instances the exteriors are kept intact in tribute
to history and the interiors changed to satisfy new needs.

“CLASSROOMS AND FACULTY OFFICES

The Brown proposal reflects the retooling of classroom space occurring at most
institutions. This is happening for two reasons. Higher education is recognizing
important differences in learning and teaching styles associated with specific disci-
plines. Computers and communications technology are altering conventional time

University oF lowa. (facing page, top) The 1926 building and 1989 addition. Big boxes above
ground. (Source: University of lowa)

University OF lowa, CaRveR HAWKEYE-ARENA. CRSS; THE DuRANT Group; GEIGER

Associates. (facing page, bottom) A splendid team effort in placing a large 13,200-seat practice and
performance facility in a natural ravine, providing at the entrance level a design human in scale, contem-
porary in materials, and expressive in its articulation of the space frame. (Source: University of lowa)

Building Types 67
68 Chapter Two
St. Mary's Cottece, Inpiawa, 1977,
HELMUT JAHN. (facingpage top) (Source St Marys

Etmira COLLEGE, GEODESIC DOMES,

HASKELL, CONNOR & Frost. facing page bo
tom) (Source: Amira College)

Saves Gymnasium, 1912. (right) Origing y

; z :
constructed for Pembroke College at
Brower :
University, the interior
ofthe historic structure is :
scheduled to be reconstructed as a twenty-first-
:
century Gassroom. (Source: Brown University

SPELMAN COLLEGE, Cosey ACADEMIC

CENTER, 1995. DE Jonc Arcurects. (below
Designed to fit the Spelman ambiance, toJ gather
GG

and serve the human lies, to combine traditiona

gee
"Ses

ip
Jt
70 Chapter Two
 and space practices and modes of teaching and learni
ng. The traditional inventory
of classroom spaces is being modified in terms of size,
configuration, environmen-
tal conditions, furnishings, and equipment. The 1992 Massac
husetts Institute of
Technology Bechtel classroom illuminates the ‘design horizo
=
2
‘ce
tbe
oS1
n with its extraordinary
range of electronic devices arranged to encourage facult
en and in turn to-adapt them to personal teaching styles.
y use of the new devices

Lock-step, these trends are also affecting faculty office designs

, which are becom-
ing communications centers for receiving and sending knowle
dge electronically as
_ well as venues for those face-to-face conversations and meetin
A
ak,
eeabt
Fe gs—the essence of
oan
¢
collegiality and educational exchanges—for which machines are no substitute.
Locationally, classrooms and faculty offices are likely to continue to
be distributed
_ throughout campus in clusters identified with the discipline, depart
ment, or divi-
sion and occasionally grouped as a campuswide facility for efficiency in schedul
ing
and experimentation with emerging technology. Thus, Spelman College’s
Cosby
Academic Center (1994) gathers the humanities into one location with contemp
o-
rary architecture that recalls the older Spelman buildings. But, might these trends
generate a new building type? Most everyone on campus, at some point in the daily
routine, is in a classroom or faculty office. Could function, materials, and teaching
technology combine to induce a distinctive design and style? Once this was the
hope of those advocating Modern architecture. Traditional designs were a “sauce,”
said the critics, that gave functionally differentiated buildings an unwelcome uni-
form resemblance. Collegiate Gothic could be applied equally to chapels and heat-
TyRET
PROS
ORE
ASAP
RR
__ ing plants, classrooms and gymnasium. Fine for the past, they explained, but not
4 for higher education’s new age. The expectations were that function would blos-
_ som into a new style. But the Modern idiom was all too soon trapped by its own
_ canon. By the late 1950s, good examples of a classroom building and 2 dormito-
a ry, conceived as Modern, located a thousand miles apart, from different hands,
= could barely be distinguished in general appearance from each other. Traditional
os or Modern, or something else, whether viable campus architecture requires a dis-
E tinctive style in the future, and what that might be, is an issue obviously germane
to our inquiry.

_VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS.

-

_ Facilities for the arts are reliable indicators of the maturation of American higher
- education and the vitality of diversified architecture. Curricula and programs have
_~evolved from “appreciation” to “hands on” experience. Fifty years ago there were
és few such buildings, telltale marks of an uncertain culture. By the 1970s buildings
~ for the arts could lay claim to being architecturally ubiquitous and among the cam-
| puses’ most accomplished works. Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center physically and

Mopesn Arcurecture: THe Canton ar its Peax. (facing page top and bottom) Two award-win-
nig buildings constructed 1955 to 1960.A dassroom building and student housing located a thousand
~ iniles apart, designéd by different hands and firms; confident and persuasive renditions ofan important

Buslding Types 71
 ee ’
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iY tie gta amine Anen

i i

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|eens
| at

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t

State UNiversity OF New York, PURCHASE, VISUAL ARTS INSTRUCTION FACILITY, 1971. (top) The
Architect's Collaborative
version of the then popular Modern architectural style, with forms and shapes associated with arts facilities,
with minimal articula-
tion of the facade.

St. BENEDICTA Arts CENTER, COLLEGE OF St. BENEDICT, 1962. HAMMEL, GREEN, ABRAHAMSON.
(bottom) All the arts
under one roof: practice, performance, creation, display. A landmark design in the history of Modern
collegiate architecture, including
flexibility in space use, acoustics, and building systems. (Source: College of St. Benedict)

72 Chapter Tivo
philosophically brought the arts into the middle of campus life. The Krannert
Center (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) was as imposing as Lincoln
Center. New campuses, such as the State University of New York, Purchase, and
older campuses such as the College of Saint Benedict (Minnesota) sponsored and
built facilities that epitomized Modern architecture in the 1960s. The designs were
manifest discourses of function influencing form, and simple materials melding dis-
parate structures into a visual unity. Architecturally, the designs signal the arts
coming of age in America—reflecting, we think, the nation’s ascendancy as a world
political power and aesthetic leader and the willingness of higher education to
afford students avocational opportunities and vocational training within a college
and university curriculum, as well as conservatory level training. Thus, painters
such as Mark Rothko and Burgoyne Diller taught not in an art school, but at a lib-
eral arts institution, Brooklyn College. Goucher College operates a renowned mod-
ern dance program. Columbia University filled its faculty ranks with international-
ly respected composers. Webster College stages a summer opera season that draws
audiences and critical acclaim worldwide. Few conservatories could equal the fac-
ulty and facilities at the University of Indiana.
Today every campus has a wing, a building, or a group of buildings devoted to
some aspect of understanding, learning, experiencing, or doing art, dance, theater,
music, and the kindred arts and crafts. In the hinterland, many are town-gown cul-
tural centers, routinely offering concerts, recitals, films, lectures, dance and theater
productions, and art exhibitions. Studios, galleries, practice rooms, performance
spaces—the technical requirements for good architecture are demanding, space con-
figurations and relationships exacting, and the design expression an opportunity for
introducing architectural concepts that extend and celebrate the aesthetic experi-
ence such buildings enclose. These are unique buildings. Sloppy and expedient
planning would be disastrous. As critic Mildred F. Schmertz explained in vetting
the Krannert scheme, one notes with appreciation if not awe, “five different facil-
ities each of the optimum size and shape for the types of performance
housed...whose intrinsic interest is not diminished by the fact that (once con-
structed) complexes such as these will probably never be built again.”
Examining a cluster of visual and performing arts buildings, one appreciates the
importance of a well-formulated facility program and the designation of a prime
site. These themselves do not, of course, determine the architectural outcomes.
Good architecture communicates values and attitudes, as well as time and place,
through the arrangement of forms and site composition, massing and materials.
How such is devised is part of the art of architecture. And the results will differ
from age to age. Design proposals submitted for the University of Maryland,
College Park, arts center (1994) exemplify how a singular statement of requirements
can yield an enticing range of possibilities. A significant competition, the range of
possibilities generated by the Maryland designers taken together can be read as a
catalog of contemporary architectural concepts. The client requirements included
concert hall, recital hall, proscenium and experimental theater, dance studio,
library, classrooms, restaurant, and amphitheater. In the solutions submitted
straight-line calibrated site arrangements or all-under-one-roof concepts have been
dismissed in favor of combinations of buildings, building segments, roof shapes,

Building Types eS)

 UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ArTS, 1994 COMPETITION. One program,
one site, varying solu-
tions. lextbook examples of contemporary design attitudes about building forms and site composition. Shown are
four of the six sub-
missions. (Source: University of Maryland)

ANTOINE PREDOCK. (top)

Moore Ruste YuDELL. (bottom) The winning proposal.

74 Chapter Two
Pe: Coge Freep AnD Pagtners. (top

(hottom
Cesar Prius AnD ASSOCIATES. bottom,

Building Types 75
FURMAN UNIveRrsITY, ROE ArT BUILDING,
1985. Perry DEAN ROGERS AND PARTNERS.
The campus image is informed by Collegiate
Georgian, a Palladian style favored in the region
and well utilized by the University in older build-
ings such as the James B. Duke Library (right).
Pediment, portico, and brick materials are the sig-
nature features from the older structures reorga-
nized in the fashionable and faultless facade of
the new building. Interestingly, the same firm was
responsible for both buildings. (Source: Furman
University)

76 Chapter Two
courtyards, and landscapes. Where one might find a Beaux Arts classical essay
of
dominant and subordinated elements, complexity reigns. The Pei Cobb Freed and
Partners scheme reads like a modern Roman forum, Cesar Pelli’s connected halls,
a market place for the arts, and Antoine Predock’s architecture as sculpture. In
these works, all is not revealed in one glance. Each hold’s the promise of sequenced
visual surprises as one moves through the site, a visceral overture and introduction
to the aesthetic experiences inside the buildings—potentially splendid campus
architecture. The winning scheme (Moore Ruble Yudell) was selected by the jury
because “It promises a rich mix of humanly scaled forms and spaces... humanism
in architecture as opposed to pure abstraction.”
Delightful are those campus buildings which serve the arts without compromise
to interior functional requirements, span generations symbolically, are architectural-
ly distinctive, and pay harmonious homage to their predecessors. Thus the fine arts
facility at Furman University (with its roof shape, portico, and materials) stands out
as a superior work from the 1980s, recalling without insult older Furman structures
less refined in their formation. The principle of design continuity with generation
differences is exquisitely handled in James Stirling’s Cornell University project.
Located at the seam of campus and community, the design epitomizes place mak-
ing and place marking. Function informs shapes, the site affects location and build-
ing connections. Materials and detailing are inspired and drawn from the nearby
architecture, educational and vernacular, aesthetic and commercial. Collegiate arts
centers in small towns also carry the charge of being local cultural centers. As venues
for events, ceremonies, performances, their sites must be part of the campus pedes-
trian precinct as well as accessible to the outside public through conveniently placed
parking. Thus these arts buildings are significant design opportunities for arranging
buildings, circulation patterns, and landscape elements into an overall design that
serves as a public ceremonial and/or memorial portal to the campus.

CAMPUS CENTERS
As with a library, the college and university without a campus center would be
exceptional. Extracurricular activities converge and are sheltered in the campus
center, serving young and old. Conceived as wholesome alternatives to the attrac-
tions that the seedier aspects of town and city life held for undergraduates, and
then envisioned as places to nurture collegiality as institutions grew larger and the
population more diverse; promoted as proper memorials for the alumnus and bene-
factors, and then transformed from student enclaves to campus unions serving the
‘entire community—campus centers are now multifunctional buildings charged to
serve and symbolize all aspects of campus life. Older students often use the center
as a social club, as a study lounge, as a place to experience campus life when such
appeals to their interests. For younger people contact and involvement with peers
in the campus center helps provide knowledge and perspective on differing back-
grounds, values, lifestyles, interests. Whereas this process occurs in well-designed
campus housing, the campus center is the main venue in terms of numbers of peo-
ple involved, and the programs and ambiance serving the bold, the shy, the intro-
spective, the articulate. A “hot button” topic is keeping students on campus for

Building Types 77
 soill|Wamefee ad
1 oe te ee a ee

78 Chapter Two
SAN FRANCISCO STaTE UNiverRsiTY, CAMPUS
CENTER, 1970. PARTRIDGE & KEATING. (fac-
ing page, top) An intriguing solution that sum-
marizes the spirited designs of the 1970s, when
clients were willing to extend a free hand for
innovation and invention. (Source: San Francisco
State University)

FRANKLIN PIERCE COLLEGE, CAMPUS CENTER,

1986. Swain Associates. (facing page, bot- ae

tom) Forms and shapes are reminiscent of 4
regional agricultural architecture. The design ele- eo
ments are organized to establish a skyline image & Ke
associated with marvelous views to and from the | =
building. A clever interior circulation scheme pro-
vides patrons and visitors a delightful sequence of i &
spatial experiences and activity choices. (Source: : GENSSAL GOO SHIPPING / RECEIVING

Franklin Pierce College)

KAPLAN, McLAuGLIN, Diaz, ARCHITECTS. (this

UNiveRSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DiEGO, Price Campus CENTER, 1 992.
bookstore, and food court. The piazza is traversed
page, top and bottom) A dramatic piazza, framed by two campus center buildings,
walk, carrying pedestrian traffic into and through the central space. The conjunction of paved areas anda
by a major campus
the campus scene. The food services building includes
greensward create a beguiling visual setting that attracts students and enlivens
the barrier between inside and outside space.” The designers note that “sales in the book-
“roll-up garage-type doors that break down
testament to the success of the design.” (Source: Kaplan,
store and food court are in the highest percentile of all college centers. ..a
McLauglin, Diaz, Architects)

Building Types a
 evenings and weekends—a programmatic issue on most campuses with a residen-
tial population and a design issue of consequence for campus center life adminis-
trators, planners, and architects.
Modest or grandiose, campus centers occupy a central site and are intended to
be designed as special buildings reflecting local conditions, customs, needs, and
aspirations. The Memorial Student Union at the University of Missouri, Columbia,
is indicative of how such came into being. It was started in 1926 with a Memorial
Tower, Tudor Gothic style, for university students who died in World War I. But
sentiment could not induce additional expenditures. Two activity wings, which
would have constituted the center proper, were delayed for three decades “due to
fund-raising difficulties, another world war, and spiraling construction costs.”
Enrollment growth after World War II gave further cause for a union, and an alert
university leadership sustained the political impetus to complete the “cherished
dream.” Externally, the second-phase design was arranged to match the older
Tudor Gothic architecture of the shrinelike Tower, but by then the design model
was dated and the results bland and enervated. The Missouri building is a land-
mark structure ending the era of romance with traditional styles and forms but not
the idea of arranging the constituent elements of a campus center to rise upward
and mark and celebrate time and place.
Campus centers at San Francisco State University (1974), Franklin Pierce
College (1985), and Emory University (1986) illustrate differences in design expres-
sion, varying functional concepts, the codification of aesthetic values, the influence
of geography, and site treatment. All three conform to programmatic principles
found in successful campus centers: typically some combination of six basic func-
tions—bookstore, dining, meeting rooms, post office, social spaces, and student
organization rooms. The best buildings are designed to encourage people to circu-
late through the interior spaces so as to see the ongoing activities and choose to
participate; this often requires an audacious building design and crossroads loca-
tion. In this regard, the San Francisco building has few equals; in appearance, it
was as if Le Corbusier and the architect of a Mayan temple had collaborated on a
competition entry arranged to catch the jury’s attention. Roofscape, surrounding
plaza, and building combine to generate San Francisco’s unique form.
Designing and redesigning centers as a progression of diverse spatial and activ-
ity experiences does not require a large building to be successful, a principle well
expressed in the Franklin Pierce College campus center. Bookstore and post office
anchor either end of the circulation spine, which, running end to end on the south
side, and well fenestrated, provides picturesque views to the lake beyond. The spine
gives access to all the main activity areas, with the spatial sequence arranged to take
advantage of the varying levels fitted into the hillside topography. The design
merges contemporary architecture with regional features; the structural profile sug-
gesting rural barns and the shingles local materials. A five-story tower provides a
viewing platform to the surrounding landscape. The tower’s physical profile and
height—a gesture to, but not imitation of, rural New England silos—furnishes a
place-marking, skyline element recognized locally as a college symbol.
The most significant recent changes in campus centers have been in the type and
appearance of food services. About 1980 it was generally recognized that the

50 Chapter Two
oncoming generation of students would not be satisfied with conventional, static,
minimal-choice, limited-hours dining. Further, many campus centers from the
1960s were showing their inevitable obsolescence and their stale decor. Food courts
and food malls became the central theme in new buildings and renovations. What
dining professions call “the full service, central kitchen,” was used to make ready
food for the campus equivalent of delis, cafes, salad bars, ethnic food stations, mall-
like courts as well as traditional snack bars and dining rooms. Emory’s solution is
unique in its terraced dining and dramatic melding of new and old spaces.
Some campuses are held in bondage by their rural site and have to use the cam-
pus center for activities, goods, and services otherwise not available in the imme-
diate environs. Fortunately, we think, are those institutions that have a surround-
ing ambiance that enlarges the choices available for participation in campus life by
having a surrounding district attuned to college and university routines and needs.
The bazaars at the gateway of the University of Istanbul; the cafes and book stalls
enfolding the Sorbonne; the English town markets interleaved with the colleges at
Cambridge and Oxford; Harvard Square, Telegraph Avenue at Berkeley, and
Thayer Street at Brown these are enclaves of private enterprise, with memorable
activities and physical forms. They are not substitutes for campus centers but sup-
plements. The University of California, San Diego’s Price Center (bookstores,
shops, eating facilities, piazza) captures the best of Berkeley or Harvard Square and
retains the advantages of onsite building location. Brown University took a two-
prong approach, restoring and revitalizing Faunce Hall (an early-twentieth-century
campus center of historic importance) in response to current student and faculty
programs and activities and promoted a cooperative effort with the neighboring
commercial interests to help keep Thayer Street economically viable, safe, and visu-
ally pleasant.
For Beloit College, “saving the heritage” meant reconstructing a Burham and
Root masterpiece, originally designed for the sciences in 1893. The building lay fal-
low from 1967 until 1985—too historic to destroy and seemingly too expensive to

BELOIT COLLEGE, HISTORIC SCIENCE BUILDING

SAVED AND CONVERTED INTO CAMPUS CENTER,
1989. C. Eowarp Ware, ASSOCIATES,
ARCHITECTS. (Source: Beloit College)

Building Types SI
 Emory University, MEMORIAL UNION, C. 1926. HENRY HoRNBOSTEL. (above) Henry Hornbostel established a significant
design image for Emory University in the 1920s, an Italianate palazzo style, inspired, it has been said, by the site’s red clay soil, topogra-
phy, and pine trees, which reminded him of Tuscany. The campus center, shown here, was designed as a memorial to university alumni.
Though the building became decrepit and outmoded, there was strong sentiment for its continuation as a central campus building.

Emory University, R. HowarD Doses UNiversiTY CENTER, 1986. JOHN PORTMAN AND Associates. (facing page, top)
A stellar designer of the architecture of hospitality, John Portman devised a contemporary solution that not only saved the old build-
ing but gave the image-inducing facade a dramatic setting. The new section, shown, contains post office, bookstore, lounges, dining
and ballroom, kitchen, and support spaces. The older section was reconstructed for student activity and operational offices, social
space, film theater, and legitimate theater. (Source: Emory University)

THE TERRACE. (facing page, bottom) The juncture of new and old has been configured into a terrace for informal dining and social-
izing. The steps of the older building can serve as a stage for special events. The concept is said to be inspired by the Vicenza’s Teatro
Olimpico. Assertive new architecture and calm classical: The combination offers something for everybody, and, with its programmatic
synergy and serendipity, truly a formula for a successful campus center. (Source: Emory University)

82 Chapter Two
wor antl

]
|
i
||
ee

Building Types 8&3

 convert to some other use. With student recruitment and retention pivoting on hav-
ing an improved campus center, in tandem with the College’s cultivation of bene-
factors appreciative of the building’s design significance, reconstruction became
tenable. The typical range of campus center functions were adroitly fitted into the
large spaces in the original structure. The impressive wooden framing uncovered
during the work was restored as an interior design theme.

SUPPORT FACILITIES

Like all institutions, higher education has certain predictable routines—administra-

tion, recordkeeping, physical plant operations, i.e., support facilities. The structures
serving and symbolizing those activities need not be mundane and can in fact glow
with creative interpretations. All building types can be architecture, if a client
insists; thus a Princeton University parking deck and the heating plant at
Scarborough College become three-dimensional art. The visual expression for the
admissions functions and administrative routines, for example, may vary from the
plain vanilla of an 1890 New England mill building converted by the University of
New Hampshire as a satellite facility (1988) to Connecticut College’s (1990) elabo-
rate and elegant Admissions House.
Having surveyed a group of typical college and university structures by function,
three building types have been selected below for extended examination: libraries,
laboratories, and housing. We use them to trace further how institutional needs and
requirements shift and how architecture responds. Libraries are and have been the
pomp and glory edifices in the cities of knowledge. Laboratories, serving science
and technology, raise the expectation that the outer expression of the building
might be as rational as the activities inside. For many institutions, but not all, the
character and quality of campus housing defines its position in the higher educa-
tion’s hierarchy and its commitment to campus life as an experiential contribution
to student development or, for married students, faculty, and staff, a service and
convenience not available in the local market. The overview includes a gloss on cur-
rent issues and trends as a way of indicating the ebullience that keeps college and
university architecture vital with certainty or vitiated with stale dogma. Several of
the designs reviewed below are, or were, considered the best of their time by his-
torians, critics, and journalists and certified as being good architecture by awards
given by peers and educational associations. Some are also chosen for illustrative
purposes because they show how function, exterior expression, and site develop-
ment can produce design distinction and differentiation without sacrificing campus
heritage. Others are didactic, which with accompanying captions and notes are alert
systems for concepts flawed and frail. Again, admittedly, this sweeping view of
building types, of course, runs the risk of being an overstated generalization, of
missing an example which an encyclopedic treatment would snare, or of being com-
posed of nuances so finite that their importance is lost in minutiae. It is our hope,
however, that after circling several pivotal definitions several times throughout the
book with examples and comments, the thematic idea and ideal will be readily
sensed and appreciated, i.e., the built environment as a sequence of accomplish-
ment: structures, buildings, architecture, campus architecture.

54 Chapter Two
SCARBOROUGH COLLEGE, HEATING PLANT,
1968. JOHN ANDReEws. (left)

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PARKING STRUCTURE

1992. MaAcHaDo ANp Sitvetti. (below) The
Princeton scheme demonstrates the power and
potential of creative designs for a commonplace
utilitarian campus structure. John Andrews’
design combines engineering and sculpture into
an extraordinary campus design element. (Photo:
Chuck Choi, courtesy of Rudolpho Machado.)

Wee,
=
~&
Viiiia?
=

Building Types 85
 University OF New HAMPSHIRE,
MANCHESTER CAMPUS. (right) Entrance area to
admissions office, 1890 mill building converted for
university functions. A well-located facility that
enables the university to contribute to historic
conservation of an urban area deserving friendly
renewal. (Source: University of New Hampshire)

CONNECTICUT COLLEGE, ADMISSIONS HOUSE,

1990. GRAHAM GUND AND ASSOCIATES.
(below) Intended to make an immediate impact
on students considering admissions to a indepen-
dent college, saying architecturally: this place is
not your large, impersonal public institution.
(Source: Connecticut College)

86 Chapter Two
LIBRARIES

Not only should the new library (Harvard University) be as perfect in plan
and equipment as a wise and generous expenditure can make it, it should
also, avoiding any display of costliness, possess a beauty of its own, both from
within and without, that it may be a constant source of pleasure and
inspiration to all who use it.
L. J. May, 1902

The elevation or facade of a library building should, as far as possible, be in

keeping with the object for which it is erected, although there is always a difficulty
in making the outside characteristic of the use to be made of the interior.

It 1s mevitable that in the absence of special knowledge (of library functions) and
in special devotion to a particular style of edifice, the sentiment of architectural
display should get the upper hand.
F. J. Burgone
Library Construction, London, 1905

To plan it, find an able librarian. To construct it, get a skillful architect. To
control both, choose a wise committee. These three, by patient study and debate, can
satisfy taste without sacrificing use—achieving complete and felicitous success.
Charles C. Soul
How to Plan a Library Building for Library Work, /9/2

Perhaps the surest sign of a first-class architect is his ability to design a building which
is functional and also distinguished architecturally. But no architect can be expected to
accomplish this unless he understands the institution, tts objectives, and requirements,
and has a satisfactory program on which to base his work.
Keyes D. Metcalf
Planning Academic and Research Libraries, 1965

A golden age of library building appeared imminent. Many of the libraries which
arose were striking pieces of architectural design—adventurous, attractive, original.
Some won prizes—architectural prizes; very few indeed would win prizes awarded
by working librarians....A few, including work by some very distinguished
architects, deserve enrollment tn the record of monumental howlers.
Godfrey Thompson, 1973

Attending the right graduate school and being published in prestigious places
are still important, but establishing a name for oneself on-line has become the
newest way to gain recognition. I don’t see how you can keep up with your
field in any other way. The Internet is probably at least six months ahead of
journals and. conferences, and certainly books.
Veronica S. Panteldis
The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1994

Enclosing books and bytes, libraries are perhaps the most revealing exhibit of the
functional transformation of knowledge and institutional response architecturally.
From a few volumes locked in closets to be kept from dampness, fire, and wear,

Building Types 8&7

 RADCLIFFE CAMERA, 1747. JAMES GIBBS.
(right) An all-time classic, campus landmark,
modernized and still used as a library.

REED LipRARY, 1965. I. M. Pel AND

Partners. (below) College and university
libraries draw the best talent of their time, devis-
ing memorable designs. Each architect intends to
leave her or his imprint, sometimes, as in this
instance, inventing forms and styles thatnoone
would or should copy. The best libraries are not
monuments to their designers but team efforts in
which the architect and librarian are coauthors of
the project. The principle is not new. Its implemen-
tation seems daunting. (Source: State University of
New York, Fredonia)

CorNeELL UNiversity, CARL A. KROCH

LIBRARY, 1992. SHEPLEY, BULFINCH,
RICHARDSON AND Assort. (facing page)
Library commissions have always provided client
and designer opportunities to devise solutions
functionally sound and aesthetically imaginative.
Differences in site location, library purpose and
size, technology, budget, and skill are affecting fac-
tors as can be gleaned in the contrasting configu-
rations of Kroch Library and the examples that fol-
low. (Photo: Jeff Goldberg, courtesy of Shepley, Bulfinch,
Richardson and Abbott)

8&8 Chapter Two

Building Types 89
 ote
cn
Raairnsinecmmaanncaecsinnson

sReapron

CAROLINA'S
LIBRARY

90 Chapter Two
with circulation controlled by the president, libraries soon became the architectur-
al symbols of college and university purpose and progress, monuments to intellec-
tual memory of a monastic past and a tribute to a cyberspace future.
Industrialization of knowledge—mass printing of relatively cheap books and _peri-
odicals to computerization—was one factor in generating expansion. The inevitable
pressures of growth in the size and variety of collections and number of patrons,
the professionalization of library service, felicitous collaboration with faculty, and
accreditation standards were among the other influences that gave cause for more
and better libraries. From the times when books were unchained from abbey walls,
every decade has been a golden age for college and university libraries and their
architects.
Colleges and university libraries are model meldings of information technology,
aesthetics, and campus design. Christopher Wren’s Trinity College Library (1690)
and Cornell University’s Carl A. Kroch Library (1992), three centuries later, are
joined by a common theme—spatial qualities that Wren said should “satisfy the eye
and impress the imagination.” Designed to help conserve a campus open space, the
Kroch designers pack 800,000 volumes into a three-level underground structure.
The landscaped roof serves as a courtyard. Skylights admit light from above to an
atrium, creating spatial effects among the offices, classrooms, and exhibit area that
recall Piranesi at his best.
There are more campus library buildings than there are campuses, bearing wit-
ness to knowledge growth and specialization and the potential reuse older campus
libraries have for continued service for discipline-oriented collections, professional
schools, and rare books. Recent projects help illustrate library differences and
design distinctions. Giurgola and Mitchell’s Davis Library (University of North
Carolina) is the large central university facility, an information mall with 2.5 mil-
lion volumes and the technological capability of tapping electronically library
resources worldwide. Hugh N. Jacobson’s Gettysburg College library typifies a
sculptural approach to building design, the client’s desire for a shape and form that
signaled institutional advancement. The University of Toronto multimillion-vol-
ume library, imposed on a small site, scrupulously well planned, epitomizes the
heavy concrete fortress architecture popular at that time.
In contrast to the Toronto scheme, James Stirling’s open and light essay in glass
and metal—the Cambridge University Faculty History Library (1968), stands out
literally in its programmatic premise and its architectural form. Of unique, mod-
ern special-purpose library buildings, the chief feature is a contemporary version of
the nineteenth-century British Museum reading room. Programmatically the fear
of losing books to theft prompted the Cambridge design, as well as the objective
of accommodating seminar and lecture rooms and faculty offices under the same

University OF NorTH CAROLINA, WALTER ROYAL Davis Liprary, 1984. MITCHELL &
Giurcota. (facing page) The largest of the twelve campus libraries. Constructed on a site once a park-
ing lot and funded through the sale of the University-operated utility systems, which had provided tele-
phone service, water, and electricity to town and campus. The banners display publisher's marks (as old as
Caxton and as young as the Ashantily Press) from works in the University’s Wilson Library. The latter is the
predecessor to Davis and is now used for special collections. (Source: University of North Carolina)

Building Types 9]
 roof as the library. The spatial configuration of the main room is a Surling-stun-
ner in shape and expansiveness. A control desk is situated above the reading room,
like the guard’s station in a minimum security prison. The upper floor corridors
are glazed to permit continuous scrutiny of the readers and books below.
Unlike any architecture before or since at Cambridge—with its cascading glass
facade and elegant detailing and joining of tile, brick, and metal—the building
attracts visitors worldwide as an epitome of period design; few come as librarians
seeking clues for functional solutions. There are, however, aspects of the Stirling
building—the human scale and serendipitous design effects—which the Toronto
scheme for all its functionality totally misses and the Gettsyburg scheme sets aside
in favor of an heroic, masonry edifice. Whether or not intended by the architect,
the upper floors of the Cambridge scheme have become an indoor garden.
Flowering plants in pots, arranged informally along the corridors by the nearby fac-
ulty, yielded an unexpected treat during a recent January visit. An unconscious ges-
ture to the vistas of buildings and greenery for which the University is famous?
Equally beguiling was the prospect of Kings Chapel on the horizon; the kind of
enchanting visual dialog which generations of great campus architecture will evoke,
a bonus from genius.
As to commanding presence, how much more specific than the instruction given
by the St. Louis Library Conference (1869), “that inasmuch as the library is the
heart of a university, it should be given a central position from which the other
buildings radiate.” Bebb & Gould interpreted the principle as a library-cum-cathe-
dral and surrounding medieval town square at the University of Washington,
1926—now one of the landmark open spaces in American campus design. The prin-
ciple has precedent in Radcliffe Camera (Oxford, 1747), James Gibb’s eloquent sky-
line edifice and one of the first buildings designed and constructed for science col-
lections, and is dramatically restated at Brown University by Warner, Burns, Toan
and Lunde. Their high-rise science library—award-winning concrete architecture—
soars over the campus and neighborhood. Visible miles away, it anchors one cor-
ner of a nascent science quadrangle. Millikin Library, California Institute of
Technology, 1978, equally dominates its setting, in this instance quixotic and idio-
syncratic as a library and eye-catching as a glitzy slab that sets no trend in func-
tion or aesthetics.
Four buildings from the 1950-to-1980 era summarize technical issues and design-
er’s response. At Goucher College, the 1953 library building was erected on the
new campus “to occupy a central position, both in the educational program of the
college, and in the plan for its physical facilities.” Where the site was cramped and
building style disguised function, then the desired prominence could be substanti-
ated with a heroic sculpture, announcing building purpose, as on the Holland
Library facade, Washington State University. From the same period, the
University of Detroit architect states: “the library has been placed at one end of a
central mall in a location where it will dominate the entire campus...the exterior
design should follow as a straightforward expression of this plan with reliance on
choice of materials and careful attention to fenestration making it fit comfortably
with its older neighbors.” The only real concession to style, wrote designer Paul B.
Brown, “is the large cartouche over the main entrance, incorporating the seal of the

92 Chapter Two
University.” Walter Netsch’s contribution to a golden age of libraries
at
Northwestern University (1980) was a series of pavilions linked to the existing
library, eliciting an architectural critic’s kudos, “as a building of crystalline beauty,
creating a major icon of twentieth-century architecture.”
Praised at their opening dates, neither the Brown, Detroit, nor Northwestern
buildings are favored today aesthetically or functionally. Detroit had the last of the
closed-stack systems. Brown’s verticality and Northwestern’s separate pavilions
impede rearranging collections, reader and support space, and provision for com-
puterized information technology. Brown’s stylistic tower, one of several such uni-
versity library towers associated with its designer, is an example of one generation’s
“soaring” becoming another generation’s intimidation. The Northwestern building
plan and facades are often cited as examples of Modern architecture gone wrong.
In these instances what Soul observed as a possible danger at the beginning of the
century came to pass: “That the business of planning of a library is specific, tech-
nical, and minute; that it is like the planning of other useful structures which can
be spoiled by blunders or ignorance, or by sins done in the name of art.” Plain-
vanilla Goucher survives, still central in location, reasonably adaptable to changing
needs, but stylistically dull. The front door design and adjacent site was an oppor-
tunity neglected, in terms of creating a significant campus open space at a cross-
roads location, an opportunity creatively grasped in the University of Missouri’s
Columbia Law School project.
On the inside of the Missouri scheme, the physical relationship of the three main
law functions are a tour de force of expressing function and symbol, and melding
these with building circulation, and provision for information technology. As the
client wished, and the designer responded, the idea was that justice is given form
in spatial character of the courtrooms, service in the functional arrangement of
administration suites and offices, and education in the library ambiance. The lobby
and plaza has that angular, diagonal slicing that signifies late-twentieth-century
institutional design. The stacking and steeping of the latter give the building a dis-
tinctive profile, scaling down a massive building and permitting the largest num-
bers of books and readers to be situated on the plaza level. Brickwork and mason-
ry effects, the light towers, and detailing are reminiscent of adjacent older campus
buildings. “Natural light defines and enlivens inside and out,” noted a design jury
giving the building a prestigious award in the name of the master of such lighting
effects in educational buildings, Louis Kahn.
Technology and library design can be seen advancing hand-by-hand, shaping and
impacting every aspect of the library’s physical development. The introduction of
metal stacks (Harvard, 1877) permitted new ways to store and arrange books. The
Dewy Decimal system rationalized locations. Small items such as Tonk’s shelf-fit-
ting (1870) and the Simplex Indicator (1880) stimulated and required an adjust-
ment in library operations, floor layouts, building circulation. The Tonk device was
a metal clasp system that permitted shelves to be lowered or raised for adjustment
in book heights. The Simplex Indicator was a graphic device for displaying which
books were in the library, borrowed, or missing, the precursor to contemporary
computerized circulation systems. Furnishings, too, have been the subject of con-
tinuing evolution. The nineteenth-century views about whether tables and chairs

Building Types 93
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CAMBRIDGE UNIversITY, FACULTY OF History Ligrary, 1968. James

STIRLING, ARCHITECT. (facing page) Program objective: "the building is
organized on the principle that there should be close contact between the
library and faculty offices (the motivating element of the Faculty of History
design and all its parts is the security of the collections)... therefore windows
are set into the corridor walls around the upper floors and these appear under
the roof lantern... .allowing members in the upper parts of the building to
look down into the reading area and maintain a visual, but non-intrusive and
silent contact, with the Library.” Stirling’s crystal palace satisfied the require-
ments and gave Cambridge a commanding, dramatic modern building. It
drew on few precedents, and since has set no direction for any subsequent
buildings in its district, nor as an example of library-as-function.
Here, then, in one project is the excitement and despair, too frequently, of
critic's and connoisseur’s laudable college and university architecture. What
does one say of a flawed masterpiece, designed to the client’s program objec
tives, human in scale, a gem, a building worth seeing and experiencing,
though not a model in terms of library practices and information technology,
and deficient as to energy conservation, maintenance, and operations? A
thing of beauty is a joy forever?

GETTYSBURG COLLEGE, LiBRARY LEARNING RESOURCES CENTER, 1981.

HUGH NeweLL JAcogsON. (above)

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, Roseers Ligrary, 1980. Warner, Burns,

TOAN, LUNDE. (right) Small library buildings or large, eminent designers &
i
strive to give the library a unique design, thus signaling institutional advance- 3
4
ment architecturally. Sometimes the results compromise library functions and 3

long-term expansion, and sometimes they impose a physical form that later
generations regret seeing and using.
 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, LIBRARY AS CATHEDRAL, 1926. Bess & GouLp. (top)

BROWN University, LIBRARY AS TOWER, 1972. Warner, BURNS, TOAN AND LUNDE.
(bottom left)
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, LIBRARY AS BEACON, 1966. SWELLING AND Moopy. (bottom right)

96 Chapter Two
 should have racks for holding patron’s hats are not dissimilar to decisions on pro-
viding extra-size lockers for patron’s expensive down-filled jackets. Reading carrels
once elaborately carved like church pews are now manufactured as electronic work
stations.
Arrangements for heating, ventilation, and illumination more than anything else
brought campus libraries into the Modern era. Within one generation oil lamps gave
way to gas fixtures and gas to electricity. Library journals recorded “scientific dis-
cussions of the forms of bulbs, the materials of reflectors, and the forms of shade.”
Early on (1905), some thought that “the cost of current to serve proper illumina-
tion—to enable us to see things without injury or fatiguing the eye, would be pro-
hibitive.” Proven economical, and with further modifications, the new electrical
lighting systems however soon helped alter architectural forms. As a result, libraries
were “able to dispense with uneconomic and narrow reading rooms; very high ceil-
ings and long windows; light wells, skylights, and rotundas; and multitudinous stack
windows; all of which had their origins in the earlier necessity of admitting as much
light as possible.” Energy conservation, lighting for computer screens, and the theme
that natural lighting is the “cheeriest, clearest, healthiest, and cheapest” are matters
that connect those earlier technical advances with today’s topics and interests.
How basic too, the observations of one early-twentieth-century library designer:
“Underheating promotes discomfort, coughs, and colds; overheating stupefies staff
and readers. More than anything else bad air interferes with clearness and concen-
_ tration of thought.” Good air, wrote a commentator much later, “seems destined
to increase the comfort of readers as well as the preservation of library materials.”
The rapidity in which nineteenth-century library building technology was intro-
duced to mediate all aspects of environmental conditions gave birth to the techni-
cal specialist, whose contributions to library design now are as important as they
were then. There are “subjects which neither the librarian nor the architect may
know all the latest phases, and they really want and must seek skilled information,”
advised librarian L. B. Marks in 1886. Expert advice is the first line of defense
against “howlers,” large and small. One responds now with amusement, but then
with disdain, to a physical plant manager’s solution for energy savings and higher
levels of illumination in a main reading room: highway sodium vapor fixtures. The
orange glow and noisy rheostat were not kindly received. Professional librarians
should “courageously oppose with facts and figures, all efforts to erect buildings
not functionally planned,” stated William H. Carlson in 1946. Respect for function
and technology, he said, does rule out the achievement of “striking architectural
effect,” or making the library the “show place of the campus, lending dignity to
the intellectual center of the institution.” Library expansion is a productive occa-
sion for retooling deficient technology, when such is required, an aspect well han-
dled in Graham Gund’s extension to the Mount Holyoke Library (shown on page
42) a contemporary design also commendable in its solution to joining new and old.
Thanks to the labors of library masters such as Keyes D. Metcalf, the essential
characteristics of college and university libraries, as a building type, can be suc-
cinctly stated. Libraries support the academic mission by acquiring, holding, and
making accessible books, periodicals, journals, newspapers, and, increasingly, data
and information in nonprint formats, both on and off site. The library staff,

Building Types 97
 2S <P gee aope
aS
ea ee

WASHINGTON StTaTE University, HOLLAND Liprary.

(top) (Source: Washington State University)
GOucHER COLLEGE LiBrary. (bottom) (Source: Goucher College)

98 Chapter Two
University OF Missouri, COLUMBIA, LAW SCHOOL LIBRARY. THE LEONARD PARKER ARCHITECTS (P. PROSE). (Source:
The Leonard Parker Architects)

Building Types ay
LiprARY TECHNOLOGY. The impact and influ-
ence of technology on library functions, forms, and
operations is not to be underestimated.
Nineteenth-century devices such as the Tonk’s
shelf-fitting device and the Simplex Indicator
helped make the library more responsive to
changing needs and improved service.
(Illustrations; Library Construction, F J. Burgoyne, London,
1905)

4 i
th,
Uy
Ga

through catalogs and reference works, assist the faculty and students in using the
library materials, to guide and connect to other sources. Space, furnishings, and
equipment are provided for the library patrons’ convenience and comfort when
engaged in library activities, independently or in groups. Staff work places are vital
for ordering, receiving, preparing, and shelving library materials. As a highly used
public building, toilets, telephones, copy machines, and janitorial rooms are
required. These are the essential features of all modern campus libraries.
Essential, but not necessarily sufficient. Each library has a constituency and
serves a clientele distinctly its own. Not every library will be a depository of pub-
lic documents, collect prints and drawings, operate a reserve reading, hold and dis-
play rare books and manuscripts, give patrons physical access to on-line databases.
Thus we see the importance of a facility program to inform library architecture
with a complete statement of needs and expectations, the first line of defense
against howlers. The second line of defense in achieving a good building is a sys-
tematic scrutiny of conceptual drawings and detailed drawings to ensure that the
program is correctly interpreted as well as to see and adjust proposed internal phys-
ical arrangements, furnishings, and specifications that those operating the libraries
know best. The program will mandate certain standards and criteria, such as struc-
tural modularity, stack spacing and shelf heights, and floor coverings. It may also
lay out in words some design objectives more ephemeral than ceiling heights and
lighting levels. One such statement, quoted in the standard reference work by
Metcalf (Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings, McGraw-Hill, New
York, 1965) is well remembered: “As the heart of the University, the library will
combine genuine functionalism with aesthetic imagination and avoid every sort of
aesthetic falsity, pretentiousness, or slovenliness.”
Juxtaposed on page 102 are two libraries, circa 1960, that are true to the inten-
tions stated by Metcalf. Inside they are immediately decipherable instances of his
consistent library philosophy, outside, polar expressions architecturally. The com-
mon theme is an open, modular library concept first advocated by some young
librarians in the 1940s and now accepted as standard practice. Modularity provides
for flexible mixing of collections, patron seating, and services from the profession-
al staff. Unlike the earlier fixed-stack concepts, which froze the library to the time
of its first construction, shelving and furniture arrangements in modular libraries

100 Chapter Two

can be modified in response to changes in collection policies, number of
volumes,
seating patterns.
The Bennington College Library (illustrated on page 102) is a jewel-box, domes-
tic in scale; 210 seats, about 75,000 volumes, serving a small college located in a
rural setting. The Boston University Library, with over a million and a half vol-
umes and seats for 2300 readers, is compressed on an urban site, a landmark struc-
ture at the edge of the Charles River. Both buildings assert their modernity, as such
was then understood. Size and location obviously affect the two design solutions.
Certain architectural features, the ephemeral differences, can also be apprehended
and rationalized as design influences. A high-rise wooden structure on a stone base
would seem as incongruous for the Boston University land area as would a tough
concrete exterior in picturesque, bucolic Vermont. A good building, and these were
for their date, is a team effort with a logical division of labor. The librarian was
charged with defining function, the architect with creating the design expression,
and both with realizing the melding of the two.
As noted, with the specialization and sectorization of knowledge, college and uni-
versity libraries now outnumber campuses. It is not unusual for a college to have
individual buildings for the main collections and the sciences. Music scores and ref-
erence books may be held in a dedicated library wing in a performing arts center.
Understandably at the university level, professional schools will have their own edi-
fices, with specialized collections and services wrapped in a building that exudes
confidence and pride, as does the law school building at the University of Missouri,
Columbia, cited earlier.
As to building additions, design attitudes, and, in turn, alternatives, vary con-
siderably. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the prosaic facade of the
older complex is broken, and a contemporary architectural expression 1s introduced
to accommodate and herald library expansion for the School for Engineering. A
special research library devoted to books focusing on the settlement of North
America, the expansion of the John Carter Brown Library earns attention—for the
functional integration of new space and old, for the architect’s skill in giving a
seamless exterior expression of the two, and the University’s decision that the cost
for crafting and constructing a stylistic faithful addition was worth the effort. The
University of Michigan Law School library expansion was solved with an ultra-
modern subsurface addition that left the older, traditional facade intact.
Whether there will be any life in any libraries through the twenty-first century,
given the expected fundamental alterations in information technology, remains
problematic, and the answers obviously will have architectural implications. As
J. C. R. Licklider forecast in 1971 (Libraries of the Future, Cambridge), “the tech-
nology of digital memory is not operating near any fundamental physical limit, and
new departures could continue to appear once every decade.” More recently, the
new and emerging forms of information technology and telecommunications, say
some experts, can provide a full range of library resources in computerized formats
accessible in any place, at any time. And should Virtual Online University suc-
ceed—the “electronic equivalent of an actual classroom”—then new forms of teach-
ing and learning (machines for accumulating and using facts, and people for
exchanging opinions and values) may generate and require hybrid forms of class-

Building Types 101

 CCN
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BosTON UNiveRSITY CENTRAL LIBRARY, 1965. HoyLe, DORAN, AND BERRY WITH SERT,
JACKSON AND Associates, INC.
(top) One and a half million volumes, with provision for 2300 readers, with its stacked floors and unusual
configurationfitted to an
urban site. Now a cityscape landmark along the Charles River.

BENNINGTON COLLEGE, 1959. Cart KOCH AND ASSOCIATES AND PIETRO BELLUSCHI.
(bottom) Planned for 75,000 volumes
and 210 reader stations, in a design that reflects the New England countryside. The terrain
permitted a clever three-level solution,
with the main entrance at the second level, a formula favored by library expert
Keyes Metcalf The modern facade, painted white
wood, brick-enclosed courtyard, and stone wall, the sense of place, represent the
best visual aspects of the pre-electronic-age small
college library.

102 Chapter Two

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LIBRARY FLOOR PLAN/COMPUTER CHIP, ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 1962. Floor plans for John Crerar Library, by
Skidmore, Owings, Merrill.A superb example of the open-plan research library, with long-range flexibility for rearranging collections,
readers, and services. Resembling a computer chip, the graphic may also serve as a metaphor for the astounding changes in informa-
tion technology. The contents of the library can now be stored on a single disc and transported for use wherever the owner would
wish. Not as transportable are the services of a professional librarian to guide the reader through references and to assist bibliograph-
ically or to help validate the reliability of information acquired electronically.

Building Types 103

 room and library architecture. Conceptually this is not a new idea, if one recalls
the functional unitary buildings of the early American colleges—all of education
under one roof. The weight of professional opinion, however, leans toward the new
information formats as being supplements to, rather than substitutes for, tradition-
al library materials. The predicted future—collections, patrons, staff, technology,
service—wrapped in, not warped by, golden-age architecture.
The Reed Library addition, State University of New York, Fredonia, 1994, dis-
tills the important aspects of taking existing libraries into the twenty-first century
and in doing so staking out important design features which no library—new,
expanded, or improved—should neglect: a building which inside and out beckons,
welcomes, and encourages one to participate in its offerings and activities.
Designed by Pei and Partners, Reed Library is a classic composition of Modern,
sculptural concrete architecture, built in 1965; 90,000 square feet, with no expan-
sion expected or planned and little provision for handicapped accessibility or library
automation and electronic information technology. The 45,000-square-foot addition
(Pasanella+Klein Stolzman+Berg) presents a different scale and facade treatment
to the arriving library patron, while paying homage to the original concept. The
exterior materials combine the brick of the older campus and Pei’s concrete. New
space and old is reorganized for twenty-first-century functions. The interior has the
skewing and sweeping spatial arrangements, with the curving walls and slanting
architectural elements seen in contemporary 1990 college and university architec-
ture. The curtain wall with spandrel glass, exposed structure and utility systems,
nooks and crannies, and occasional informal seating patterns, all help humanize the
original 1965 blockhouse architecture.

LABORATORY BUILDINGS

A key goal ts to improve national literacy in science and mathematics and meet
future requirements for trained people in science and engineering. This is
essential in an increasingly technological and competitive world.
D. Allen Bromley, 1990

Serendipity—the chance discovery of an idea—is common in the daily practice

ofscience and mathematics. Facilities should support serendipity.
Project Kaleidoscope, 199]

The construction of new laboratory buildings and the renovation of old ones
requires close communication between the laboratory users, project engineers,
architects, construction engineers, and safety and health experts.
Louis J. DiBerardinis, 1993

Unfunded science and engineering capital needs total $5.7 billion (feels)
mstitutions (of the nation’s 3,600 campuses) reporting such information.

National Science Foundation, 1994

Why do science buildings from the 1920s and 1930s look different from today’s
architecture? What occurred to transform exterior expression from traditional styles
to Modern idioms? Did differentiation in subject matter, pioneering research rou-

104 Chapter Two

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEw York, FREDONIA,
REED LIBRARY ADDITION, 1994.
PASANELLA+KLEIN STOLZMAN+BERG. (right)
Detail of new addition, changing scale and
image, and improving existing library functions
sympathetically. (Source: Pasanella+-Klein
Stolzman+Berg)

STATE UNiveRsiTy OF New York, FREDONIA

ReeD Liprary, 1965. |. M. Pel AND
Partners. (below) The apex of the modern
sculptural architecture: assertive and emphatic, a
style not currently in vogue. (Source: |. M. Pei and
Partners)

Building Types 105

 Zi

106 Chapter Two

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, FREDONIA, REED LIBRARY ADDITION, 1994. PASANELLA+KLEIN STOLZMAN+BERG. (fac-
ing page) The building systems are made visible, the interiors lightened and scaled with structural elements, all expressed as part of
the redesign. (Source: Pasanella+Klein Stolzman+Berg)

UNivERSITY OF MICHIGAN, LAW SCHOOL ADDITION, 1981. GUNNAR BIRKERTS AND Associates. (above) Underground:
98,000 gross square feet, overall 211,000 gross square feet, new and old. A clever and sensitive solution to expanding a landmark
library building whose design features do not admit an economic and functional extension in the same style. The expansion site was
a parking lot. The new greensward, an abstraction of the older building’ collegiate Gothic, adds another piece of greenery to the
University’s history of commendable campus landscape development. (Photo: Timothy Hursley, courtesy of the University of Michigan
Planning Office)

Building Types 107

 tines, or novel modes of teaching stimulate a new architecture as science and tech-
nology expanded in the frenzied race to ensure the country’s dominant position in
international affairs following World War II? We address first the expectation that
laboratory buildings will be as rational and studied as the activities they contain and
that such rationality will inform good architecture.
The assumption seems tenable historically. Christopher Wren (1689), scientist
and architect, applied both skills in designing a superb teaching and demonstration
room: “one of the best imagined for seeing, hearing, and for the display of anatom-
ical demonstrations or philosophical experiments upon a table in the middle of the
arena.” Fitted with audiovisual and computer technology, the room would be suit-
able today. Pierre Gaudet (Elements and Theory of Architecture, 1909) classified sci-
ence teaching rooms by discipline, suggesting differences in size and shape related
to scientific topics. And, more than a half century ago, Larson and Palmer
(Architectural Planning of the American College, 1933) laid out some guidelines as
germane then as now: “lines of demarcation separating sharply the accepted fields
(disciplines) are fading out and we frequently find ourselves on the borderlands
where they meet and overlap.” The authors urged designers “to seek flexibility in
a building devoted to science study, and to make the interior arrangements adapt-
able to changing interests and varying emphases. Adequate provision should also
be made for research by both students and. faculty, and with the increase of inde-
pendent study and tutorial plans, for conference and seminar rooms.”
World War II is a threshold in examining current programmatic needs and archi-
tectural responses. The discoveries and inventions that came from the defense
effort (radar, penicillin, atomic energy, electronic computational devices) were stim-
ulated by basic research whose theories and findings soon made their way into the
curriculum. This gave cause on every campus for the design and construction of a
range of laboratories and support space facilities previously seen only at the most
sophisticated technical institutes. During the Cold War and energy crisis, the estab-
lishment of national agencies with mandates and budgets to support research
offered universities, and some colleges, the reasons and financial resources to design
and construct facilities at a phenomenal rate. Private foundations, corporations, and
enlightened donors played a significant role in that surge, encouraging and spon-
soring some of the best architecture of its time. The output from the labs (trained
personnel, ideas, products) fueled the economy and helped move the country into
the postindustrial status it now enjoys.
Science and engineering research in fiscal year 1993 ranged from $745 million
(Johns Hopkins University) to $64 million (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
at the 100 leading research institutions. The top 26 schools were budgeted at over
$200 million each. Funded research was not limited to universities. “The new cul-
ture” —emerging science and technology creating an ever-expanding knowledge
base—requires undergraduate faculty to keep current with their fields not only
through the literature but also through participation in theoretical and applied
research. On the best campuses, students share with faculty, “learning science by
doing science,” giving cause for more and better space. Advanced science and
appropriate facilities can thus be found at smaller institutions, such as Oberlin
College, with its Kettering Neuroscience Center.

108 Chapter Two

UrRsINUS COLLEGE, PFAHLER HALL OF
ScieNce. (left) A sensible version of a traditional
style, which for the older generation evokes an
image of campus life. (Source: Ursinus College)

HAMLINE COLLEGE, ROBBINS SCIENCE CENTER,

1990. BWBR, Arcuitects. (below) The old-
est college in Minnesota, architecturally notable
for several fine collegiate Gothic buildings. The
new science building visually connects to the older
structures through the selection of exterior materi-
als: sienna brick, red tile roof, limestone trim. The
flat roof, hard-edge corners, slit windows, alu-
minum, and glass honor and indicate twentieth-
century precedents; all together a fine rendition of
restrained Modern architecture. (Source: Hamline
College)

Building Types 109

 Examined broadly, design principles and procedures for science buildings apply
to engineering and technology structures, with some understandable caveats stated.
Among all such buildings there are significant differences in subject matter being
studied, in teaching and learning routines, and research. How variable? The
National Science Foundation, for example, tracks the intellectual content and facil-
ity needs of 43 distinct science and engineering “departments,” or disciplines and
subject areas, not including the medical sciences and social sciences. From aero-
space to zoology each has substantive differences that engender an exceptional and
exacting range of building functions, configurations, interior environmental crite-
ria, and building systems requirements. The latter two give rise to the axiom that
a good laboratory is a plumbing and ventilation diagram wrapped in an elegant
ambiance whose size, structure, and shape are determined by discipline-based
instructional practices and investigative protocols.
In scanning National Science Foundation facility documents, two trends are evi-
dent: hyperspecialization in facilities as one moves up the scale of higher education,
and a tendency on all campuses to expand and gather the sciences and engineering
facilities into a discrete development sector for intellectual exchanges, for conve-
nience in operations, for sharing equipment and services. Hyperspecialization
engenders building complexity particularly in handling the products and wastes of
science and engineering. In these instances, the design, locations, arrangements, and
detailing of building components, fixtures, and furnishings are significantly deter-
mined by engineering criteria. As a result, the progression of science, engineering,
and technology buildings has been awesome in scale and physical representation.
From the suite of science laboratories in modern community colleges, in which
DNA materials and lasers can be found, to the recent Cyclopean castles of biolo-
gy research at University of California, Los Angeles, and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (pages 112 and 116), the functional requirements for teach-
ing and research have and will continue to stimulate a more visually interesting
architecture than any other campus building type. Some, such as the engineering
buildings at University of Minnesota, are exotic by functional concept, with sig-
nificant space being underground. Others gain attention for size, as the Biomedical
Science Tower, University of Pittsburgh, with 10 acres of enclosed space stacked
on a tight site. Stanford University’s 1994 science and engineering quad is remark-
able for the program thrust, sophistication of building types, and the University’s
ability to cast out obsolete structures to create suitable sites for significant new
buildings. Five “drab buildings from the 1950s and 100 parking spaces” are to be
removed to create a major landscape setting for four new teaching and research
buildings. The site arrangement is intended to sustain the Stanford tradition of
“students in engineering and the sciences interacting with students from the
humanities.”

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING QUAD, 1994. Pei Cope FREED & PARTNERS.
(facing page) A significant undertaking at a leading research university recognized for the quality of its
campus design. Site was cleared of obsolete buildings and parking to create a landscaped setting for three
major teaching and research buildings and a high-tech teaching and lecture hall. (Source: Stanford University)

110 Chapter Two

‘ wane

Building Types 111

iva tv
Hn :

Somerton

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES, MOLECULAR SCIENCE BUILDING, 1993. ANSHEN+ALLEN. An epitome ofbuild-
ing rationalization and contemporary campus architecture. A difficult site, a large building (159,000 gross square
feet), a demanding
program, an assertive and commanding solution. (Photo: T. Hursley, courtesy of Anshen+Allen)

112 Chapter Two

THE COLORADO COLLEGE, BARNES SCIENCE CENTER, 1988. CLIFFORD S. Nakata. (top) (Source:
The Colorado College)

RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE, Low CENTER FOR INDUSTRIAL INNOVATION, 1987. MITCHELL/GiURGOLA. (bottom
left) (Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

UNIVERSITY OF AKRON, COLLEGE OF POLYMER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, 1988. RICHARD FLEISCHMAN. (bottom right)
(Source: University of Akron)

Building Types LHS)

 Acknowledging hyperspecialization in building functions at the university level
and relatively simpler physical forms for buildings serving the collegiate curricu-
lum, what are the signatures of this building type, i-e., the commonality that com-
prises a useful generalization? The comments and design implications now noted
would seem applicable to most circumstances, i.e., the majority of higher-education
laboratory buildings.
Signature 1 is philosophic—each discipline has modes of teaching and research
uniquely its own, where clearly one best learns and advances science and engi-
neering by doing science and engineering. Though multiuse spaces are possible,
and equipment and support services can be shared, the doing requires more space
per student than any other scheduled higher-education undertaking. Signature 2 is
that all disciplines will stress team activities, with significant amounts of space and
time intensively dedicated to singular routines in specialized spaces, large amounts
of which must be designed to close tolerances and exacting environmental criteria.
Signature 3 is that the desired outcomes to which the buildings are dedicated are
fostered by spaces that invite discussions, and interactions, i.e., the socialization and
accumulation of the educational and experimental experiences. Finally, signature 4
is the chimera of flexibility in science and technology buildings, whose logic attracts
designers forward like a gravitational force, and whose realization (to date) never is
sufficiently realizable. The objective is a structure that is functional, reliable, safe
on opening day; maintainable during heavy use, and changeable as new needs and
requirements dictate.
Procedurally, good laboratory architecture begins by stating clearly the pro-
grammatic objectives and physical characteristics of the space components that con-
stitute the project and then confirmation and/or adjustment of the project budget
or project size and elements. The start-up methodology is then followed by a deter-
mination of the overall internal spatial organization and circulation, site disposition,
and external expression. Parenthetically, the design methods applicable to science
and engineering are also useful and adaptable to designing any college and univer-
sity building. The importance of facility programming for libraries was discussed
earlier. For example, the generic building type of laboratory being our topic, the
comments that follow focus on selective aspects to indicate distinctions and differ-
ences. These are building modularity and systems complexity, the visual expression
of the exterior walls, and the benefits programmatically and physically of “interac-
tive spaces.” The latter’s physical expression gives recent laboratory buildings a
scale and aesthetic character that critics found missing in what one charitably
labeled the “Fort Knox Laboratory Architecture” that climaxed the Modern archi-
tectural movement.

MODULARITY, SYSTEMS, AND BUILDING COMPLEXITY. In the 1930s

building modularity was shrewdly partnered with pleasure for Modern architectur-
al aesthetics. The Association of Technical Institutions (London) documented the
desired trends as early as 1935. The Association promulgated the view that where-
as science and engineering technical college buildings “should not be devoid of
architectural interest, it is possible to obtain a dignified effect in a simple manner
relying upon skillful composition and the judicious employment of modern mate-

114 Chapter Two

rials, rather than upon the more elaborate decorative forms associated
with past
architectural periods.” The Association also argued for the presumed economies of
Modern architecture, as it was then emerging, noting: “It will be obvious that a
considerable saving will be effected by adopting this suggestion.” The Association
publications also made a strong case for differentiation in building types based on
functional variations in environmental requirements. Buildings “should be planned
in a simple and orderly manner, as far as possible on a ‘Unit’ basis, which effects
economy in cost and also simplifies subsequent alterations.” “Unit” also meant
space and construction standardization. Architecturally, the Association’s ideas are
significant launching points in promoting the causes and benefits of modularity,
which in Great Britain reached their aesthetic peak in construction of a new cam-
pus for York University, circa 1962. There, employing a regional, prefabricated
building system called CLASP, the University was able to construct facilities for
1000 students in 18 months, with a hierarchy of building types, with significant
differentiation and flexibility in the interiors of the science buildings, and a visual
unity among all the structures on the site. York demonstrated the efficacy of the
principle of rational architecture. However, the exterior designs—initially praised
for their color, simplicity, and texture—did not take hold as enduring designs.
Ironically, a new facility for teaching management was the first to set aside the orig-
inal designs. The York academics contended that a curriculum devoted to “ratio-
nal decision-making” deserved an elaborately configured contemporary architectur-
al statement.
Forgotten in many accounts are the precedents for rationalization; one was the
first designs for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new campus along the
Charles River, in Boston. Inside the 1915 scheme, MIT utilized a New England
mill planning principles: Large-span spaces could be easily and continuously sub-
divided. Utilities and mechanical systems could be threaded throughout, accessible
and adjustable as needed. Outside, at the beginning, MIT wrapped its east campus
in a Roman toga. The Classical idiom was then replaced with Modern designs, when
these became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, assertive
examples of hard-edge concrete structures extended the Institute’s willingness to
remain au courant architecturally. MIT’s latest large building (shown on page 116)
straddles several decades of design innovations, and shifts in style, with a structure
that has a reasoned resemblance to the other east campus architecture, a visual con-
tinuity and heritage the Institute typically prizes, protects, and occasionally misin-
terprets when the excitement of trendy architecture overcomes studied judgments.
The lure of “new being best” for signifying institutional progress should be
judged on a case-by-case basis. At Carnegie-Mellon University, a Modern engi-
neering building intrudes into and destroys a classic campus plan established by
Henry Hornbostel, whose sense of grandeur in site composition did not diminish
his ability to organize a building facade human in scale and visually interesting. The
more recent concrete, blockhouse engineering structure is so out of character and
context as to make one wish architecture were biodegradable.
Big and bold doesn’t necessarily mean brash and bulky. The Hammel, Green,
Abrahamson solution for the University of Minnesota Electrical
Engineering/Computer Science Building (1988) placed 40 percent of the building

Building Types nS
 CARNEGIE-MELLON University. (facing page)
Spring 1994 views of the contrasting architecture.
A classical facade inspired by Henry Hornbostel’s
Beaux Arts training (admittedly marred by win-
dow-unit air conditioners) versus a blockhouse
intrusion into the major campus open space. The
entrance to the older building, human in scale, is a
welcoming portal. The bulky concrete form of the
newer building sits heavily over the entrance area.
In the background, the University of Pittsburgh's
Cathedral, designed by Charles Z. Klauder. Taken
together, the vista is an instructive example of
serendipitous campus design, a panoramic sum-
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BUILDING 68—BIOCHEMISTRY, EAST pao

Campus, 1994. Goopy, CLANCY
ARCHITECTS. (above and right) A watershed
structure in campus design at an institution
whose eastward expansion is a model of sound
campus planning and adventuresome architec-
ture. A century of exemplary American higher edu-
cation buildings can be found in the precinct, pro-
duced by the leading architects of their time. These
include a candy factory converted into a cancer
research center; a swimming pool, metro Boston's
first Modern campus building (Lawrence B.
Anderson, circa 1940); several Miesian buildings
from Skidmore, Owings and Merill; and essays in
hard-edge concrete by |.M. Pei (tower building,
upper left); among other notables. The Goody,
Clancy design is an architectural Rosetta stone. The
shapes and textures in their felicitously modulated
facade are derived and combined from older cam-
pus buildings, and can be read and translated as
the architect's code of hierarchy and importance.

116 Chapter Two

SA
BN

TRESTLE

Building Types Li?

 less

118 Chapter Two |

below grade. The visible portion had to establish a strong physical image
for the
program, and at the same time relate to the existing older buildings (illustrated
on
page 118). The main portal is inset at the building corner, facing a campus open
space, and framed by a heroic composition of structural element and flaring wall.
The base is extended at the ground level to form a slanting, greenhouse wall, which
admits light to the lower levels. Pedestrian traffic can view interior activities, mak-
ing the building less ponderous than it seems at a distance. The gestures to context
include the horizontal banding pattern and picking up the patterns of stone and
brick in the vicinity. Technical requirements included vibration-free rooms, exten-
sive air purification, and, of course, adequate light and ventilation to the below-grade
rooms. The building tries to “communicate in three languages” said project design-
er Bruce Abrahamson, “the classical old one, a language in transition, and one that
talks about the future.”
In establishing a “language,” a legitimate but frustrating objective in laboratory
building design is the integration of utility systems and the structure of the build-
ing for optimum flexibility; the end product is the ultimate rational science struc-
ture. The design features would be systematized, ordered, and arranged with a clear
formal hierarchy in spaces and structural frame, with an interior adaptable to
change, and an exterior clad with combinations of traditional and contemporary
materials that reflect the region and building purpose. The University of
California’s Molecular Sciences Building comes close to being such paradigm, a
blending of function and visual delight. Critic Joseph Giovannini summarized the
essential utilitarian features of the UCLA structure when he called it a “giant
lung.” The 300 hoods, he said, were a “synchronized, extensive system of intake,
distribution, and exhaust that constituted an architectural order itself.” The “archi-
tecture of air” was further complicated in the UCLA project by the necessity of
keeping biology and chemistry laboratories separate and distinct, a requirement dra-
matized in the building plan and massing. (See page 112.)
Understanding and expressing laboratory systems is the port of entry for archi-
tecture that serves and symbolizes the building types. Once laboratory rooms, circa
1931, could be “ventilated by a special fan which introduces warm air through
openings in the ceiling, foul air being removed through the floor ducts by a sepa-
rately controlled exhaust.” The simple technology posed no challenge for those
muffling the technology in Collegiate Georgian and Gothic styles. Engineering was
a secondary consideration. Today variations in laboratory architecture are the pro-
ductive result of collaboration of architects, engineers, and laboratory design spe-
cialists concerned about functional solutions for health and safety reasons.
Indicative of the challenges is Harvard University’s School of Public Health alert
list, items which can be found in both college and university laboratories: common
use and storage of toxic gases and vapors, unstable chemicals and hazardous solids,

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING/ COMPUTER SCIENCE BUILDING, 1988.

Hammel, GREEN, AND ABRAHAMSON. (facing page) A large building, with a technically challenging
program ona prominent site, breaking the mold of older architecture in the vicinity but remaining in con-
text. The test of the design direction will come when additional structures are sited nearby—in harmony
or contrast? (Photos courtesy of C, N. Hewett)

Building Types LL9

WILLIAM JEWELL COLLEGE, WHITE SCIENCE
CENTER, 1992. (right) A new piece to an old
building; a contemporary design providing a wel-
coming facade to those passing by and those
entering the domain of collegiate science. (Source:
William Jewell College)

HOLLINS COLLEGE, DANA SCIENCE BUILDING,

1967. DouGLas Orr, DECOssy, WINDER
AND RANDOLPH FRANTZ & JOHN
CHapPELEAR. (below) Twenty-five years after its
opening, this building was recognized and award-
ed as a “pleasing oasis of learning. .. the bold, inte-
grated, flexible design has proved itself repeatedly,
as its uses have evolved to meet the changing
demands of the sciences at Hollins.” (Source:
Hollins College)

120 Chapter Two

ionizing and nonionizing radiation, and natural as well as artificially engineered
bio-
hazards. The words help measure 50 years of change in building requirements.
Building systems (structural, mechanical, ventilation, electrical) thus account for
the largest share of the laboratory building budget. Operating costs are the highest
per square foot.
The search for flexibility and solutions to building complexity will continue, as
it should. Versions of today’s pursuit of flexibility and improved technology in sci-
ence engineering buildings have historic precedents worth recalling, if for no other
reason than to inspire further progress. For a culture heavily immersed in science
and engineering, it is ironic how little appears about laboratories as a distinctive
building type in the literature and chronology of the architecture of higher educa-
tion. The MIT experience was cited earlier; the Lehigh University Chemical
Building (1884) is another deserving attention. A landmark in science building
technology, the Lehigh lab is believed to have the “earliest example of contempo-
rary modular bench layout designed to maximize the use of lab space.” Now named
William H. Chandler Hall, after the Lehigh professor who devised its pioneering
features, the building features also include “services piped to each bench station,
including gas, steam, vacuum, compressed air, and water...unknown before the
construction of Chandler.” Chimneylike flues were arranged for fresh air intake,
“with steam pipes supplying the radiators...within each chimney flue to heat air,
ensuring a positive updraft of exhaust gases.”
Curriculum, teaching, and research were “real-world,” one enthusiast recollect-
ed in tracing how the nineteenth-century Lehigh programs connected lab design
and university goals and objectives. ““There was a strong industrial flavor to the
faculty’s interests; the assay course received particular attention. Custom-designed
muffle furnaces were mounted at the basement level and were used to teach the
milk, butter, fat, oil, and mineral analyses. Assaying, an intense, technique-based
summer course enrolled most of the chemistry majors in June, July, and August.
Students practically lived in the laboratory while taking this degree track.”
Chandler also provided space for a small museum, “centrally located” to arouse
curiosity and display samples and scientific artifacts used in teaching and research.
His functional concepts were suitably translated into architecture by Philadelphia
architect Addison Hutton. The building won an award for “innovation” at the 1889
Paris Exposition.
Effective utilization of space, equipment, people—the 1927 Kedzie Chemical
Laboratory, Michigan State College (now Michigan State University) addressed
these questions effectively. Under Professor Arthur T. Clark’s direction, the archi-
tects were encouraged to design an “H-shape” building plan that “allows abundant
light and cross-circulation of air in each laboratory.” Laboratory size “was limited
to thirty students, the maximum number that can be taught at one time.” For flex-
ibility in assignment, labs were amply designed, serviced, and equipped “to make
variations in courses from one semester to another easy of adjustment.” The
“plumbing was left as accessible as possible, with numerous cleanouts and connec-
tions for continuous flushing....Corridor space is reduced to a minimum. ..offices
are conveniently located adjoining the laboratories. ..(with) hoods and tables for pri-
vate research, and also small blackboards for private instruction.”

Building Types TZ
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, CHANDLER CHEMISTRY In several decades of laboratory evolution, early Modern architecture continued
LABORATORY, 1884. (Source: Lehigh University)
to rationalize the interiors functionally and stripped the exteriors of all visual ref-
erences to traditional styles. The “box for science” was first welcomed for its sim-
plicity and then questioned as to its visual impact. Around 1970, expert science
facilities consultants, such as Burgess Preston Standley, were encouraging a trans-
formation in design attitudes, a fundamental shift from antiseptic building forms
to a more textured architecture. “Science is not a sacred cow, why enclose it in a
pyramid,” he wrote. “An appealing science center should not be monumental or
overpowering, but represent the activities within its walls as intensely human
activities...the creative, freely imaginative, nature of science.” Standley was
appalled by edifices such as the Yale University Kline Biology Tower (1965),
where a popular designer, with an audacious concept, overpowered the faculty
planning the building. Appalled, because the form cast an inflexible mold and
impediment to change, as Yale discovered decades later in studying ways to adapt
the building to new needs and requirements. Critics praised Kline as “great
skill...its tall, strong form sets up a pleasing and effective relationship with the
city, the bounding streets, and the hill it crowns.” Perhaps. But, in this and sim-
ilar instances, Standley and other observers would second William C. Caudill’s
injunction: “the beauty, integrity, and permanence that a science building deserves

122. Chapter Two

should not be a reflection of frozen function, but should derive from the excite-
ment of change that its flexible interior must allow.” Dana Science Building (1967)
and White Science Center (1992), shown on page 120, demonstrate the realizable
objective: “an innovative structure which does not aggressively assert its scientif-
ic purpose, but is gracious, humane, and inviting in a manner befitting the tradi-
tions of the college.”
Again, could the architectural recognition and arrangement of functional systems
give rise to a contemporary canon the equivalent of Vassari’s classical orders? One
might judge successes and failures against a measurable index. Yes and no? True
flexibility for the unpredictable needs would probably mean a building design and
premium expenditure for which few institutions, if any, would wish to pay. Reasons
other than function and economics, of course, also influence the design outcomes
in contemporary laboratory buildings. The College of Polymer Science and
Polymer Engineering, University of Akron, 1991, glistens in glass, with atriums and
laboratories providing “faculty and student researchers with a pleasant laboratory
environment with natural light.” The building geometry was sculptured to give the
discipline a prominent position on the skyline. For comparable reasons—visibility
and symbol—the George M. Low Center (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1987)
rears above the campus skyline. Less assertive than either two, and thus perhaps
less likely to be dated as passing fashion, is the Barnes Science Building (Colorado
College, 1988). The Colorado building merits attention for the gesture made to the
adjacent Palmer Hall (1889)—through window shapes and green-colored roof. The
Barnes loggia helps modulate the facade with a play of light and shadow welcomed
in the mountain sun. The dramatic oculus identifies the front door and illuminates
the four-story interior atrium. Positioned in the campus plan to complete a science
quadrangle arid in conjunction with totally new and reconstructed science space in
nearby structures, to which it is physically connected, the building materials and
shapes generate an image and sense of place recognizably Colorado College, defin-
ing clearly the place for science instruction.
Gathering and clustering the sciences in one location has operational and intel-
lectual benefits. When development occurs over time, what are the architectural
choices and effects? Our selection of an illuminating example begins in the late-
nineteenth-century when science and technology crossed the threshold of being, in
the main, disciplines that could be housed in a suite of rooms or a wing, to teach-
ing and research facilities that required extensive, specialized space. Carleton
College archives, circa 1870: “Professor Payne transferred the whole chemistry lab-
oratory to his quarters in a bushel basket, making one trip.” A century later, 1960,
Carleton sheltered the sciences and mathematics in three structures. Gradually
these became dated and beyond economic adaptation for the new curriculum,
modes of teaching, and equipment. Within 35 years, the time span of a tenured
professor, each of the sciences then had the spatial equivalent of its own building.
Biology, chemistry, geology, physics, and psychology were connected in a four-part
site arrangement, each piece a forward step from Modern to contemporary archi-
tecture. Biology, the last piece, was assigned new space in 1994. Its vacated quar-
ters were reallocated and redesigned for physics and psychology, these latter hav-
ing less demanding requirements for building systems, Mathematics and computer

Building Types NE
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CARLETON COLLEGE, 1995. (above) An open-quadrangle campus design with a century of architecture and landscapes typically
intended to be the best of their period. Lyman Lakes, constructed in the 1920s, ranks nationally as a panoramic vista of exceptional
beauty. The views upward from the west, across the Cannon River, reveal a landmark collegiate skyline. The map arrow points to the
new science quad, part of the fine-graining of the campus landscapes and the consolidation of the sciences in one location.

CARLETON COLLEGE, OLIN HALL OF SclENCcE, 1960. (facing page, top) Minoru Yamasaki’s Modern Gothic. (Source: Carleton
College Archives)

CARLETON COLLEGE, SEELEY G. MupD HALL oF SciENCE, 1975. Sovik MATHRE SATHRUM QUANBECK. (facing page, bot-
tom) Second piece in a phased site development strategy to provide faculty and students with facilities for a top-tier educational
program. Each piece has its individual exterior expression, though a family resemblance in the use of exterior brick. The linking and
joining of the science buildings on a single site, framing and forming a new quadrangle, establishes the unifying campus architectur-
al theme. (Source: Carleton College)

124 Chapter Two

Building Types
 sciences were also provided new space nearby. A site closer and connected to the
other science disciplines would have been advisable, but existing buildings, not
moveable, and mature tree cover, were intractable impediments to a unified func-
tional scheme on a single site.
As to appearance, the 1994 Carleton biology wing will continue a transition away
from a landmark older science building. Designed by Minoru Yamasaki (1961), it
earned national awards for its attempt to make a functional, stripped-down, brick-
box science building into an art form by embellishing the exterior with abstracted
forms of an ancient style, “Modern Gothic,” Yamasaki called it. The gesture did
not gain a foothold on the enduring ladder of styles at the College or elsewhere.
Carleton’s later science buildings were wrapped in simpler building forms using
brick and stone. The science grouping is further unified by a new landscaped open
space—a quadrangle that symbolizes collegiality.
Chessboard moves, such as the Carleton College development scheme, will be
increasingly commonplace as colleges follow universities in gathering their sciences
into one definable area. When the costs and suitability of replacing worn-out and
dated laboratory support systems are factored into the facility planning equation,
as well as the typical backlog of deferred maintenance and mandated accessibility
improvements, then a planning and design strategy that blends old and new, reha-
bilitated and reallocated space into a unified concept usually proves to be the best
functional and economic solution, with self-evident architectural consequences. The
amount of new space required in many instances can be satisfied in a building addi-
tion. At Macalester College and Pomona College, carefully calibrated in-fill archi-
tecture is thus the desired route, with local materials and building scale favored as
gestures for design continuity. In all these examples the thrust of improved facili-
ties signals an institutional commitment for a higher-quality science educational
experience and concomitantly better facilities. Sometimes however, as at Allegheny
College, the key to starting a successful sequence is a new science building (1992),
complimenting and adjacent to the older structures, yet in form and detailing clear-
ly commemorating the architecture of its time. The new Allegheny building is also
intended to set the design standard for new structures that might be added in this
sector of the campus.
Laboratory buildings of the quality illustrated have always been the collaborative
efforts of client and designer. Identity, connectedness, contact, and communications
among the occupants, an encouragement of synergy and serendipity—these are
underlying principles that configure award-winning historic and contemporary lab-
oratory buildings. Mind not that the Lehigh edifice looks like a Victorian orphanage,
or that Kedzie, on first glance externally, might resemble a library or large fraternity
house, or that the cited recent projects struggle with the challenge of giving related
buildings a family resemblance, for the utopian, truly flexible rational building has
not been realized. To see, know, and appreciate why designs emerge, appear, and
are distinctive and different is to understand a cause and effect in generating archi-
tecture. Solutions to internal function stimulated by careful examination of teach-
ing and research activities, team effort designs—these are the commendable lessons
to be noted in historic precedents. The external expression may rise from other
sources, motivations, and design intentions, as we have seen and will examine again

126 Chapter Two

in attitudes about articulating the exterior, “the almighty wall,” the “great
walls”
of memorable college and university laboratory buildings.

THE ALMIGHTY WALL AND GREAT WALLS. Informed by the collaboration

of architecture and engineering, an outstanding laboratory building may be recog-
nized by the manner in which the four signatures cited earlier are expressed. In the
progression of design innovation after World War II, which seems to have no log-
ical beginning or end on most American campuses, the boxlike, utilitarian, Modern
designs have given way to physical forms that are slanted, indented, and bulged to
avoid the monotony of the grid. Nonlab spaces are located as joints and connec-
tions between the lab assemblages. Differences in exterior materials and variations
in fenestration patterns are used to mark differences in interior functions. The out-
side wall once muted in the Modern idiom speaks assertively in contemporary
designs—as in the recent University of Minnesota and MIT examples seen earlier.
This aspect deserves further comment, since elevations are vivid and prominent
components of campus architecture, and the discussion will lead us through some
informative by-ways as to how memorable architecture is created.
Once all laboratory activities could be fit into a conventional building envelope,
with undifferentiated architecture such as Bowdoin College’s Mary Francis Searles
Science Building. The structure at first glance could be read from the exterior as
being a nineteenth-century dormitory, or classroom and faculty office building.
Searles imparts several lessons about appearance. The building draws attention for
its programmatic thrust, the careful modulation of its facade, the changes in exte-
rior color that were made 50 years after the building’s completion, and the risks
the College took in engaging Henry Vaughn for a project that may have been
beyond his competency.
The “Almighty Wall,” thus biographer William Morgan subtitled his account of
Vaughn’s life (MIT Press; Cambridge, MA, 1983). Morgan substantiates Vaughn’s
reputation for articulating building elevations that meld and merge historic detail-
ing, resulting in a “clear sense of monumentality and controlled taste for textural
richness,” work that Ralph Adams Cram (master of stagecraft architecture) praised
as “an inspiration for young architects who were working towards a more sincere
and expressive manner of building.” D) Vaughn’s designs were, thought Cram,
“infused with thoughtful and scholarly spirit that varies from precedent only
enough to give the work life and contemporaneity...thoroughly modern, thorough-
ly alive.” Here, Cram’s “modern” is like our “Modern,” being a polemic slogan,
which like the phrase “good design,” is used to defend personal tastes and values,
often arbitrary and transitory, against the whims, fancies, and vagaries of the seem-
ingly vulgar and uninformed.
Vaughn had little experience with college buildings. His masterworks, such as the
Chapel of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Saint Paul’s School, New Hampshire) were
almost entirely ecclesiastical. But with a nudge from a benefactor ready to fund the
project, and touting Vaughn’s reputation as a designer, the College engaged his ser-
vices, continuing a tradition of Bowdoin seeking and achieving aspiring architecture
from the pantheon of eminent practitioners. Thus, Richard Upjohn’s Bowdoin
Chapel (1884) is probably the benchmark edifice in revivalist Romanesque style.

Building Types a7
 McKim, Mead, White’s Warner Art Building (1894) was good enough to be com-
memorated recently with an illustration of its facade on a U.S. Postal Service post-
card. Edward Larrabee Barnes’ Visual Arts Center (1975) is frequently cited, along
with Le Corbusier’s building at Harvard, as the yin and yang of contemporary col-
legiate art instruction buildings. Henry Vaughn’s Searles belongs to that illustrious
company, with his design “giving lasting substance to the history of the institution.”
In style Jacobethean, in plan an ingenious functional solution, Searles demonstrates
an architectural skill tweaking nuance and variety from every aspect the canon per-
mits, and, praiseworthy, with no compromise to building purpose.
Searles was not a chapel design molded to fit late-nineteenth-century science. To
Vaughn’s and the College’s credit, style did not determine and dominate the build-
ing plan. Biology, chemistry, and physics each had its own building entrance and
interior spatial identity. The main facade faces the quadrangle, with the north and
south ends anchored by two octagonal staircases, functional escape routes for safe-
ty, and crenulated as stylistic gestures. Window patterns (with more glass for day-
light to the labs than Vaughn originally wished) and the secondary asymmetrical
facades reflect functional floor plans and laboratory arrangements. Where Cram
would have liked to “tie the anarchy of the past into the order of the present” with
an elaborate site plan for buildings and spaces (some from the architect’s imagina-
tion and not necessarily from well-determined institutional needs), Vaughn was
pleased to produce a building that sat on its own site and was complete and satis-
fying in scale and massing on four sides.
Color and texture were Vaughn’s métier. The yellow and buff brick was accent-
ed by contrasting sandstone, which was used in coursework, turrets, gables, door
frames, and carved medallions. Where Vaughn’s church detailing would include
saints, he decorated his Searles exterior with the scientific paraphernalia, including
telescopes and geological hammers. “An essentially utilitarian structure, the one
thing Vaughn surely did not want was a bland surface,” observes the College’s
architectural historian, Patricia M. Anderson. In an action that might annoy purists
and preservationists, she reports that Vaughn’s “original brick was painted red in
the 1950s, the better to harmonize with both the oldest and newest Bowdoin build-
ings.” A landmark building, Searles is being given new life as a science building
through a physical development strategy that relocates the systems-demanding dis-
ciplines therein to new space—contemporary brick architecture—and renovates the
older building (Searles) for mathematics and physics.
Walls, especially Great Walls, are billboards for symbolic gestures. Thus
Princeton University in the first half of the twentieth century boxed its sciences in
collegiate Gothic, following Ralph Adams Cram’s advice that the monastic style was
“the great cultural influence good art must always be.” A. D. F. Hamlin seconded
Cram’s dicta, writing that “The average American college student is probably some-
what opaque to the penetration of the rays of purely aesthetic influences...he is a
good deal of a Philistine; that he is impervious to every aesthetic influence. I do not
believe, consciously, or unconsciously, he reacts to his environment.” For Cram
there was “nothing diffuse, casual, or individualistic” in his Princeton concept
(Cram’s Collegiate Gothic), “but all is coordinated, controlled by sound law, infused
with the impulse of an indestructible tradition that transcends the limits of conti-

128 Chapter Two

BOWDOIN COLLEGE, SEARLES HALL, 1894. HENRY VAUGHN. (Source: Bowdoin College)

nents and centuries.” If, in those years, Princeton was in an import mode (the
Oxbridge Gothic models), then export was the mode of the latter half of the centu-
ry. The dichotomy of Nobel prize work in the sciences occurring in retrograde archi-
tecture was patently contradictory. Abandoning the “style of the ages,” Princeton

Building Types 129

 adopted variations of the Modern to signal institutional advancement, functionally
and aesthetically after World War II, and gained a reputation for not being reluctant
to try different variations of contemporary design. Wishing to avoid any difficulties
in gaining a superior, up-to-date, exterior expression, by a celebrated designer, and
at the same time committed to achieving an equally superior interior functional lay-
out, the University used different firms for each aspect. The collaboration worked
well. Several Princeton buildings in this spirit became icons for young designers
worldwide, notably the Lewis Thomas Laboratory (1985). “The most interesting
thing to happen on campus in a long time” said one local observer.
While Princeton was sending Gothic signals, designers for a new engineering
school in the Southwest decided sunny and sere Spain would be the source of
inspiring architecture for Texas Technological College (now Texas Technological
University). Founded in 1924, “the primary objective of the new campus (was) to
establish the most modern and most completely equipped textile school in the
entire South.” Located in the cotton-growing Llano Estado, the College was ush-
ered into the twentieth century with a grandiose development scheme of the kind
that folklore couples with Texan ambitions. The main feature was a classical site
arrangement, a mile in width and a half-mile in depth, “with its main axis the con-
tinuance of a 4-mile boulevard 200 feet wide leading directly from the Courthouse
Square in downtown Lubbock...to the future Commencement Hall of the College.”
The Court of Technology sat within this framework, with the new textile engi-
neering building centered like a baroque palace. “The entire college is in architec-
ture reflecting the Spanish history of the earlier days of Texas. The climate and
physical environment of Lubbock are quite similar to those of central Spain,” wrote
the campus designer William Ward Watkin. The Spanish influence was ritualized
on the walls with cartouche, balconies, and carved door frames in a manifestation
that a Cervantes might recollect as Iberian regal. Later, the expensive detailing did
not survive changes in architectural taste and more stringent building budgets. The
great spaces proved to be environmentally uncomfortable, with landscapes difficult
to maintain in a dry climate. What did survive, and now joins disparate science and
engineering buildings into a singular campus design theme, are the variations on
the original tweedy, buff-colored brick and red tile roofs. The first building, a gem
of regional architecture, well-proportioned, human in scale, also serves as the
benchmark building for local contextual architecture.
Walls being extensive and visually prominent, their constituent materials provide
the easiest approach to achieving a family resemblance among buildings or for using
architecture to signal a cultural, intellectual, or physical separation from earlier
structures in the same vicinity. The silver-gray glass enclosure for Carnegie-Mellon
University’s Software Engineering Institute (1988) effectively conveys the spirit of
a nontraditional building for an emerging technology. The environs have North
America’s most perplexing conglomerate of disparate collegiate architecture.
Interestingly, the reflective glass mirrors the designs of nearby structures, further
giving the building a liveliness that these sanitized, machinelike exteriors usually do
not possess. The walls of Brown’s geochemistry building, from the same period,
are made of denser material. The “reflection” of neighborhood context is expressed
in the color and texture of the brickwork, the coursing, and laboratory windows,

130 Chapter Two

FEZ ag
CER EEITRREReei

TEXAS BAROQUE—1924, TEXAS

TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE TEXTILE
ENGINEERING BUILDING. WILLIAM Warp,
ARCHITECT. (above)

BRICK AS NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT—1984.

BROWN UNiveRsITY, GEOCHEMISTRY BUILD-
ING. Davis, BRopy & Associates. (right)

REFLECTING FACADE: AN EPITOME OF

STYLISH- MIRROR ARCHITECTURE—1 988,
CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY'S SOFTWARE
ENGINEERING INSTITUTE. PETER
Boutin+Associates. (below)

Building Types Si
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, RICHARDS
Mepicar RESEARCH LASORATO

UNiversity OF Mississippi, NATPONAL CENTER

FOR Puysicat Acoustics, 1988. HAINES
- UNBERG WAEHLER AND MOcKSES-COKER-

wail, f provide @ wINdOW

GaaiOnal SouNG et

GOS GNG Exterior NOISE SOUITES, [Ne OUNIGING

FACAGE IS 2 CONTEMPOFALY SYNMESS

132 Chapter Two

almost domestic in scale. A third approach to “wall design” involves accenting the
utility systems, ventilation stacks, and exhaust hoods (the lungs and the waste dis-
posal organs of high-tech science and engineering) through special encasement or
exposure. Of the former, the precedent-setting design is Louis Kahn’s Richards
Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania (1957). Kahn disaggre-
gated building functions into “served” and “servant” spaces. The vertical shafts of
the serving utilities stood apart from the lab modules. Slender and higher, they
gave the flat-roof architecture a gracefulness that the boxy architecture might not
otherwise possess. The 1988 National Acoustics Laboratory (University of
Mississippi) is a more recent and successful variation of these functional distinc-
tions expressed architecturally.
Conceptually important for demonstrating Kahn’s theory of architectural dis-
tinction for “served and serving” spaces, the Richards labs were, however, deficient
in other respects, including the problems of daylight flooding experimental areas
where illumination was not wanted and the loss of wall space in the extensively fen-
estrated lab areas. The exposure approach to treating building systems also has had
mixed reviews, especially when such solutions are draped down the sides of build-
ings in an interpretation of the fashionable Centre Pompidou (1972) or in gestures
to space-age technology, as if Gene Raymond, the author and draftsman of Flash
Gordon, had turned his imagination from twenty-first-century solar system cities
to late-twentieth-century science and engineering structures. Nonetheless, the
Wellesley College Science Center project (1978) proved that a skillful architect
could merge two ends of the century with an inventive blending of adapted space
and new space. The College’s Gothic science building was renovated for classrooms
and offices. New laboratories are packaged into a flexible structure whose facade
advertises the building technology. The two are joined by an atrium designed for
library functions and enlivened by bridges which cross the space and connect the
buildings. More common and acceptable is the undisguised treatment of the fifth
facade—the utilitarian roofscape that fascinates with its complicated array of
machinery, piping, vents, and apertures, of which the UCLA project (pictured on
page 112) is also an edifying example.
Considerations of taste, context, and technology may be emphasized or subordi-
nated in designing Great Walls. Harvard’s Mallinckrodt Laboratory (1927) hides its
functions inside a brick box whose monumentality is punctuated by a portico said
to be a simplified version of Charles Bulfinch’s Massachusetts General Hospital.
The structure is set back from the street, uninviting, somber, more like a court-
house than an incubator of ideas and training grounds for people who have changed
the world. Nearby, the 1979 Sherman Fairchild biochemistry building beautifully
scales down a large building with a patterned facade whose rhythm is established
by the interior laboratory module. Brick serves as gesture to Harvard’s campus
design milieu. The facade is softened by wooden panels and balconies that double
as emergency exits. Day and night, the activities inside the biochemistry building
are visible from the sidewalk. A splendid melding of functional purpose and design
logic, palpably and measurably in context with its neighbors, delightfully sited and
strung out among other structures from another era, this building, arguably, is
Harvard’s best twentieth-century building, laboratory or otherwise.

Building Types 133

 BE(i:
ey

134 Chapter Two

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, SHERMAN FAIRCHILD BIOCHEMISTRY BUILDING, 1979. PAYETTE AND ASSOCIATES INC. (facing page)
(Source: Payette and Associates Inc.)
WELLESLEY COLLEGE, SCIENCE CENTER, 1978. Perry, DEAN, STAHL & Rocers. (below) (Photo: Edward Jacoby, courtesy of the
architects.)
Two remarkable science projects, 20 miles apart, constructed within one year of each other, landmark architecture for different rea-
sons. Each can be appreciated as a carefully planned example of laboratory design, and as exemplifying ideas which might be consid-
ered in designing other building types.
The Wellesley project serves a college population, is located on a suburban site, and brings together into one area 11 science
departments and their library. About 14,000 square feet of new space was joined to 89,000 square feet of renovated space. The junc-
ture, the courtyard of the older collegiate Gothic, was roofed to create an atrium—an awesome gathering space through which and
above connecting bridges join new and old. The 1979 facade is a spectacular composition of exposed structural elements, mechanical
systems, windows, and portal facing a major campus open space.
Harvard's biochemistry building is laudable for all the important reasons: functionally well planned, with clear directions from the
client team; inserted into and organized on a tight site without compromise to interior space requirements; situated to create some
beguiling and surprising open spaces, views, and pedestrian circulation; developed with a facade that invites passers-by to see and
intuitively understand building purpose; detailing that divides a large and complex building into harmonious parts, human in scale;
materials that are reminiscent of older buildings but not diluted copy-cat architecture. Like many masterworks the building does not
exhaust its subtlety, grace, and beauty on first glance.

Bs
Building Types ]J 3
 Eminent institutions do not have a lock on innovative building concepts. From
the earlier 1960s onward, thought-provoking experiments in architectural configu-
ration could be found in the hinterland, where foundations such as the Educational
Facilities Laboratories, Inc., lead by Harold Gores, were willing to risk some seed
money on exploratory designs. Ipso facto, Alice Lloyd College, Pipa Pass,
Kentucky, was encouraged to construct a science building in form and style not
usually found in Appalachia. Architect Jaspar D. Ward and facilities consultant
Richard Sames wanted to test the possibilities of a “sandwich concept” for distrib-
uting building services to the laboratory floors and increasing “flexibility in interi-
or space configurations; with the objective of being able to optimize space changes
in response to curriculum changes.” The three-level scheme is framed by a struc-
tural grid that provides for nonload-bearing partitions on each floor. Vertical and
horizontal utilities are located to serve specialized space on the second level and
open laboratories on the upper floor. Typical massing is reversed, the wider base
being on top. The fusion of materials and shapes in the articulation of the wall
advertise the Modern idiom, including the jutting, metallic upper floor, the mason-
ry vertical elements, and fire stairs separated incongruously, but dramatically, from
the main structure. Should the national will to support science and technology be
fortified, the hinterlands again will become important venues for experimentation
in laboratory teaching and research modes and buildings.
Other considerations should not be overlooked or underestimated: Laboratory
buildings should provide inviting and appealing spaces for faculty, researchers,
staff, students, and visitors to meet and interact informally. Such encounters help
promote the socialization and acculturation of the educational and investigative rou-
tines occurring in the building. Friendly and constructive communication helps
overcome the obstacles of turf and discipline-based introspection and advances the
ideal and reality of science and engineering as a team effort. These exchanges
encourage those aspects of intellectual synergy and serendipity which strengthen
common interest or reveal new insights and syntheses not previously considered.
Such spaces are also useful for groups to meet for progress reports, briefings, and
meetings that do not require special preparation or elaborate audiovisual devices.
Rooms and spaces of this quality elevate good buildings to the realm of best archi-
tecture and can be expressed in the Great Walls.

A HORIZON VIEW. Not all laudable laboratory projects have been new build-
ings. Tufts University’s Science and Technology Center is sheltered in three for-
mer warehouse buildings, connected and adapted for exotic subjects such as elec-
trooptics and high-energy physics. Financed by the U.S. Department of Energy,
the project was also designed to demonstrate “energy efficient laboratory systems.”

Duke University, LEVINE SCIENCE RESEARCH BUILDING, 1992. PAYETTE AND ASSOCIATES INC.
(facing page) Stair landing and building juncture designed and furnished as an informal gathering area.
Such spaces should be promoted as a common element in all twenty-first-century campus architecture
thus increasing the opportunities for contact and communication outside the scheduled routines and giv-
ing programmatic cause for supporting more graceful and spatial buildings than current guidelines, prac-
tice, and economy permit. (Source: Payette and Associates Inc)

136 Chapter Two

Building Types [37
 Echoing MIT’s mill building paradigm, the warehouse floor-to-floor heights, struc-
tural capacity, column locations, and horizontal layout of the floor area “proved ide-
ally suited” for 62,000 square feet of mixed lab and office uses. Big? Of 93 labora-
tory buildings constructed this past decade (a representative sample), the average
size was 127,000 gross square feet and the average project cost $26 million (1993
dollars). Impressive expenditures, but not adequate.
The decline of support for continuing capital investment in laboratory facilities,
and the retooling of aging and obsolete buildings, as well as a measurable decline
in students entering these fields, has stirred a debate over how and when to revi-
talize programmatically. and physically this segment of higher education.
Extrapolations from National Science Surveys (1994) indicate a $5.7 billion back-
log in needed new construction and major repairs at 515 “active science and engi-
neering” campuses and a proportionately similar need at other institutions. Decay
and obsolescence are intolerable. Though the funding responses are slow to date,
it would seem inevitable that the fundamentals of national necessity will overcome
inertia and bring about another wave of construction and reconstruction, especial-
ly in disciplines where the American polity cannot sustain its status and income
without the initiatives stimulated by science, engineering, and technology.
And what happens to good but obsolete older laboratory buildings, heritage archi-
tecture too valuable to demolish? Many are Charles Eliot Norton’s kind of building:
an “ennobling presence, where the architectural atmosphere weakens critical judg-
ment by the spatial and sensual pleasure they immediately offer.” Science buildings
of intrinsic merit can be functionally and economically adapted to new uses.
Constructed in 1927 for chemistry and psychology, Wittenberg University’s Koch
Hall is now a visual arts building. As illustrated earlier, Beloit College redesigned its
1893 science hall as a campus center. Successful designs avoid cutting up and cramp-
ing the original spaces or removing the delightful interior period detailing, with their
materials and craftsmanship, seemingly a forgotten art, memory banks from a time
when laboratory designs melded utility and beauty without compromise to either.

CAMPUS HOUSING

Compare, for example, the dormitory in which the writer lived as a student with the
present-day dormitory generously provided with baths and other plumbing equipment
and a modern heating system. The old time dormitory housing fifty to sixty students
had for plumbing fixtures two iron sinks and four water closets (which any plumbing
inspector today would condemn in even the most primitive structure), and for its
heating system small coal- or wood-burning stoves, owned by the students themselves.
Frederic B. Fohnson
Yale University, 1936

Because of the prevalent belief that student life in well equipped and efficiently
managed dormitories makes a very important contribution to the health habits and
to the educational and social development of students, there is rapidly growing
tendency to provide more and better dormitories in colleges and universities.
E. S. Evenden, G. D. Strayer, N. L. Engelhardt
Standards for College Buildings, Teachers College,
Columbia University, 1938

138 Chapter Two

 A hall of residence is a local habitation with a name where members
of a
university may live....It is now time to study the material settings which best
Savor their fulfillment. ..this study must constantly keep in view the intention and
the matter used to express it, the intention being founded, as Vitrivius said, on a
conviction that the matter wrought will fully suit the purpose...consideration is
first given to three fundamental requirements that a hall should be quiet,
sufficiently warm, and well lighted.
2 University Grants Committee, 1953

In asking deans & architects if they expected basic thinking about college housing
to change, over “/s of architects replied that it would change, not only in technology
of materials & construction, but in philosophy of housing as well....They believe
that future buildings will be built not just to house & feed students but also to
provide them with homes to accelerate knowledge, & will provide them with
recreational facilities to keep their bodies in an equally healthy state.”
Byron C. Bloomfield, AIA
Bulletin of the American Institute of Architects,
September—October 1956

In our judgment, universittes are building too much of the wrong kinds of space.
Space needs are too often established parochially without considering campus and
student life as a single integrated system of people, activities, and buildings.
Sim Van der Ryn, 1967

The way students live and the way they work intellectually today is different from
the past. Colleges need to build new kinds of dormitories for the electronic age, and
for achieving the higher retention rate and quality of learning the public now expects.
Earl Flansburgh, FAIA, 1991

Housing goals, philosophy, and policy mold campus design and architecture like
the hands of a potter on the clay. The solutions chronicle a fascinating evolution
in design concepts at the intersections of educational trends, cultural attitudes,
lifestyles, and economics. Anchoring one end of the time scale are the Cambridge
and Oxford colleges, originally for bachelor teenagers far from home. At the other
end of the time line, Mary Hufford Hall, Texas Women’s University, 1995, a tra-
ditional dormitory reconstructed for family housing, serving single mothers with
children. Both Oxbridge and Hufford are inspired examples of “living and learn-
ing” concepts. They demonstrate the impact of demographic changes on higher
education, the parallel adjustment in housing objectives, and the resulting physical
forms. As to balancing continuity and change, new housing designs can express,

Harvarp University, HOLLis HALL. (overleaf top) Eighteenth-century architecture reconstructed

and restored several times. Dated as to style, but superb in terms of scale and architectural simplicity.
(Source: Harvard University)

WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE, STUDENT HOUSING, 1989. EARL FLANSBURGH AND

Associates. (overleaf bottom) A polished and sophisticated model of recent student housing. Shapes
and materials evoke older architecture but remain clearly contemporary in composition. (Source: Earl
Flansburgh and Associates)

Building Types 139

140 Chapter Two
Z GSE: bs | Campus Housina: IMAGE AND REALITY. /n
the expansion era 1950-1970 undergraduates
applying to residential institutions had images of
collegiate life and architecture that often ran
counter to reality. Some buildings (unfortunately
too many), justified as Modern architecture, were
not much more than brick-enclosed cells on raw
sites, lacking the scale and charm of older tradi-
tional styles. The meager buildings—at best, shel-
ter—now require significant restoration and reha-
bilitation. Where and when useful economic life
still remains, and site locations are favorable, then
redemptive architecture may be an appropriate
solution.

Building Types 141

 .
symbolically and physically without compromise, older ideas worth emulating
Juxtapose eighteenth-century Hollis Hall, Harvard University, and new housing at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One can appreciate how the art of architecture car-
ries ideas from one era into another without cloning and design degeneration. In
this instance the program themes, common to both examples, are suites of rooms,
brick architecture, human in scale, with an overall form evocative of time and place.
Seeing these good examples, it is disillusioning to know that too often the image
and reality of campus housing are so distant from each other. In the recent past
young people arrive expecting a housing stock which will promote campus life and
find accommodations which fall far short of expectations. Understanding why this
has happened should help generate better designs for this important building type.
As to the future, architectural solutions should continue to seek to express diver-
sification in response to demographic factors, inform new designs with the best
aspects of previous housing design, and revitalize the large existing housing stock
which requires significant reconstruction and regeneration.
Fortunately the tasks to be addressed are in the hands of administrative staffs
who are now educated and trained to manage campus housing as a profession, inte-
grating the cultural, social, and financial factors which influence successful housing
design and operations. Once these responsibilities were largely the task of the col-
lege or university president. Historically their views changed, as did higher educa-
tion and, in turn, housing concepts. Nineteenth-century presidents at Brown,
Harvard, and Michigan thought that students should be treated as adults, and as
adults should make their own housing arrangements. Their bias was educational.
The university model they were importing was German in origin. Oxbridge was
backwater. They noted that living off campus was the typical case with students in
Europe, except the “mere remnant of the monkish cloisters of the middle ages, still
retained in England.” Their opinions prevailed at the start of the university expan-
sion in America, following the Civil War. But, the principle of self-sufficiency in
housing, however, soon had to give way to pragmatic events and conditions. The
local housing supply could not meet demand. Accommodations were marginal. As
in medieval Oxford, town and gown relationships were aggrieved by students’
habits and the students’ scorn for a community they saw exploiting their plight:
the need for safe and sanitary housing at reasonable cost.
Other countervailing forces came from several quarters. Parents and preachers
began to fear that living off campus would erode morals, obedience, and respect.
An 1876 guide for locating new campuses listed the choices: large city, rural town,
state capitol, quiet village. Rural was best, and if such were not possible then “carve
out a bit of peaceful countryside within the city,” by constructing a group of con-
nected and landscaped quadrangles. Seeking the secure haven of a campus setting,
fraternities and sororities rose in prominence, leaving those not so housed isolated
and indignant about not being able to participate in campus life. A new generation
of college and university presidents then saw political and educational advantages
in advocating student housing.
Events at the University of Oregon in 1920 settled a pattern and established a
precedent. There an “increasing student body had to accommodate itself as best it
could in student living organizations and about town. In many cases the rooming

142 Chapter Two

houses were charging high prices for what often was unsuitable services.”
The
University’s inability to attract and hold students because of poor housing was seen
as an educational crisis in a state that hoped to advance its economy through a
strong public university. Pride and purse stimulated a reluctant state legislature “to
erect buildings for dormitory housing and boarding purposes and for student activ-
ities,” and to borrow money for such, and to “pledge the net income from rentals
toward the principle and interest of borrowed funds.” The act was challenged, test-
ed in the Supreme Court, and given favorable ruling. The six buildings construct-
ed from the first funds were perceptive in several respects. Each unit (40 to 60 stu-
dents) is designed to be “a separate self-governing social unit...with a separate
entrance and distinctive name...(each has its) own excellently furnished living-room
on the lower floor, separate telephone room and guest room.” Presciently, wrote
the University executive secretary in 1928, “the furnishings used have been delib-
erately set at a level distinctly above that of most college dormitories. It was
believed that if substantial and attractive furniture were used, the students would
respond by taking pride in their surroundings, taking better care of the building
than has been the experience, a consideration of economic importance aside from
the educational desirability of providing college students with esthetically and
socially satisfying surroundings.”
The Oregon scheme would not test well today in terms of density (four students
to a room with double bunk beds and access to a study alcove), gang bathrooms
and toilets, the extensive application of asbestos for fire protection, and the build-
ing style, a modest version of collegiate Georgian. About the same time across the
continent Harvard and Yale were building undergraduate accommodations, which
in contrast to Oregon, would have about twice the space per student housed, thanks
to a donor’s benefaction, which moderated the need for housing to “pay its own
way.” Like Monet painting his hay stack 87 times, by the early 1930s the inter-
pretation of what constituted suitable campus housing types nationwide was
impressive in concept and execution, and creative variations.
However, encouraging as that record may be, too often in recent time, during
the impressive expansion of higher education, the economics of campus housing
compromised program objectives and design response, and when the financing was
deficient, the task of resolving the resulting difficulties was left to a later genera-
tion. For example, responding kindly to a perceptible need, the Higher Education
Facilities Act of 1963 (and subsequent legislation) enabled colleges and universities
to construct hundreds of buildings to shelter their enrollment surge. As seen in the
1960 view of the Washington State University campus, the surge was satisfied with
heavy-density buildings, minimal shelter. Typically, 6- to 8-story structures were
arranged on the campus perimeter, often with few site amenities, and few had per-
ceptible and attractive design relationship to the other campus sectors. The end
product was “huge complexes of dormitory residences...with little thought to the
ways in which residence life might be integrated into academic life...beset by
unwieldy state and federal restrictions on costs per square foot...they seemed to
show little regard to the educational life of the students, let alone their personal
living space,” wrote one observer. Particularly vexing were buildings dependent on
elevators, “negative influence on students is clear....With few exceptions, these

Building Types 143

 3B $B

FRATERNITY-GROUP TYPE
SS Se
STANFORD -TOYON
DOUBLE STUDY ¢ SLEEPING PORCH

57
PRINCETON- PYNE HALL

- 3" [——4 — =—

YALE - HARKNESS: CE reer eee

CORNELL - BOLDT HALL

BRINCETON - PYNE HALL

MIXED TYPE-STUDY-BEDR@M
& STUDY ane’ BEDROOM

HARVARS - LIONEL HALL’

: — — —

STUDY-BEDROOMS - SINGLE
éxcept where marked "2"

5S + Study
8» Bedroom
SB* Study-Bedroom
P * Sleeping Porch

Q - Shower

68
YALE - HARKNESS

STUDY ence’ BEDROOMS (/or2z) MOUSE TYPE oc ae

ARCHITECTURAL FORUM, JUNE 1931.

144 Chapter Two

buildings are an architectural mistake that needs to be addressed.” Smaller
build-
ings were similarly affected and deficient by a seemingly unalterable gap
between
minimal space standards and cost constraints. Inadequate budgets also left a residue
of negative site features which no token landscapes could ameliorate.
The dismal picture at many institutions, stuck with a housing inventory poorly
conceived and not yet amortized, worsened through the 1980s as maintenance was
deferred and administrators were uncertain whether students would fill the struc-
tures. That aspect of campus housing now seems settled. On-campus life is popu-
lar, but the residue of neglect remains. Although some new housing is being con-
structed, and more planned, the thrust of campus housing improvements now and
in the near future will focus on rehabilitation and upgrading buildings and sites.
Stimulated by alumni pride, trustee concerns, and parental grumbling, elite insti-
tutions and public campuses are spending historic sums in restoring their invento-
ry; $75 million at Harvard, $35 million at Brown, $25 million at the University of
Connecticut.
Public campuses, and independent colleges less selective academically, are rec-
ognizing that housing maintenance deferred is a student exodus accelerated and,
worse, a cause for underenrollment. Institutions unable, or unwilling, to plan and
fund improvements will discover they are left with draconian choices: rebuild or
regret. Obsolescence and decay intrinsically have no cure but sizable capital rein-
vestment. The size of the renewal is impressive, at least $15 billion, by one reck-
oning: | million beds $15,000 per average bed cost, the latter being about half the
cost of new construction.
Given the physical state and cultural status of the campus housing stock in the
mid-1990s, not many observers would have predicted that students and their fam-
ilies, institutions, and their administrators would find, promote, and desire resi-
dential life once again as an important part and central feature of the American
higher education experience. Most of the 15 million college and university students
are full-time students, age 22 or less—a significant group demographically, educa-
tionally, and architecturally. Of a representative sample (250,000 freshmen stu-
dents) entering higher education in the Fall of 1994, two-thirds expected to live on
campus. Their housing choices were better than that of the preceding generation
in terms of type of housing, condition, and architectural character. Slowly, but
steadily, the distance between the image of campus housing—domestic in scale and
welcoming at the front door, and the reality (sterile, impersonal, brick barracks and
cold, seemingly impersonal, filing-cabinet, high-density dormitories) is being short-
ened as institutions realize that the quality and appearance of campus housing can-
not continue to be neglected as they have been in recent decades.
On the bright side of the dismal picture of obsolescence and decay which intro-
duced our scan, the shortcomings and blunders discussed have stimulated social
science and design research which has pinpointed cause and effect in developing
successful housing programmatically and architecturally. Prompted by the further
professionalization of campus housing operations as an institutional responsibility,
the past decade has yielded a collection of precepts and principles for planning and
designing campus housing which no client and designer can ignore. These include
variations in housing programs and designs and the gradual upgrading of housing

Building Types 145

 tution’s educational program may dictate housing variations. ‘The residential hall at
the Maryland Institute College of Art (1994) provides three- and four-person apart-
ments for housing 350 students. The building includes 17 project rooms which per-
mit students to work late at night in the safety of their own dorm.
Some students, of course, will live in the community rather than on campus, by
choice in lifestyle, or because such arrangements seem more economical than cam-
pus housing. Housing officials believe that diversification in housing choices raises
the level of student satisfaction with dorm choices and “choice is the name of the
game.” At Cabrini College, shrewdly, students are offered a customary dormitory
experience in a traditional or contemporary building (clearly differentiated in plan,
materials, and siting) or in one of nine smaller buildings, constructed to look like
single-family homes but adapted to house about twenty students. All are located in
central campus, near recreation, dining, and social facilities. Site-wise the “houses”
are located along what was designed to be (if necessary) a suburban street.
Strategically, should the college residential population decline, the units could be
leased for a noncollege population, perhaps local elderly families seeking “transition
housing” from the estates and large homes in the college vicinity. The 1991 pro-
ject at Kutztown University melds several objectives—lessons from the past. The
project concept, designed to optimize summer use (so as to generate income to
lower student room charges), scales down the 400-bed dormitory socially by using
12-person suites (attractively expressed in the cloisterlike site composition, facade,
and massing) and provides additional housing choices with 20 beds accommodated
in a three-story wing designed to look like a house. Recent projects at Harvard
University (conversion of a motel into a law school dormitory) and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (adaptation of an industrial building into
graduate student housing) earn attention as projects worth examination when con-
sidering variations and additions to the campus housing stock.
How to proceed with renewal, reconstruction, and new housing? Arguably after
a half century of striving and struggling, the patterns of American campus hous-
ing have settled down to a predictable and measurable range. Variations in the qual-
ity and quantity of campus housing can thus be determined by examining the
square footage, distribution, and physical attributes of space available and their rela-
tionship to specific institutional missions, educational philosophy, expectations, and
peer group comparisons. Less measurable statistically are site conditions—the sur-
rounding ambiance whose visual quality and functions bear directly on student sat-
isfaction with campus housing. Here, problems and opportunities can be summa-
rized graphically. The resulting information—profiles, statistics, and pictorial sur-
veys—can then be used to define actions which will mediate deficient conditions
and help project requirements and criteria for new housing and building additions
that are tailored to local objectives and resources.
As to standards and criteria, campus housing has more space on most campuses
than all other academic functions combined. Interinstitutional and intrainstitution-
al statistical comparisons also indicate vital differences in the range of undergrad-
uate residential space provided per student housed: 132 net square feet to 190 net
square feet in a representative sample taken in 1992. From these and other data-
bases three types of campus housing types can be deduced, with revealing varia-

148 Chapter Two

EXHIBIT TEN PROBLEM AREAS
Sector A
Northwest Quadrangle
North Campus
© Softball field needs to be
regraded, reskinned and
reseeded

© Tennis court surfaces are

cracked and heaving © Overgrown shrubbery

© Cracked and chipped

concrete steps
© Drainage problem creates
® Sidewalks throughout
ice hazard
sector are cracked and
heaving making travel
© Spalled concrete steps
hazardous for pedestrians,
especially those who are
physically handicapped © Worn turf as a direct result
of uncontrolled perimeter
parking
© Sparse vegetation

® Curb cuts not installed

consistently throughout * Muddy and wor turf areas
sector

© Sparse outdoor lighting © No designed outdoor

sitting or gathering spaces

© Turf destroyed as a direct

result of insufficiently © Barren entrances
paved and poorly defined
service vehicle access
routes and pedestrian ® No direct, paved path to
pathways crosswalk

Life Sciences Bag i © Busy street separates

Annex sector from campus and
creates a pedestrian hazard

@ Stark, disjointed path to

“Hillside
Road main campus

tions. These are the shelter model, the campus life model, and the academic model. UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT, STUDENT
HOUSING RESTORATION STUDY, DIVISION OF
In the comparisons that follow, the exact number of net square footage associated
STUDENT AFFAIRS AND SERVICES, 1991.
with each model—though based on a statistical sample—should be read as an illus- Doser, Lipsky, CRAIG AND ASSOCIATES,

trative range of housing types. Size is not necessarily an indicator of problem hous- Consuttants. Example of site conditions docu-
mentation; issues needing resolution for a satis-
ing. In scanning a variety of campus housing examples, one can find some resi-
factory housing environment.
dential halls that are spatially small statistically but delightfully proportioned and
detailed. And, there are behemoths whose square footages seem favorable on a
graph but whose actual designs lack the human scale and visual features expected
in an arithmetically spacious and higher-cost dormitory.
The shelter model (less than 150 net square feet per student) provides bedroom
and bathroom space and minimal social and support space. Typically a brick box
dormitory, designed and constructed cheaply and expediently, these are academe’s
version of public low-cost housing, with all the social and physical ills the phrase
connotes. Parenthetically, many such campus buildings are not beyond salvage, if
space is added for functions they do yet contain or their existing exteriors are
enlivened with new detailing or the surrounds improved by installing new land-
scapes. The additions are another example of redemptive architecture, which we

Building Types 179.

 expect could modify considerably the sterile and straitened appearances too often
encountered in campus housing sectors.
The campus life model (150 to 200 net square feet per student) includes bed-
room and bathroom space, plus support spaces, such as laundry rooms and storage
rooms, as well as program and social space for activities that help young people
experience the best aspects of campus life in a college-sponsored residential setting.
Essentially, the dormitory (or equivalent housing) is seen not just as a place for
sleeping, studying, and keeping personal belongings but also as an environment that
encourages interaction with peers. This interaction is believed “to contribute to the
education and development of the whole person and to the unification of living and
learning within that person.” With the oncoming, multicultured society, David
Reisman’s advice seems as cogent as ever. As he noted (1970): “One of the func-
tions of the residential college is to emancipate the young from the inevitable lim-
itations of their home and neighborhood before it is too late.”
Interaction is fostered in the campus life model by live-in residential staff and
visitors, and through formal and informal meetings, social and cultural programs,
and events sponsored by the housing unit. Typical recreational and social spaces
found in the campus life model include game room, snack bar, fitness center, laun-
dry, TV room, computer room, designated group study room, and mailroom. Each
such function can be located, designed, and furnished to promote the serendipity
and synergy of campus life. A good example is the 800-bed Foothill Housing
Complex (1992) at the University of California, Berkeley. Here the institution has
hurdled the deficiencies of its 1960 high-rise solutions by changing scale from ver-
tical density solutions to the horizontal, with smaller rather than larger building
components. A fine ensemble, thoughtfully integrated into a tight site, the project’s
scale, materials, colors, and furnishings were designed and selected to echo but not
imitate the Bay Area’s “arts and crafts” domestic style architecture.
The academic model (200 net square feet or more per student) adds space for
formal and informal academic experiences to the campus life model. The addition-
al spaces may be developed for faculty in residence, tutor offices, seminar rooms,
libraries, and accommodations for visitors who are expected to spend time with stu-
dents academically. The model precedent is Oxford and Cambridge. The Harvard
houses and the Yale colleges are modified American examples as is the most recent
version of Oxbridge at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The latter can
claim honors for having a diversity of commendable Modern and contemporary
architecture interpreting the singular programmatic theme of a cluster of small col-
leges situated in a larger university context. The Santa Cruz model was intended
to help overcome the hazards of “large, impersonal classes, little student-faculty
contact, and for many students a computer-card identity crisis.” Farther south at
the Claremont consortium similar ideals have proved themselves sound and viable.
Housing at the earliest colleges in the consortium, Pomona and Scripps, is consid-
ered exceptional for the regional architecture and landscape settings.
For success, the architecture of any of the three models must and should reflect
local needs, desires, customs, and factors. When designing new housing and revi-
talizing the old, regional differences in climate, school calendar, traditions, and the
nature of surrounding neighborhood are important considerations. Single-sex and

150 Chapter Two

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY,
FOOTHILL STUDENT HOUSING, 1991. THE
RaTCLIFF ASSOCIATES WITH WILLIAM
TURNBULL Associates. A pivotal example of
changing attitudes about student housing anda
beneficial and attractive architectural response.
(Source: The Ratcliff Associates)

Building Types 151

 Diagram G
SITE PRINCIPLES

A Surrounding Landscape
Providing Views and Vistas :
Opportunity Opportunity
For Outdoor For Outdoor
Activity Area Activity Area

Benches, Signs, Lights,

Landscape:
Some Hard-Surface for Pick-up,
Deliveries, and
Outdoor Events.

An Attractive, Friendly, Inviting,

Articulated and Visible
Front Door and Facade.

= Emergency Exit A Pleasant

and
Safe Walkway
= Service Point
Approach

= Possible Elevator Location fA \

= Site Landscape
Reasonable Infrastructure
Development Costs

BABSON COLLEGE, STUDENT HOUSING FACILITY PROGRAM DIAGRAMS, 1992. Doser, Lipsky, CRAIG AND ASSOCIATES, INC.
(this page and facing page bottom) Programmatic diagrams to guide site and building design.

BABSON COLLEGE, STUDENT HOUSING, FRONT DOOR VIEW, 1992. CBT ARCHITECTS. (facing page, top) The resulting project.
(Photo: Steve Rosenthal, courtesy of Charles Tseckares.)

152 Chapter Two

Diagram B
NEW HOUSING FACTORS
Consistent
Potential for with Strategic
Award-Winning Plan Purposeful
Architecture Communities

Contribute Multiple
To Campus Program
Design Opportunities

1991
Responsive to
Safety and BABSON Best Aspects
of Existing
Security
Objectives
COLLEGE Housing
CONCEPT

Site Continuation
Sensitive of Meal Plan

Appropriate
Attractive to
for Custodial and
Sophomore and
Operational Economy in Junior Class
Requirements Construction and
Maintenance

Building Types 155,

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, VILLAGE B HOUS-
ING, 1984. (above) Hugh Newell Jacobson's
expressive translation of university housing into a
site-sensitive design for one of America’s cherished
and protected residential districts. (Source: Hugh
Newell Jacobson)

AND How Far Have We Come? (right)

Interior view, 1946, Rogers Dormitory Dining Hall,
University of Indiana. Exemplary early Modern. See
also page 5.

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNiveRSITY, BRONCO

MALL, 1992. (facing page) Neon signs, food
choices, with an ambiance more like a shopping
center food court than a military base dining
hall—dining that also provides nutritional, eco-
nomic, and cultural choices for campus life at the
dawn of the twenty-first century. (Source: Western
Michigan University)

154 Chapter Two

coed campuses are each different places. Not all campuses will provide housing for
single mothers with children, as does Saint Paul’s College, Virginia. Executives
enrolled in short-term university training programs expect room sizes, bathrooms,
and amenities not found in typical dormitories. Fraternities and sororities, gradu-
ate student housing, married student housing, faculty housing obviously have their
special purposes and architectural requirements.
At the undergraduate level, in principle a varied housing stock is the best
response to meeting the generation cycle of changing student expectations—where
one age group seeks its identity by being different from the group before. The
Babson College facility program diagrams and photos indicate how housing policy
considerations and specific site development criteria for a suburban venue merged
into a realizable campus life project that broadens the College’s housing inventory
on a suburban campus. Of urban examples, Georgetown University’s Village B stu-
dent housing is everything the dreaded brick box is not. What might have been a
large dormitory is expressed as a series of town houses designed to fit one of
America’s pleasant historic neighborhoods. Details pick up the Italianate style of
nearby buildings in a tour de force of architecture in context.
Most housing sectors have their own associated dining facilities, often architec-
turally the best spaces, even in otherwise mundane housing compounds. The act
of eating together in the institutional dining hall is often remembered by alumni as
an act of survival almost leading to sedition or a gracious affair of social and edu-
cational benefit. Many existing facilities require upgrading comparable to the resi-

Building Types nH
 dence halls for similar reasons: decay, obsolescence, and the marketing and eco-
nomic vitality of the dining experience. The desired objective is to provide a vari-
ety of dining choices in an environment that does not conjure up the mental pic-
ture of being in a minimum security institution. Conventional cafeteria, serving
lines, and large open seating areas are being replaced with food courts and seating
areas not unlike those seen in a shopping mall. Where climate permits, outdoor din-
ing areas are popular. All in all, the objective of a streamlined and economic food
operation, with an exuberant decor, appealing to students and visitors, is a reach-
able goal these days. Like housing, college and university dining services have
become professionalized.. Expert advisors are available on such matters as menu
development, methods of food preparation and serving, equipment, health stan-
dards, the psychological impact of color and space on the dining experience, and
computerized patron identification and charging systems. As to general ambiance
and amenities, few institutions can afford the dreary and dismal. Philosophically
food services cannot be treated as “auxiliary services,” peripheral to the overall edu-
cational experience; comprehensive physical renewal of facilities can be expected
nationwide.
In scanning several centuries of building types, we have traced an evolution stim-
ulated by function and have indicated and illustrated how function inspires excep-
tional designs. Clearly, function is a design determinant, but a useful definition of
campus architecture also requires other discernible distinctions and aesthetic dimen-
sions. These we will now explore as we continue our exposition and examples.

156 Chapter Two

 COPDASPa
Tae Ros

CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE
DETIN
EED

Certainly it is not possible to invent a new

kind of architecture every Monday morning.
Mies van der Rohe, 1961

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CAMPUS PLAN,

1922. CHartes A. PLATT. An Apollonian
campus design, geometric, presumably predictive
in determining building shapes and forms. Platt’s
biographer, Keith N. Morgan, writes that the
“trustees were eager to establish an official style
for university buildings. Since Platt found no
appropriate local or campus traditions on which
to base the design of new buildings, he imposed
an architectural vocabulary of English Georgian,
which was consistent with the formality of his
plan and could be expanded easily to accommo-
date the needs of differing departments and pro-
grams.” Several such structures were designed,
but several Monday mornings followed, too often
with a pot pourri of styles. Of consequence was
Platt’s idea of a regulated development scheme,
honored in principle by subsequent architects,
albeit their own versions.

157
158 Chapter Three
CHAOS OR CONTROL: ARCHITECTURAL ENIGMAS
People want the buildings that represent their social and community life to give
more than functional fulfillment. They want their aspirations for monumentality,
joy, pride and excitement to be satisfied.
Sigfried Gideon, 1960

We see our new architecture as an art aimed at satisfying social needs. We

define function not in terms of visual effect but as the arrangement and
enclosures of spaces to make human activities more productive and enjoyable. We
consider materials as tools for enclosure, not as symbolic labels for fixed style.
Phil Will, Jr., FAIA, 1961

The review of building types helps us understand diversity’s cause and result but
does not establish a structured definition of campus architecture. For that, we have
to throw light through a propagating prism. Today a small school such as Carleton
College has 63 buildings, a large institution such as Stanford University several
hundred, many functionally different as to building type. Diversity is necessary.
But, as designer Robert E. Alexander worried in 1963, “such radically different
building forms, consciously sought, could lead into chaos unless policies are devel-
oped to control them.” Writing on the eve of unprecedented growth in American
higher education, Alexander was fearful that “Industrial research and salesmanship
have opened a Pandora’s box of building materials and colors.” He believed archi-
tectural chaos could be avoided at the University of California, San Diego, where
he was working, and other campuses he was studying, by applying certain princi-
ples which he saw evident “in the unified and somber buildings of old world” uni-
versities. As Alexander and his peers learned, and as we demonstrated in the review
of building types, the search for principles to steer architecture through the shoals
of function, style, and symbol to solutions that are suitable and relevant to purpose
and place is no easy task.
By the time Alexander had completed his buildings in San Diego, old world and
new were discombobulated by architectural ideas and philosophies not easily coun-
tenanced by Alexander, one of the last masterful interpreters of Modern architec-
ture as it was conceived before and after World War II. How quaint and simple
and convincing Gideon’s truism, Will’s formula, and Mies’s convictions, like a flex-
ible sock, one size fitting all. Comforting too, would be Walter Gropius’s faith in
Modern: “the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and

BROWN University, JOHN CARTER BROWN EXTENSION, 1990. HARTMAN AND Cox, ARCHI-
TECTS. (facing page, top) The new addition was designed as astylistically seamless extension in a tour de
force of matching new and old. When to invent, when to depart, when to emulate, when to interpret?
These are leading questions in defining campus architecture.

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, SERVICES AND SUPPORT BUILDING, 1990. Keyes CONDON
FLORANCE. (facing page, bottom) A clear example of context determining style. The shipping and receiv-
ing functions, mail room, equipment storage, and vehicle repair had to be housed near the main building
complex, in an urban precinct, and with an architecture that was in scale with and sympathetic to the sur-
rounding residential neighborhood. (Source: Keyes Condon Florance)

Campus Architecture Defined 159

 sculpture and painting in one unity and which will rise one day toward heaven from
the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.”
Architecture today is an uncertain art. Conflicts in theory, purpose, canon, and
convictions exacerbate the tensions between the visionary and the practicable, as
they always have in the periodic rise and fall of fashion and function.
“Contemporary architecture bathes in the pantheistic limbo of eclecticism,” states
Demetri Porphyries (1974). “Torn between the dilemma of a frantic search for noy-
elty and an inherited social mission for a popular language, architecture leafs
through history caricaturing remembrances.” Not so argues Robert Stern (1989),
suggesting that the grammar and vocabulary of Classical buildings, the merits of
vernacular regional buildings, and the influences and artifacts of industrialization
can be melded into an aesthetic that uses the best features of all three.
On campus, commissioning a new building begins with definitions of purpose,
size, site, and budget. Once these are settled, the aesthetic adventure is launched.
As designs advance, topical vexations and institutional sophistication about archi-
tectural matters are immediately exposed in debates such as the merits of gratuitous
elaboration versus unambiguous functionalism, or the serenity of a formulated con-
temporary architectural style versus the panache of design gestures with historical
antecedents blended with exterior materials and shapes totally without precedent
on the specific campus. This “sweet disorder and carefully careless” may have
“merit,” acknowledges critic Robert Maxwell (1993). However, “To be acceptable,”
he says, “modern architecture has to be rendered into a human tradition and sub-
jected to human values.” On that score, and to that end, we see campuses as ideal
proving grounds for continuous self-determination of appropriate campus architec-
ture, campuses being, as they are, multifaceted congeries of coherence and contra-
dictions. Accordingly, success here may come by first understanding and inter-
preting some fundamental factors peculiar to building in the groves of academe,
where the objective could be conscious design consistency or, where desired, delib-
erate, though agitating, variety.

FUNDAMENTALS
Knowledge is higher education’s prime purpose—utilized in teaching, research, and
community service. The three functions are dynamic, the means and modes varied;
so too are the physical representations and configurations of the functions. Some
campuses are appealing architecturally because they convey the appearance of visu-
al unity, carefully cultivated. The controlled ambiance is cherished through design
continuity, such as the three centuries of Collegiate Georgian architecture at William
and Mary College, albeit with varying interpretations of that protean style. Other
campuses are attractive because they are composites; offering the best architecture of
their era. Witness the Green at Brown University, also several centuries in the mak-
ing, and praised today as a tangible, three-dimensional history book of architectural
philosophies, fashions, engineering, and craftsmanship. To use Duke Ellington’s
superlative, it is “beyond category.” Of consequence is Brown’s continuing revital-
ization of these and other original structures; such as the Sayles Gymnasium project
cited earlier—inside the building new functions, outside the form preserved.

160 Chapter Three

 Such differences are not an East Coast phenomenon but universal in campus
design. Visual unity can be found at the University of New Mexico, Albuquer
que;
composite designs at the University of Washington. Centuries of buildings at
Oxford are united by the honey-colored, oolitic limestone, carved, sliced, paneled
in older and newer structures, many organized around the memorable quads. In
contrast, its intellectual twin, Cambridge University, is remembered as having a
larger palette of materials and site configurations. The latest buildings at Lavalle
University are joined visually to their earlier counterparts in color, texture, and cer-
tain detailing, arranged in veneration to the Quebec vernacular.
Like a geologic cross-section, the buildings at these institutions can be read as
economic indicators of good times and bad, as well as swings in the cultural and
aesthetic pendulum, from neotraditionalism to avant garde and points in between.
Apparent in those cycles is a reality that informs college and university architec-
ture as an exceptional professional challenge, the challenge of discovering, balanc-
ing, and expressing the energy of institutional vitality. Pistonlike, these are the
push-pull of continuity and change in mission, goals and objectives, size, organiza-
tional structure, programmatic priorities, and aesthetic preferences. These forces
affect campus architecture at its inception. They are at work in moving a project
from concept to reality. Successful architecture must position itself clearly along
the spectrum of past, present, and future. Ignorance or indifference to these cir-
cumstances has unhinged the complacency of those who would guide campus archi-
tecture with a curator’s conservatism and goodwill as well as upset the advocates
of accelerating a new direction with artistic audacity. In both instances by failing
to make a strong case for continuity or change, or for creative solutions for chan-
neling the forces, some ingenious schemes have been sent to the archives unbuilt,
concepts which in other circumstances would have survived the test of campus
ethos, committee judgments, administrative discretion, board leadership, and the
financial officer’s concerns about available funding.
Another reality is that whether consciously conceived as a visually unified design
concept or emerging as a composite, college and university campuses are never
completed. Relentlessly, like the tides, new combinations of teaching, research, and
community service evolve as institutions discover, define, and use the corpus of
facts and values which is implicit in their missions. The intellectual ferment—evo-
lution or revolution—often requires parallel changes or adaptations in the physical
forms that constitute the campus, and, occasionally, for functional reasons will
breed fundamental new concepts as to what is appropriate campus architecture.
The knowledgeable designer will be alert for and will address these conditions.
Technology influences campus architecture obviously, ubiquitously. The drive-
in community college is the product of the auto age. Electricity, and, later, elec-
tronics, transformed the use and physical forms of the campus library. Indoor
plumbing altered dormitory design. The mechanization of food services impacted
dining hall routines, site requirements, and ambiance. The fear of fire gave cause
for widespread acceptance of masonry architecture. Cast iron columns helped widen
room size. Cheap glass improved natural lighting. Provisions for controlling toxic
wastes and gases altered the appearance of science facilities. As they became avail-
able, aluminum and poured concrete permitted building forms and shapes previ-

Campus Architecture Defined 161

 BROWN UNiversITy, THE GREEN. JOHN Foraste. (top) A living museum
of institutional architecture. (Source: Brown University)

LAVALLE UNIVERSITY, THE OLDER 1920 LiBRARY, THE NEW SCHOOL OF

MANAGEMENT. (/eft and above) Forms and textures linked for visual conti-
nuity and homage to antecedents, a campus worth seeing for good lessons in
architecture as heritage, simple landscapes, and clarity in campus design.

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT, WILLIAMS HALL. (facing page, top) (Source:

University of Vermont)
UNITED STATES AiR Force ACADEMY, CHAPEL. (facing page, bottom)
(Source: U.S. Air Force Academy)
Emphatic skyline designs with generational differences in building technolo-
gy, materials, and aesthetics.

Chapter Three
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Campus Architecture Defined 163

 ously unseen on campus, many loaded with design signals that announced the end
of one generation’s view of good architecture and the arrival of another. Generation
differences in materials, technology driven, are easy to read architecturally as sig-
nals of change. Compare the elevation of nineteenth-century Williams Hall at the
University of Vermont and the Air Force Academy Chapel, both memorable
designs pointing skyward. The Williams’s building materials and forms are the
products of a definable industrial period and architectural style. ‘The Chapel’s alu-
minum framing and construction unquestionably convey modern materials, values,
and aesthetic attitudes.
Introducing his concept for the University of Sussex (England, 1964) Basil
Spence noted that the Greeks (presumably the classical authority and arbiters of
British design values) “welcomed the idea of incompleteness as a virtue, that
incompleteness was life itself. It was with that in mind that the first plan was
done.” Simple and effective conceptually, his designs provided a group of build-
ings in a landscape setting with expansion directed outward from a stable core.
However, some degree of permanency is also desired philosophically, education-
ally, physically as campuses mature. The mortmain of achievements and accom-
plishments should be sustained or reused as heritage. The accommodation of those
who are out of step with the times but whose eccentricity finds productive outlet
in academe, the enduring qualities of intellectual discipline and rigor, the ideal of
governance through collegiality—these are anchors in a sea of change which can be
found in campus histories and are often ennobled architecturally. At the least,
where desired institutionally, generational continuity can be honored through archi-
tectural gestures and genuflections that reflect their surrounding context. Spence
for Sussex: “I saw the University now and in the future in pink brick with some
arched forms peeping in the trees.” The designs of some American campuses are
equally compelling in applying that logic. At Virginia Polytechnic University, a tra-
ditional local stone is used in the facades of discernible contemporary buildings,
manifestations and recognizable signs of change and continuity. Though organized
internally by programmatic factors, buildings can stand uncompromised in func-
tion, yet be molded by shapes and inflected with details and materials associated
with their region, a principle beautifully executed in the 1992 classroom building
at Rock Valley College, Illinois. The roof lines, massing, and stone walls are
reminders of the surrounding agricultural community. Architectural Rosetta stones,
these buildings are alphabets of local design metaphors translatable into signals of
continuity and change, of which Vanderbilt University’s Psychology Building
(shown on page 25) is a sophisticated example. However, as E. H. Gombrich warns,
“corruption lurks close to perfection...an overdose of effects produces a hollow and
affected style.”
Landscapes can also be conceptualized and used to indicate the permanent and
the indeterminate. Building sensitively in the groves of academe, using the groves
and other forms of campus greenery as campus design themes, is an art worth
encouraging, indeed an essential aspect of campus architecture, as discussed below.
Poetic or pragmatic, commendable campus landscapes range from the grand classi-
cal development schemes (framed and formed by lawns, trees, and flowers) to the
nooks and crannies delightful to discover and use (when properly planned, pat-

164 Chapter Three

VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC UNiversity. Architecture defined by homage to stone. (Source: Virginia Polytechnic University)

Rock VALLEY COLLEGE, 1992. C. Edward Ware's place-evoking campus architecture. (Photo:A.Sskutans, courtesy of Rock Valley
College)

Campus Architecture Defined 165

 terned, and planted). Walls and fencing, gateways, ceremonial areas, memorial gar-
dens, sculpture, fountains, and outdoor art are opportunities to raise quotidian
designs to a higher level of design achievement. Paradigmatic campus architecture,
admittedly challenging by definition, aims to meld all the constituent physical ele-
ments into a unified visual statement. How? Again, Spence: unity “comes from
internal rhythm, the buildings and materials, and a sensitive appreciation of the
site, of using ground in a proper way.”
To reiterate, campus design has to ennoble the past, enhance the present, and
provide for the future by balancing continuity and change. Campus architecture
implements these objectives through specific projects. As will be illustrated, good
solutions must meet functional needs on a well-selected site, with creative responses
to aesthetics and budget, and gain endorsement among those affected by the
design. The last is not least. These days the best designs are not imposed from
the top but surface from consensus and participatory planning. Reflecting the
forces of continuity and change, it is also understandable that the reasons and
rationale which are used in the design processes that create new architecture, or in
the plans that conserve and reuse the old architecture, may not be shared by all
who have a stake in the outcome. Sometimes collegial reviews and evaluations of
the first designs must serve as the occasion for mediating or settling philosophic,
cultural, and social differences—not necessarily related to the project under dis-
cussion—before a firm concept is approved for design development and construc-
tion. That kind of discourse is another institutional reality to be reckoned with in
generating campus architecture. Fundamentally, a single model or process for
encapsulating higher education physically is as unlikely a proposition as the sun
setting in the east. Thus, the search for and expression of diversity and distinc-
tiveness, or a reaffirmation or reinterpretation of design continuity, all through col-
legial efforts, is an underlying principle in our recommended conceptualization of
campus architecture.
There are two other fundamentals which can and should inform and bring all
architecture on campus into the twenty-first century—institutional responsibility
for demonstrating environmental awareness and the humanizing influence campus
architecture can have as computers and communications technology continue to
mechanize and accelerate the processes for creating, transferring, and sharing
knowledge. The following definitions and commentary are offered in structuring
our interpretation of campus architecture.

TROLLING THROUGH THE SEA OF DEFINITIONS

A campus is an ensemble of buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure used for high-
er education, as it exists and as it is planned. The word is occasionally applied to
other architectural groupings such as school grounds, government complexes,
research parks, and medical and cultural centers. The connotation is favorable and
constructive. In these instances campus is a cachet implying an ordered design, spe-
cial and coherent, as in the Rhode Island Hospital long-range development con-
cept. The text and illustrations which follow focus on college and university cam-
puses, though the discussion may have useful application for any large group
of

166 Chapter Three

buildings and landscapes constructed over time and intended to be mutable
envi-
ronments responding to social and cultural needs.
As to defining architecture, a book-length bibliography would be required to
introduce the canon. Publications include manifestos sanctioning new directions,
screeds on building types, and tropes on designers fashionable, neglected, or redis-
covered. Subtitles from publisher Pierre Mardaga’s book catalog (Paris, 1994) reveal
the range: architecture as a symbolic form, as an expression of realism, as social
ornament, as a political statement of power and prestige, as craft, and as patrimony.
Each opus offered a universal truth. In that spirit (the search for certitude in an
era of paradox and perplexity) the selection of definitions that follow are a sample
of those that have had historic influence on campus architecture and, taken as a
whole, provide a critical appreciation of causes and effects still at work in deter-
mining, shaping, and siting college and university buildings.
Following a tradition dating back to Vitruvius, professionals such as William
Halfpenny (The Art of Sound Building, London, 1724) and the contemporary
Michael Winn (4rchitectronics—Revolutionary Technologies for Masterful Building
through Design, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1993) have illustrated architectural pur-
pose and technique for practitioners, their clients, and the interested public. The
first such books in English were ubiquitous in application. Treasured by the cul-
tured elite as well as semiliterate craftspeople, these books determined what was
acceptable architecture in climes as varied as Northern Ireland and the Southern
Caribbean, and in societies as disparate as New England and the Virginia planta-
tions. Some early-nineteenth-century American architectural pattern books, how-
ever, soon recognized possible continental differences, the beginnings of
transoceanic variations, and architectural regionalism. In publishing his version of
suitable architecture, designer Owen Biddle (1810) introduced the matter thusly: “I
have experienced much inconvenience for want of suitable books on the subject.
All that have appeared, have been written by foreign authors, who have adapted
their examples and observations almost entirely to the style of building in their
respective countries, which in many instances differs very materially from ours.”
Biddle’s thrust was an unchaining of British influences that produced along the
East Coast thousands of watered down versions of Georgian and Neoclassical door-
ways, fenestration, and mantelpieces—architecture through millwork—which for
their age are now justly esteemed and preserved in older college buildings. Decades
later, in preparing guidelines for zoning codes and proselytizing architecture as
regionalism, John Gaw Meem (circa 1930) would go much further, downgrading
all references to European antecedents and upgrading native forms and colors in
nourishing and defending the Pueblo style first advocated by William G. Tight for
institutional buildings in the Southwest, notably at the University of Mexico.
Designer-writers Andrew Jackson Downing and William Butterfield preached
that architecture might be differentiated morally. Downing (1842) advocated coun-
try houses be designed “with more chasteness and simplicity than a townhouse;
because it is in the country, if anywhere, that we should find essential ease and
convenience always preferred to that love of effect and desire to dazzle, which is
begotten for the most part, by the rivalry of mere wealth in town life.” Thus sym-
pathetic to Downing’s reasoning, Frederick Law Olmsted would advocate cottage-

Campus Architecture Defined 167

168 Chapter Three
_ RHODE ISLAND HospiTAL, 1986. Doser, Lipsky, CRAIG AND Associates, INC. (facing page, top)
ARKANSAS COLLEGE, 1994. Doser, Lipsky, CRAIG AND Associates, INC. (facing page, bottom)
Campus plans:Acoordinated view of the future, a mix of new and old buildings, landscapes, circulation, and parking; sufficiently flexi-
ble to admit adjustments and changes in specificity during implementation.

SmitH CoLtece. (this page) A century of housing, buildings and landscapes engaged, each generation with a style its own but
throughout a consistent regard for the Olmstedean programmatic theme. An arboretum defines one edge of the campus and the
townscape the other. Residences marked with asterisks are interspersed, a living catalog of architectural motifs and taste. (Source:
Smith College)

Pa

Campus Architecture Defined 169

 style architecture over monumental buildings for his college clients. Olmsted reject-
ed the formality of quadrangles and classical architectural compositions, as well as
the housing of students in the “red-brick barrack-like accommodations,” with
which he was familiar in his tours of eastern seaboard campuses. Domestic scale
structures, village and informal park settings—these were most suitable for exem-
plifying the American character and serving the democratization of higher educa-
tion, thought Olmsted. His ethical tone resonated with righteousness for the
founders of Smith College seeking architectural themes suitable for educating
women through and with “every element of their environment—intellectual, spiri-
tual, physical, cultural, aesthetic.” Smith College was thus created and maintained
as an Olmsted ideal, agricultural in sentiment, producing the first student housing
designed as cottages, each with their own dining room. Several generations of
buildings track changes in design fashions and styles at Smith, but, the overall pur-
pose and size of campus housing continues—the continuation of collegiate domes-
ticity, the annealing of a Smith tradition of buildings situated in a self-perpetuat-
ing landscape.
Campus architecture can serve and signal institutional attitudes about moral
issues. Inventing a new style and building plan for Keble College (Oxford, 1868),
Butterfield and clients were motivated to end the debauchery, idleness, and indif-
ference to education that they were convinced were too strongly associated with, if
not engendered by, earlier Oxford architecture. From the design of brickwork to
the arrangement of interior corridors and room sizes, Butterfield departed from ear-
lier Oxonian precedents, producing a version of collegiate architecture that delight-
ed his clients and for a time infuriated critics and peers. Architecture as fashion
and architecture as style are two threads that can be woven into a theoretical fab-
ric, fashion being ephemeral, and style being art ossified. The appearance, accep-
tance, and endurance of the first (fashion) will lead to the latter (a style). Keble
was neither, thus a testimony to Butterfield’s genius and the strength of the client
and architect’s joint convictions. Together they fostered and supported the design,
eccentric though it was, in a traditional and sometimes hostile educational and
social environment.
The history of campus architecture is spotted with such convictions. Explaining
his proposed designs—nineteenth-century Classicism for the University of Texas—
Paul P. Cret would “conjoin the legacy of the past with the promise of the future”
by finding the “character of the building” in establishing its parti. The word means
“party,” he once wrote, “just as in politics there is a Republican, a Democratic
party. Selecting a parti for an (architectural) problem is like taking an attitude
towards a solution.” Collegiate Gothic was praised and promoted as the only com-
mendable architectural style for its ability to remind students of the virtues and
disciple of monastic education. Such designs were an architectural antidote to late-
nineteenth-century “insane secularism,” thought its devout propagandist and
skilled proponent Ralph Adams Cram. In contrast, Collegiate Georgian was revived
several times as a style in memory of the verities and social values of the early New
England churches and colleges. Such candles are not easily blown out, witness the
recent dormitories at Boston College and Tufts University, echoing nineteenth-cen-
tury designs, and the library addition at Kenyon College seen earlier—modern in

170 Chapter Three

every functional respect, detailed as homage, and built with gestures
to nearby his-
toric designs.
Useful are the attempts to rationalize design processes and thus prescribe archi-
tecture. Though 200 years apart, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1802) and
Christopher Alexander (1964) share a common approach to defining architecture;
first through classifications of forms and functions and then through applying orga-
nizing and compositional principles to generate building designs. These coded con-
ventions continue definitional and directional architectural dialogs, of which Leone
B. Alberti’s The Art of Building (1485) is the seminal work in the Western canon.
Here, for example, one might find the correct composition and location for design
elements as diverse as a vestibule or a town gate. In his pattern-language planning
for the University of Oregon (1965) Alexander provides equivalent prescriptions for
campus open spaces, path systems, and building elements.
For Robert B. Bechtel architecture is Enclosing Behavior (Hutchinson and Ross,
Stroudsburg, 1977). He and his counterparts meld human ecology and psychology
to infuse design conceptualization and processes with the insights and ideals avail-
able in social science research. Their work and points of intervention have signifi-
cantly influenced design processes such as facility programming and evaluations of
the built environment. At the least, they challenged the soap opera of design awards
for buildings that were not examined as to functional satisfaction and psychologi-
cal impact. At their best, they gave designer’s methods for stating more clearly
architectural intentions and desired outcomes. They moved, for example, concepts
of human scale from an abstract Renaissance diagram to descriptive and timely con-
structs of cultural and generational differences in shaping and experiencing space
functionally and visually. As in Robert Geddes’s landmark housing scheme for the
University of Delaware, designers working this definition sought and applied
“sociopetal-anthropophilic” theories to help configure site and building arrange-
ments so as to unite “more fully the social and intellectual life on campus with
architectural forms.”
Architecture is environment first, some social scientists would claim, as they
enrich with disciplined research the intuitive explorations of Richard Neutra
(Survival Through Design, Oxford University Press, New York, 1954). In his design
philosophy and practice, Neutra expanded the definition of modern architecture to
embrace and interpret findings from biology and the behavioral sciences. His
impact on school design was noted earlier. Sustaining the relationship of man and
nature is essential, says Norman Crowe, chastising those who would categorize and
isolate environmental concerns and factors from the process of determining the
shapes of the built environment. In Crowe’s Nature and the Idea of a Man-Made
World (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994), he argues that is an unnec-
essary dichotomy. He proposes an architectural theory based on return to an his-
toric symbiotic relationship between basic natural environmental conditions and
forms induced by functional requisites. He rejects the aesthetic tenets of “post-
modernism...which tends to see the built world...through the abstractions of post-
enlightenment science.”
Christian Norberg-Schulz holds that architecture is a way of giving people an
“existential foothold” through a work of art that concretizes and transmits the

Campus Architecture Defined 171

 orn
go ee

172 Chapter Three

meaning of culture and the significance of place (Genus Loci, New York,
1984). All
campuses have or should have that significance. Peter Eiseman, however,
would
strip all associational meanings from architecture, “making the plans, walls and
ele-
ments as valueless as a stack of playing cards:” His definition of architecture was
first seen in domestic commissions and later given full reign in a controversial
scheme for the visual arts (Wexner Center) at Ohio State University. It “shakes us
from the complacency of our convictions about campus master planning, tradition-
al architecture, and the notions of what art should be,” comments observer Graham
Gund. “Spatial gymnastics,” writes Carolyn Senft, is an “effort to create percep-
tual instabilities that displace the subject/viewer within architectural space.” For
Mies van der Rohe, architecture was less, not more. Iconoclast Robert Venturi
advocated the “hybrid” over the “pure,” “the inconsistent and equivocal rather
than direct and clear” in his savvy and provocative Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966). Theory is “not a hammer
but an oculus,” thus the concepts of style should be secondary to considerations of
site, enclosure, and materials, writes David Leatherbarrow in The Roots of
Architectural Invention (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1993). He observes that “the art of building has been transformed into a business
of self-display and promotion through the design and construction of figurative
motifs, making it an object of consumption.” Leatherbarrow would return archi-
tecture to “topics and matters that must be worked through before style.” He says
the “manifest presence” of these form-giving activities has been and will be “the
responsibility of the architect who dares to invent something new.”
Less mentioned in the annals and bibliographies that trace the evolution of mod-
ern Western twentieth-century architecture, and significantly underrated as design
influences deserving acknowledgment, are building technology such as high-speed
elevators, unitary HVAC systems, artificial lighting, computers, and communica-
tion devices. Arguably, a theory of architecture could be formulated as the meld-
ing of technology and fashion. As seen earlier, mechanical and structural systems
have been expressed in a visually interesting manner on the exterior in some recent
campus laboratory buildings, although by 1994 the impulse to do so had seeming-
ly gone dormant.
~ Thus scanned, definitions of architecture can be found in dense discourses on
aesthetic sublimity, ideology, and philosophy, on one hand, and on the other divid-
ing postulation and practice, theories about the manipulation of materials and struc-
ture and simple manuals explaining programming, design, and construction as a
linked process. Critical appreciations rarely examine these latter factors, which

UNiversITY OF DELAWARE, STUDENT HousiNG, 1964. GeDDEs, BRECHER, QUALLS AND

CunincHam. (facing page, top and bottom left) A pioneering venture in applying social science research
to Modern campus housing. (Photo: Jack Buxbaum, courtesy of University of Delaware)

Oxrorb, KeBLe COLLEGE, Cc. 1870. WILLIAM BUTTERFIELD. (facing page, bottom right) The archi-
tect gives the client a refreshing design palette to announce and symbolize significant changes in educa-
tional philosophy and housing arrangements. Coeval opinions: Nickolaus Pevsner (“actively ugly’);
Kenneth Clark (‘one of the finest buildings of its date in England’).

Campus Architecture Defined 173

 well
affect answers to such questions as: How well does the building work? How
was it built? The last is not to be neglected. As Bruce Durie reminds us “Hadrian
of
built the Pantheon to the glory of Gods and Art, but it only went up because
concrete and some good arithmetic.” Ironically, the Penguin Dictionar y of
Architecture (New York, 1977), a standard work, has no entry under architecture.
Trolling through the canon, some aspects of all the definitions cited apply to
some extent to college and university buildings. Required then is the architectural
equivalent of the cosmologists “General Theory”: an all-embracing definition that
accounts for shifting horizons, the heat and light of an expanding universe, black
holes and bright stars, the waxing and waning of observable phenomena that
inspires poets and physicists, and, to stretch the metaphor further, a definition that
sets in motion the best efforts of the preachers, patrons, and producers of campus
architecture.

CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE

Our objective in suggesting a general theory is furthered by joining and treating

the two words (campus + architecture) as a descriptive entity. The definition we seek
must apply to microscale designs (specific college and university projects) and
macroscale concepts (area designs that organize the campus, or campus sector, as a
functional and visual unit).
At the macroscale, architecture is an amalgam of context and relationships. The
desired result is an overall area design concept, creating both the image and speci-
ficity of a memorable city, district, campus, or site. Here, through place-making and
place-marking techniques, the art of civic design comes into play, generating large-
scale architectural effects that are seen and remembered as the essence of the par-
ticular area. Place-making objectives are realized through the articulation, classifi-
cation, and differentiation of building groups and significant structures, landscapes,
and circulation elements and then their arrangement and positioning in response to
site conditions, climate, programmatic and functional relationships, and desired
visual sequence. Place marking strengthens the overall design structure and inflects
it with perceptible physical character. Take, for example, Bath, England, with its
honey-colored stone, the brick edifices of Back Bay, Boston, the white stucco of
historic Seville—in these instances the consistent use of regional materials in new
and old architecture are visible place markers reinforcing the sense of place.
As to microscale architecture, some version of the ancient utilitas, firmatas, et
venustas would cover the essentials. Campus buildings are understandable objects,
from the outer walls inward, with characteristic features associated with the build-
ing type. These characteristics are revealed in floor plans, cross sections, elevations,
details, fittings and finishes, the sizing and relationships of spaces to meet program
requirements (including, these days, safety, accessibility, and energy conservation),
and the introduction and installation of necessary building technology to sustain
and support building activities and for economic operations and maintenance. But |
j

above all else, a building declares itself as architecture through clarity of purpose,
logic in plan, perceptible and enjoyable vertical and horizontal circulation patterns,
the dimensioning and flow of space to be experienced as volume, and the selection

174 Chapter Three

and arrangement of exterior materials and motifs as a conscious, congruou
s demon-
stration of building function, structure, and style.
Admittedly, the result for some may be a yawn, or a yelp, or elation—reflecting
the merging of client intentions with the designer’s ability to produce a persuasive
design and the inevitable reckoning of objective critical judgment and peer stan-
dards and expectations. Nonetheless, whether from the hand of Pugin or Aalto,
Wren or Wright, such architecture gains the approbation “masterpiece” when the
design and crafting of the interiors and furnishings echo and sustain the building
concept and when the siting and kindred landscape extend the aesthetic experience
of the structure into the environs for use and pleasure.
So far the definitions of architecture—macro and micro—have universal appli-
cation. To assay the particular in this book, we define campus architecture as build-
ings and landscapes synergistically engaged and integrated as projects which are sit-
uated in paradigms planned and designed for higher education. As illustrated more
abundantly later, paradigms are areawide designs, created through place making,
such as the overall form of the campus or the design of a campus precinct. The
paradigms may be perceptibly geometric, such as the original quadrangular plan for
the Duke University West Campus, less fettered site arrangements such as the
Texas A & M campus, or composites that include both formal and informal cam-
pus precincts. In all three instances, campus greenery helps establish, embellish,
and “emblematize” the broad-scale campus design and its constituent parts.
The paradigms thus created for campuses can be further strengthened through
place marking, i.e., an additional transfer of civic design techniques into campus
design methods, and their application to campus venues. The desired outcome is
location and orchestration of certain physical attributes which give a campus a visu-
al uniqueness appropriately its own. Place-marking elements include the consistent
use of building materials (such as the cut limestone associated with the image of
Kansas State University), continuity in aspects of style (such as variations of
Collegiate Georgian associated with images of William and Mary College), a her-
itage building serving as an institutional symbol (Old Morrison, Transylvania
University), or a mnemonic landscape element (such as the clock tower and sur-
rounding lawn, University of California, Riverside). In varying combinations these
image-imprinting, place-making features will be found in abundance on campuses
with a strong sense of place. However created, eventually honored and recognized,
these design strokes provide beneficial links to the past, a Proustian continuity,
bearing “unflinchingly in the tiny drop of their essence, the vast structure of rec-
ollection.”
Projects are specific designs, admirable in scope and execution, which help real-
ize the paradigm or are consistent with the paradigm themes and purposes. Projects
selected for this book as campus architecture are thus clustered and illustrated by
types of paradigms. The selection is skewed toward designs that resonate with a
confident interpretation of their surrounding history and natural context, respecting,
but not in thrall to, antecedents and precedents, designs that celebrate diversity and
variety. The best overcome the curse of “time out of joint...the instinctive dissatis-
faction with formula driven designs...they catch the atmosphere and tradition of the
district with inherent artistic perception or even the rarer response of poetic grace.

Campus Architecture Defined 175

 r : f 7s eeea: % en oe : se :
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Duke University, APOLLONIAN COLLEGIATE GOTHIC, 1926. HORACE TRUMBAUER. (top)

Texas A & M University, DIONYSIAN CONTEMPORARY CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT

CONCEPT, 1986. MND, INc. (bottom)

176 Chapter Three

 However exemplary our selection may be for explaining how the past can
inform
the future, for didactic and illustrative purpose, Freya Stark’s comments on
the
untranslatable aspects of artifacts and architecture are a caution also to be contem-
plated. Observing and experiencing centuries of classical buildings, she wrote:
“copy not the forms,” but understand “the traditions and impulses behind them.
These alone can be handed on, to be assimilated, to be nurtured and reborn in a
new shape, alive and different in new hands. Unless such a process takes place the
mere imitation is dead.”

BUILDINGS NOT CAMPUS ARCHITECTURE

Colleges and universities have some structures and many buildings, but not all are
campus architecture. Occasionally, there may be legitimate reasons to construct an
edifice out of context and only vaguely related to site history and the visual char-
acter of the immediate environs. Erected as icons of aesthetic supremacy, stylized
elegance, the uplifting grand projects are usually intended to signify institutional
advancement, solemnize special causes three dimensionally, ennoble benefactors,
and provide publicity, if not prestige, to the sponsoring college and university.
They may be individual structures, such as Frank Gehry’s Fine Arts building at
the University of Minnesota, or a group of buildings, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s
West Campus of Florida Southern College.
The same impulses can have an opposite effect: giving birth to structures with
convoluted shapes, fractured forms, ambiguous floor plans, and incongruous mate-
rials—all this stitched together in the name of modernity and plopped on the land
with minimal regard to terrain, climate, or locale. With well-aimed disdain,
Porphyries labels such buildings as “evasions...the illusion of authenticity cherished
by collectors of reproductions...industrial kitsch...violent jerkiness of advertise-
ment...architecture with no discourse.”
Both kinds of buildings animate the campus visually and philosophically. Like
certain spices added to a stew, these buildings may be welcomed for their flavor,
but they are not needed for nutrition. Eccentric and idiosyncratic, these structures
sometimes end up happily as campus landmarks, recognized as treasured testaments
to the vagaries and vanities peculiar to higher education. Whatever their fate or
critical regard, in principle, the approbation campus architecture is, however, best
applied to facilities that contribute to their surrounds by helping to generate a sense
of place worthy of posterity’s respect as a contribution to a unifying campus design
concept rather than astonishment as a singular act of architectural audacity.

CAMPUS AS LANDSCAPE

Some aspects of campus development other than buildings merit attention. Their
efficacious planning and design will contribute to achieving the institution’s mis-
sion, improve operations and reputation, and strengthen the desired sense of place,
for example, site sensitive solutions to circulation, parking, and infrastructure.
Functional outdoor areas such as play fields, gardens, and arboretums can be
designed and placed for convenience, maintenance, and appearance. The selection

Campus Architecture Defined 177

 FLORIDA SOUTHERN COLLEGE, 1946-1950. Frank LLoyD WRIGHT. (top) Idiosyncratic architecture. A
bold statement, not
repeated, set no direction, enjoyed and celebrated as the unique work of a master designer.

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY (CALIFORNIA), CENTER FOR WORSHIP AND PERFORMING Arts, 1993.
THE BLUROCK
PARTNERSHIP. (bottom) The punctuation mark on a linear campus design, with appropriate contemporary
materials—a solo, soar-
ing structure designed and sited to serve as a symbolic campus building. (Source: Concordia University)

178 Chapter Three

UNiversiITY OF MINNESOTA, FREDERICK R. WEISEMAN Museum OF Art, 1993. FRANK GEHRY. A bravura performance with
few precedents on campus or elsewhere. The building as an art work for art, thus commendable, but not campus architecture.
(Source: University of Minnesota)

Campus Architecture Defined 179

 also
and location of outdoor furniture, lighting systems, art works, or a bridge can
contribute to place making and place marking. A campus is well designed when the
interface area between campus and community is consciously articulated, and atten-
tion is given to the sequence of visual experiences (including signs) which brings
and guides people to and from the environs to the campus gateways and interior
destinations. Good buildings and bad become better architecture when every aspect
of their surrounding environment has been consciously designed. And without
question, a campus is not a campus without suitable landscapes; as at the University
of Nebraska (pictured on page 184), they generate for many people the ultimate
and all-embracing campus design experiences.
The absence of landscape on campus is as telling as a sweet smile with a miss-
ing front tooth. Some campuses are as memorable for their landscape as they are
for their buildings. The physical development of Pomona College radiates with the
founder’s doctrine that a “garden setting,” rather than architectural style, should
be the overriding campus design theme. Arguably, the presence and quality of the
full range of campus landscape elements, ensemble, would be sufficient to produce
a distinctive and distinguished campus design. The point is well-illustrated in
Ralph Cornell’s landscape imprint on Pomona College and the beauty he encour-
aged. Hofstra University markets its sense of place by advertising the campus as a
6000-tree arboretum. Whether indicating the college and university boundaries,
announcing the passing seasons, epitomizing a new fashion in garden design, chan-
neling circulation, embellishing the sites for rites and rituals, commemorating peo-
ple and events—nature shaped by dialogue, dictum, and diligence—these kinds of
landscapes and campus design effects are understandably linked to architecture.
Campus as landscape is a subject deserving a magisterial treatment. After all,
Eden, the perfect environment, was a garden, not a building. Open the lens on the
history of campus design and one finds landscapes framing evocative renderings of
facades or positioned to carry the eye into picturesque greenery, or through botan-
ical detail suggesting a specific locale—polar differences, such as pine trees for
Maine, palm trees for Florida, evergreens in the Northwest, and cacti in Arizona.
Variations in landscapes can signal changes in cultural attitudes and style. The pas-
sion for change, which is a driving force in architectural innovation, has its equiv-
alent in campus greenery. Mavis Batey cogently illustrates cause and effect in her
pioneering book Oxford Gardens (1982)—“pioneering” because she treats campus
landscape as a major campus design influence, not subsidiary to building design.
As our definition of campus architecture includes campus greenery, some addi-
tional comments about landscape as an art are timely, and Batey’s work is a good
guide.
In seeking the causes of change, Batey’s illuminating assessment can be decon-
structed as a docket of the transitory factors that have shaped and reshaped
Oxford’s physical forms over a thousand years. The factors include modifications
in college size and modes of teaching, changes in subject matter and disciplines,
the arrival of women and their gradual rise in status and influence, the introduc-
tion of new building technologies (from indoor plumbing to computers), mutable
artistic determination about what kind of architecture and greenery is best for new
conditions and requirements, and the occasional nostalgia for the return of a design

180 Chapter Three

University OF TEXAS AT DALLAS, CECIL AND IDA GREEN CENTER, 1992. F&S Partners. (top) A catalog of contemporary
“hardscape’ design components, including variations in paving, fountain, and lighting fixtures. (Source: University of Texas)

POMONA COLLEGE, CAMPUS CENTER, 1995. RoBert A. M. STERN. (bottom) Another piece added to the “college in the gar-
den.” The design concept reinterprets earlier Pomona buildings and paradigm of soft landscapes. (Source: Robert A.M. Stern)

Campus Architecture Defined 18]

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POMONA COLLEGE, DEVELOPMENT PLAN, 1957. RALPH D. CorneLL. A strong statement of campus as landscape, providing
a graphic rendition of the founder's vision of ‘college buildings as architecture in a garden.” Several building sites have been
changed and functions differ, but the spirit of the concept continues to guide development at one of America’s superior campuses.

182 Chapter Three

expression discarded by earlier generations. The knowledgeable observer will
see in
Oxford similarities and analogies in tracing the development of campuses elsewhere
.
Whereas the significant place-making form at Oxford is the quad, the place-
marking gestures taken together—facades, roof lines, towers, gates, fenestration—
are stunning chronicle of design convictions and then-changing directions. A litany
of those once at work at Oxford makes the point: Wren, Gibbs, Hawksmoor,
Ruskin, Butterfield, Lutyens, Jacobson. As a group, the Oxford designers produced
buildings in 22 styles. Oxford’s landscapes are equally rich in their marking of
time, taste, and locale. In attempting a summary one appreciates Nathaniel
Hawthorn’s observation: “...it is a disappointment to see such a place...for it would
take a lifetime, and more than one, to comprehend (Oxford) satisfactorily.” Each
gyration in building style (formal to informal and back) has had its equivalent in
greenery.
Legendary are the confrontations between those supporting the formal Dutch
and French gardens and those favoring the picturesque and romantic. Of the for-
mer, a 1732 print shows New College’s four lawns: an historic masterpiece now
lost, with its embroidered flower gardens and palisades of green hedge, reinforced
linearly with stilted, pollarded Dutch elms. Early on St. John’s College would
embrace both aesthetics. In contrast to a formal garden, an adjacent arbor was laid
out as a “wilderness,” 4 acres of contrived countryside, squeezed onto the college
grounds, in a design attributed to Capability Brown. Later, seemingly insulted by
the presence of a formal green lawn, one proctor presented a case for turning the
grass into a monastic turnip garden; another argued for a bowling green. Neither
prevailed. “Not in my time,” ruled the reigning don. Oxford’s historic oscillations
in landscape design, overall, are settled in recent years by favorable memories and
respect of antecedents and precedents, greenery to be preserved and honored.
Landscape’s impact as a form-generating factor can be seen in many illustrious
American campus designs. Jefferson’s and Olmsted’s ideas were cited earlier.
Recent versions include William Turnbull’s dormitory design for Arizona State
University and the BOORA Architects development plan for the Oregon Graduate
Institute of Science and Technology. At Arizona, the distant buttes inspired the
massing concept, accented by a tower that marks the front door. The adjacent
courtyards planted with distinctive indigenous materials are configured to provide
optimum shadow and light effects. The building colors and textures recall the sed-
imentary southwest land forms, strengthening the visual unity of a commendable
project. In Beaverton, Oregon, the stands of firs and deciduous trees and a large
grassy park were utilized both as a green foil for the site composition and as a nat-
ural preserve and outdoor science observation park. The laboratory buildings were
configured to fit the edge of the wetlands.
The respect given historic campus buildings in the United States is now begin-
ning to find its equivalent in campus landscape. For some places, unfortunately a
little late, important aesthetic ideas—cultural evidence as revealing and enlighten-
ing as a building design—have been destroyed or altered through expediency or
ignorance. Thus the restoration plans at Vassar College (Sasaki and Associates,
1989) and the University of Virginia (EDAW, 1994) are commendable. The
Virginia strategy removes mature plantings to return the views and vistas along the

Campus Architecture Defined 153

 Harry Lloyd Weaver
Native Garden
An exhibit of native prairie plants managed by
° the School of Biological Sciences, this garden is Enright Garden
U GUM pUs used for academic activities. The collection
evolves from season to season in response to "This lnkfease space
EIEN ES accommodates major
pedestrian routes. Future
plans will create spaces for
Andrews and Burnett Halls casual conversation while
Perennial Flower Gardens maintaining the focus on
Mueller Tower and the
These sunny perennial borders display plants Mueller Tower cupola of Love Library.
for colorful urban gardens. Long season
blooms are a special feature.
Donaldson Garden
Introduced trees and shrubs
. demonstrating many exotic and
x4Andrews Hall unusual forms are found in this
Cather Garden garden. A diverse collection of
oaks can be studied here.
The prairie landscape
meets an intensely urban
and architectural Holling Garden
environment in this
garden. Native The simplicity and elegance of
wildflowers, grasses, this garden's collection provides
trees, and shrubs are a backdrop for social activities at
displayed here. Street
10th the Wick Alumni Center.
Caretul consideration of plants,
building materials, sculpture and
water create consistent overall
spatial quality.

Sheldon Sculpture Garde:

Campus Spaces
A formal display area linking Special collections of plants are incorporated in the campus landscape,
the Sheldon Galleries and the
historic grounds of Architec- making best use of the building environment for aesthetic and educational
tural Hall, this garden purposes. Exceptional specimens are found throughout campus, making each
displays contemporary
sculpture against a backdrop Love Memorial Libra’ stroll a surprising and enjoyable one.
of mature trees.
These perennial borders frame the traditional entry LR OR OR IC
point to City Campus. Dozens of species and varieties of Symbol suggests path through gardens.
trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and flowers are
displayed within the setting of beautiful bluegrass lawns.

“One plans not places, or spaces, or things; one plans experiences.”

John Ormsbee Simonds

-
weky » ft
i= . “St
ns RE ee es es' es te ce

184 Chapter Three

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, CAMPUS AS LANDSCAPE, 1994. (fac-
ing page, top) An epitome of Dionysian campus landscape experi-
ences arranged to complement building designs. (Source: University of
Nebraska)

Oxrorb, New COoLtece GarDEN, C. 1730. (facing page, bot- ———w. LYhs
WP BL ra
tom) An Apollonian design. Just as buildings can be read and deci-
phered as signs and signals of values and tastes, so too can campus
AN $e ait

landscapes. Significantly, the Oxford landscapes are not available to

be experienced in sequence; the American campus, being more open,
provides that possibility—beautifully so at Pomona College and the
University of Nebraska, cited earlier.

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1990. WILLIAM TURNBULL

Associates. (this page) The architect's sketch which inspired a PSU BAM S 2 & 350unt
building concept fora 410-student dormitory. The large tower reflects Wess v / Xi ull we
the forms of the distant buttes and marks the main entry and com-
mons areas. The roof design is striated concrete, suggesting the color
and texture of the sedimentary rocks in the vicinity. An epitome of
campus architecture and campus housing. (Source: William Turnbull
Associates)

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ite:ve

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Campus Architecture Defined 185

 Lawn so they approximate Jefferson’s concept—the horticultural equivalent of peel-
ing contemporary vinyl siding from a nineteenth-century building.
Existing campus landscapes are often undervalued. Recognizing the contribution
trees make to campus design, The College of Saint Catherine (Minnesota, 1993)
“surveyed their landscape to determine appropriate management.” The College dis-
covered a $2 million campus design asset. The survey identified 523 campus trees,
thirty-eight varieties, some rare, including several dozen over 2 feet in diameter.
Unfortunately, overall, nationally, campus landscape maintenance is getting worse.
In lockstep with building maintenance budgets, funds for grounds upkeep are being
reduced. New landscapés, in the main, seem feeble in concept, penny-pinching in
budget, far short of what the design professions could do were there as many adyo-
cates and donors available for the art and science of campus greenery as there are
for buildings. At the least, while awaiting the grand revival of a great tradition,
campuses could increase their tree cover in areas not likely to be building sites. The
new landscapes could include miniarboretums for science, greenbelts for noise con-
trol, bosks for contemplation, gardens for art, and a few exotic specimens for visu-
al interest and enchantment.
The built and natural environments should be conceived and developed, with
beneficial regard to each other, as a unified design. In principle, the budgets for
such development must include a reasonable allocation for implementing the full
scheme. Landscape is not a contingent item to be reduced or eliminated from an
inadequate construction budget but an essential component of campus architecture.
We have acknowledged the presence of good and bad buildings on campus. We
recognize the many ways to design and position physical elements that are not
buildings to structure and inform campus designs. We show the influence of cam-
pus landscape on campus design. We will indicate through examples below that the
melding of buildings and greenery, above all else, is the distinguishing mark and
province of campus architecture physically. Those relationships—built and natural—
are also significant symbolically, philosophically, and instructively. As qualifying
attributes, these aspects merit further though brief comment as affecting factors in
our definition of campus architecture.

SYMBOL
Historically institutional architecture has been charged with symbolism, producing
objects with cultural and social significance. Creedal forms such as pyramid, cathe-
dral, palace, or town hall can signify the power and presence of personalities, his-
tory, time, and place. A campus possesses many such symbols. The semiotics of
campus architecture is a subject untapped as a systematic intellectual inquiry.
Though not evident at all institutions, certain public images of campus and their
physical forms are place-related and thus amenable to design. In the fall, spectator
sports, the sounds and sights of animated play, and cheering crowds are heard,
seen, and remembered nationwide through telecasts from the collegiate and uni-
versity stadiums. In the spring, processions, orations, and ceremonies on the cam-
pus green celebrate the end of the school year. The months between conjure up
quotidian routines in classrooms, libraries, dormitories, campus centers—formal

186 Chapter Three

 hs es
ee Sa
Aa ANY AS

CENTRAL GROUNDS LANDSCAPE

The University ofVirginias ||
Charlottesville, Virafni STUDY

OREGON GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 1995. BOORA, ArcHiTECTS. (top) Site composition and
building plan are informed by and integrated with the surrounding landscape. (Source: BOORA, Architects)

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, RESTORATION PLAN, THE LAWN, 1994. EDAW. (bottom) A significant design project in which the
concept of sensitive restoration of historic campus buildings is applied to campus landscapes. (Source: EDAW)

Campus Architecture Defined 157

 UNION COLLeGe, Nott MEMORIAL.
FINEGOLD ALEXANDER+ASSOCIATES. The
restoration plan (cross section) gives new life toa
landmark building while maintaining views and
vistas from the historic surrounding green. The
engagement of the two into a singular design
(building and landscape) defines campus architec-
ture. (Source: Finegold Alexander+Associates)

a sot
| ih s

ji
ai ay
| ng

188 Chapter Three

 and informal activities which the best campus architecture recalls and represent
s as
the essence of collegiate life.
Buildings and landscapes conjoined as campus architecture may also be read as
a symbol of institutional ethos and organization, as the Vatican is for Catholicism,
or Capitol Hill for national government. Library Field at Union College scintillates
with history and homage. Here a legacy building and symbolic landscape are won-
derfully situated. The greensward was defined in Joseph Jacques Ramée’s 1813
design, said to be the first coherent campus plan in North America. Nott Memorial
(1858) celebrates the life of Eliphalat Nott, the college president and significant aca-
demic leader who engaged Ramée. The landmark building was given extended life
in 1995 as an assembly hall, museum, and classroom study by restoration experts
Finegold Alexander and Associates. There are, of course, many campus design ele-
ments which serve as institutional emblems, and, if not at their genesis, they later
become associated with a particular campus. Thus the cupola at Saint Joseph
College, Connecticut, and the domes that punctuate the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Charles River skyline are remembered as marking and symbolizing a
specific place. In Webster’s dictionary the word ivy equates with academic, reflect-
ing “the prevalence of ivy-covered buildings on the campuses of the older U. S.
Colleges.” As suggested earlier, regional plant materials can be used and treasured
as a campus symbol. At the macroscale or microscale, good campus architecture
uses these design inflections to define, display, and symbolize a sense of place.

PHILOSOPHY
In an era of accelerated degradation of the physical environment, an architecture
that embraces nature kindly is a welcomed demonstration of an ethical view about
our relationships to the living world. Architecture thus fostered may also help
counter possible indifference to the varieties of human experiences when one is
immersed in, almost mesmerized by, the new and emerging forms of knowledge
production and utilization, the electronic-driven computer and communications
technology. In both situations, campus architecture could satisfy deeply rooted,
instinctive emotions and interests about landscapes and the built environment per-
haps genetic in origin.
At the dawn of our modern university, these sentiments and insights were the
preserve of artists and pedants. Several from the eighteenth century deserve citation
for their influence on campus design historically. Stephen Switzer (Iconographica
“Rustica, London, 1742) raised a banner under which many a theoretician and prac-
titioner, from Humphrey Repton to Ian McHarg, would happily march. The
designer should “submit to Nature, and not Nature to his design,” wrote Switzer.
In providing human satisfaction, the color green (and hence greenery) was the “most
agreeable and necessary” part of the aesthetic spectrum, expounded David Hartley
(1749) in defense of landscaped university quadrangles. Nature’s harmony (a salu-
tary state of mind) could be found in applying certain optical laws, thought William
Hogarth (1752). His codification of aesthetic principles rationalized the serpentine
lines that shaped the location of paths and plantings at Exeter College, which at that
- time was a revolutionary design concept in collegiate England.

Campus Architecture Defined 189

 These historic musings were encouraged, if not launched, by Oxonian Joseph
Addison (1672 to 1715). In his Spectator articles, Addison claimed to see in nature
the sources of imagination from which unwavering empirical principles governing
the physical world could be deduced and appreciated. His college environment
(Magdalen) inspired this cognition, Addison later related, especially the walks and
meadows, where he perambulated through grounds “unalienated” by the formal
Dutch and French modes of landscape then in style at other colleges.
As our age seems to be, so was Addison’s. His was a time when the rich menu
of information, intelligence, and ideals was a diet not all found palatable. At many
an eighteenth-century Georgian college, the continuing secularization was a vexing
threat to some who resisted change, especially change accelerating with the onset
of investigative science, with the arrival of new knowledge from the colonies, and
with the rapid dissemination of information through cheaper and more accessible
books, pamphlets, and newspapers. During an era of intellectual stimulation, whose
future and bounds could not be ascertained, how comforting to many was
Addison’s conviction that certain forms of campus greenery fill “the mind with
calmness and tranquillity...(laying) turbulent Passions at Rest...and (giving) great
Insights into the Contrivance and Wisdom of Providence.”
Stripped of their eighteenth-century language, and questionable intellectual
underpinnings, are these ideas and intuitions relevant for our time? Some contem-
porary scientists at Yale University think so. Their Biophilia Hypothesis holds that
“Eons of evolution, during which humans constantly and intimately interacted with
nature, have imbued Homo Sapiens with a deep, genetically based environmental
need to affiliate with the rest of the living world.” Lacking affiliation with, or not
having a sufficient appreciation of, nature (bio-indifference) gradually erodes psy-
chological health, limits aesthetic appreciation, constrains altruism, and leaves us
potentially seduced and sedated in our “electronic cocoons.” No proof of “biophilia”
has yet been offered as convincing as the law of gravity, but the concerns expressed
in the hypothesis, especially the “electronic cocoons” metaphor, are significant
given the existing and emerging presence and use of campus computers and their
connected communications technology.
Speculative thought or design imperative? Not since books were unchained from
the library walls and Thomas A. Edison’s lighting devices changed the sites and
times for learning has there been a more substantial shift in the methods, modes,
and means of conducting higher education. Via the new technology, a student liy-
ing in a dormitory or residing off campus can “...check the library’s card catalogue,
consult primary sources and a professor’s lecture notes, contact experts at distant
schools, draft a major research paper, send it to a teacher, get it back graded,
rewrite it, resubmit it, debate a point electronically with a teacher in his or her den,
and then have the final grade sent to the registrar’s office...” (The New York Times,
February 26, 1991).
Through computers, classroom presentations, laboratory experiments, and studio
exercises can be conducted with data and information, sounds and images, obser-
vations and hands-on activities once thought experimental in scope and delivery.
Distant as well as on-campus information formats and sources are accessible 24
hours a day, potentially throughout the campus. The technology is transforming

190 Chapter Three

other aspects of college and university operations, such as admissions, administr
a-
tion, alumni affairs, fundraising, and placement. The technology has an extraordi
-
nary capacity to extend knowledge across disciplines and to integrate knowledg
e
production and knowledge application. Temple University, for example, operates a
worldwide network that enables performing artists to find and link up with pro-
fessionals offering help with physical and psychological problems. The network
includes an electronic bulletin board, electronic mail, and access to a database of
over 20,000 abstracts, research papers, and clinical findings. The system is orga-
nized to inform students, assist music therapists, and to advance and share knowl-
edge in a subject area once limited by conventional means of communication.
The technology is sifting downward to elementary and secondary schools, with
eventual consequences for higher education when students arrive “computer liter-
ate.” Here the application and utilization is expanding at a phenomenal pace. The
first expenditure from a $325 million school bond reconstruction fund (Jefferson
County, Colorado, 1994) provides “...at least one computer in every room, class-
room sets of laptop computers, TV monitors and video hookups, laser disk read-
ers, digital cameras...a simple telephone in the classroom, complete with voice
mail...a gateway to cyberspace and all that implies...” (Denver Post, August 15,
1994). In Colorado and elsewhere, students will enter higher education with abili-
ties and expectations heralded by a few technology pundits and prophets several
years ago but not expected by many people to be so pervasive and prevalent until
well into the twenty-first century. Self-evidently, campus architecture must be
responsive to the specific requirements of the technology, such being a necessary
utility, and as fundamental in building design as heating, lighting, ventilation, and
plumbing.
Arguably, the mechanization of knowledge transfer should also accelerate the
need for face-to-face discourse and dialogue, especially exchanges which elucidate
ideas and values with the nuances, subtleties, inventiveness, connectivity, and speed
of the human brain. Well-designed campus environments, inside and outside the
building, can facilitate and nurture those human and personal exchanges without
losing the efficiencies and economies of information technology or other impacting
shifts in education philosophy, modes of teaching, and events from cyberspace. For
most of its history, that kind of environment has been Pomona College’s legacy and
lesson for higher education. Intended by its first president to be “a college in a gar-
den,” the Pomona landscape (see illustration on page 182) was given definitive
shape by Ralph Cornell, and extended and reinforced by succeeding generations
exercising an informed stewardship. The beasts of technical change and intellectu-
al uncertainty were tamed by greenery’s beauty.
The philosophic basis for campus architecture, as defined, can thus be summa-
rized as having these imperatives: the presence of nature as a life-sustaining force;
the utility of green settings (buildings and landscape intertwined) to encourage and
facilitate contact and communications among those participating in campus life; and
the mediation of the knowledge machines’ hermetic and artificial attractions by
nature’s edifying presence. “Presence” includes the horticultural clocks that
announce the color and texture of the changing seasons, the sensing of regional dif-
ferences in plant materials, an appreciation of the art of landscape through views,

Campus Architecture Defined 191

 vistas, embellishment, the observation, studied or otherwise, of botanical gardens
and arboretums. Landscapes of this quality enrich campus architecture. But they
cannot be accomplished casually and as an afterthought and cannot be neglected
once created. The definition of where the landscape begins and the building ends
is not a moot point. Each discipline (architecture and landscape architecture) has |
its special techniques, routines, skills. In principle, these are best applied in coor-
dinated collaboration—another aspect of symbolism, generating campus architec-
ture as a collegial enterprise.

INSTRUCTIVE

The instructive value of campus architecture, process and product, deserves com-
ment, being congruent and complimentary with higher education’s central pur-
pose—to teach and to learn. At the University of British Columbia, the Institute
of Asian Research Building was designed purposively to demonstrate “new stan-
dards for sustainable design, construction, and operations.” From the reuse of old
timbers (reclaimed from a nearby demolished armory), the installation of energy-
efficient and waste-reducting building systems, and the selection of Gingko Bilboa
trees “as a filter for carbon monoxide,” the project continues the tradition of envi-
ronmental stewardship associated with northwestern colleges and universities.
“Stewardship through demonstration has three elements,” says campus designer
Rolfe P. Kellor, “the conservation of limited natural resources, the avoidance or
mitigation of environmental impacts, and the preservation of campus and commu-
nity character.” As to the latter, campuses are testimonies to authenticity. Their
form, function, and appearance serve and reinforce determinable purposes occur-
ring in specific places. Campuses need not, and should not, be facsimiles of each
other but genuine environments, locally determined. That demonstration of the
genuine is critical in a world that often distorts reality by conflating, simulating,
and cheapening experiences, of which the Grand Slam Canyon (Las Vegas, 1994)
is a late example. The Nevada entertainment complex includes roller coasters, water
rides, laser tag, dinosaur bones, archeology exhibits, and American Indians. “All
under a pink glass dome. Admission is $10, all ages.” Historian Anne M. Butler
trenchantly unmasks the weakness of such indulged fantasies: “tolerated and
encouraged misrepresentations of history...varnishing over problematic expressions
of race, class, gender...in the willingness to buy into a...myth in almost any form.”
Campus architecture should not, need not, disguise and distort real life.

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, TERRITORIAL CAPITOL BUILDING, 1874. (facing page, top) Restored as the
University’s main administrative building and serving as a three-dimensional memory of state and higher
education history. (Source: University of lowa)

KENT STATE UNiversiTy, TAYLOR HALL, 1963. (facing page, bottom) Designed to preside over the
campus, like a “Parthenon,” and to introduce “a feeling for Greek architecture.” Counterpoised, the two
examples of Great Walls are instructive for different reasons, philosophically and aesthetically. In their clar-
ity and faithfulness to their idioms they demonstrate again how a building (Kent) differs from architecture
(lowa). (Source: Kent State University)

192 Chapter Three

Campus Architecture Defined 193
 Stating a belief held by many, Chancellor Larry N. Vanderhef (University of
California, Davis) desires and sees the campus as a venue where “students are
exposed to a range of principles, ideas, and ethics at a time when they can mature
and come to their own conclusions.” Attitudes and values among the young can be
molded as they experience campus design first-hand, Amateur architect and savant,
Henry Aldrich (Dean of Christ Church College/Oxford) encouraged his pupils to
find in his design for Peckwater Quadrangle (1704) ideas worth emulating. The
seeds sprouted later, gloriously, with an exceptional group of country houses and
public buildings, erected by those who once occupied Aldrich’s inspiring Palladian
collegiate architecture.
Recognizing a teachable moment and an instructive process, Howard R. Swearer
(president of Carleton College and later Brown University) often appointed stu-
dents to campus building committees. He believed they would thus learn about how
institutional architecture is determined, contribute to its conceptualization, and be
encouraged to participate in comparable undertakings later as responsible and active
citizens involved in life beyond the campus precincts.
New functions, new forms, and new styles may communicate instructively
changes that announce institutional vitality. Supporting this view, one often finds
in letters soliciting building funds, in facility program statements, and in brochures
commemorating the start of construction and the dedication speeches that open
new facilities the heralding of a time-tested benefit: campus architecture as the
omnipresent intimation of institutional purpose, character, and commitments,
The idea of architecture as a silent teacher, of course, has an important prece-
dent in American higher education. ‘Thomas Jefferson arranged the details of his
“academic village” (University of Virginia) as an ever-present reminder of styles he
considered suitable for a democratic society,
At the least, by their visual impact certain Great Walls, such as Kent State
University’s assertively Modern ‘Taylor Hall, should not fail to stir some thoughts
about design genesis and purpose. Labeled the “Parthenon,” the architect believed
it “introduced a feeling of Greek architecture—from the year 483 B.C.—to the
campus.” Preservation of heritage, in contrast to new construction, may also
instruct by its presence, as does the 1874 Territorial Capitol Building now used by
the University of Iowa as an administration office. On inspection of the two exam-
ples, each meant to crown their site, one can readily detect the differences between
a building and architecture. Perhaps the Kent students also sensed that a
“Parthenon” of this subtlety was not quite right when, it has been reported, they
“staged a small and good-natured protest when the hill (assigned for new building)
was taken away.” ‘The demonstration set a precedent for a more significant protest
later, centering on war or peace.
The lines of reasoning that inform the definitions of campus architecture—land-
scape, philosophy, symbol, instruction—could be multiplied and thickened into a
richer theoretical treatise, an objective this book does not further pursue. Rather,
the definition of campus architecture as stated and qualified should suffice to serve
as a framework for introdueing paradigms and projects.

194 Chapter Three

 CHAPTER 4

PARADIGMS
AND
PROJECTS
...4 connotation of
infinity
sharpens
the temporal splendor
of this place....
Cl, €, CUMMINES

A PRINCIPLE REITERATED

The older colleges have passed through periods of style, each new building being
ddded to the then current architectural fashion....Such heterogeneous collections
have not heen found pleasing even though they have given us an historical
record, and the tendency at present is to establish definitely a style in the iter-
‘ ests of coherence and unity.
Architectural Forum, /926

The fundamental principle reiterated: The conscious and inspired intertwining of

buildings and landscapes is the essence of accomplished campus architecture. ‘This
sign of excellence is evident in America’s oldest surviving collegiate building group-
ing (College of William and Mary, 1693) and one of its newest institutions (The
College of Staten Island, 1992). The principle has informed campus development
at the country’s largest institutions (the University of Minnesota, 45,000 students),
and one of its smallest residential schools (Scripps College, 800 students), and com-
muter campuses at both ends of the higher education spectrum (Santa Fe
Community College and City University of New York). Flexible in application, the
principle will yield the necessary variety in design—in response to institutional mis-
sion, history, resources, site conditions, climate, and other influential factors, not
the least of which is the diversity of American higher *education itself. Each acad-
emy, institute, college, school, seminary, and university comprising that cultural
universe called higher education has both the reason to expect and the capability
 to induce an image and reality specifically its own. Thus the conceptualization and
design of paradigms—buildings and landscapes mutually engaged for a common
result—can help extend to infinity the realization of a campus being or becoming
a splendid place.
If the past offers any experience, it is likely that each generation can be expect-
ed to exercise or initiate its own judgments as to what constitutes good architec-
ture, either freestanding structures or ensembles. Arguably, with Modern having
run its course, and the styles that followed rapidly exhausted, one senses a renew-
al of earlier aesthetic debates. In settling a direction, the principle outlined above
can be applied in several ways: loosely for those advocating diversity and variety,
or strictly for those seeking to establish and maintain a dominant visual order, or
as a mediated position that provides continuity with latitude for skillful divergence
when conditions permit or encourage, via paradigms and projects.

PARADIGMS
Paradigms are configurations, frameworks, and molds which shape, structure, and
contain the campus or campus sector, i.e., macroscale campus architecture.
Architectural and institutional histories chronicle pendulumlike swings in taste and
preferment among the forms, from the Dionysian to the Apollonian, and back
again, in no predictable sequence. For those comforted by contemporary analogies,
the differences are as striking as the contrasts between a painting by Ad Reinhardt
and a late-phase Jackson Pollock.
Apollonian paradigms (Reinhardt) tend to be linear, rectangular, and hard-edged,
immediately perceptible in their organization, with connected beginnings and ends.
The composition shows a hierarchy of dominant and subordinate architectural ele-
ments. Massing, elevations, and interior spaces are informed by functions. The
overall building designs are generally marked with facades of consistent materials,
with motifs, and detailing richer or reductive as the style would command. Thus,
the Collegiate Gothic ensemble at the University of Chicago and the Modern idiom
at State University of New York, Purchase, provide a visual unity for buildings
functionally different. In both instances the adjacent landscapes are geometric and
muted, reinforcing the ordered site compositions. Easy to achieve at the start, when
significant construction is completed at one time, Apollonian coherence is difficult
to keep intact stylistically. As one university president was reported to have said,
when asked to select a style and set some firm design guidelines, “He could not,
because he did not believe in prejudicing the future.”
What style cannot command, consistent use of building materials (or related ver-
sions of color and texture) will produce some degree of visual unity where such is
desired, as discussed earlier. Good examples are the brick architecture at the
University of Virginia, the palette of gray to white masonry at Pomona College,
Pennsylvania fieldstone at Swarthmore College, and sandstone and red-tile roofs at
that paradigm of campus design, the University of Colorado, Boulder. There, fol-
lowing Charles Z. Klauder’s lead, successive generations of architects have utilized
the palette for consistency and coherence in external appearance, while exercising
some latitude in massing, configuration, and detailing. The University design

196 Chapter Four

guidelines aim for “a serendipitous mix of open space and building mass,
attention
to human scale,” and the preservation and extension of “the architectural
design
themes and building materials,” so as to allow the architect to “bend the rules
with
care when needs arise.”
Dionysian paradigms (Pollock) are generally looser in site composition. Few build-
ings are connected. The site design is less hierarchical. There is greater variety in
styles and materials, the kinds of campuses that apparently gave classicists such as
Ralph Adams Cram artistic dyspepsia. “A harder (design) problem.. assimilating the
heterogeneous repast of varied types of aesthetic food [Princeton University] had
wolfed down during her formative period, with scant attention to gustatorial har-
monics or the possibilities of a normal digestive system.” So burped Cram (1906),
engaged by Princeton to create “ultimate unity” from “congeries of subordinate
units (so as to) tie the anarchy of the past into the order of the present.”
In terms of plantings, the Dionysian is a richer fabric. The landscapes tend to
be more informal and picturesque. Seemingly natural, the matured landscape, is, of
course, a design invention, often with superb results, as at Mount Holyoke College.
There, the idea of purposeful gardens, functional and horticultural landscapes, bits
and pieces, woven by generations into a campus design theme, started early and has
continued thereafter. A student writes on opening day (1837): “There were no
trees, no fence, not a blade of grass, but a deep bed of sand around the (building).”
Two years later nurseryman Samuel Wells, seeking to sell plant materials and a
design concept, inquires of founder Mary Lyon, “As your building is a plain one
and the ground perfectly level, I suppose you would not think of rusticating the
area in the present most approved fashion.” A century later, a cluster of clearly
modern buildings by Hugh Stubbins and Associates are pleasantly ensconced by a
Mount Holyoke landscape, a collegiate ambiance of Dionysian rustication which has
few equals. Playfields wrapped in groves, the lakes, quads, nooks and crannies,
courtyards, and the views to Prospect Hill—Mount Holyoke’s informal beauty tran-
scends critical judgments of the constituent elements of the college’s architectural
ensemble, including some buildings, inevitably in older institutions, that Cram
probably would have called “the indiscretions of the munificent but misguided.”
The categorization, “geometric versus loose” is an approximation, of course. Some
site development schemes, which in their derivation would be the typical Apollonian
progeny of T-square and right triangle, are sometimes broken and arranged eccen-
trically, with Dionysian results. The slanting and odd angles produce unexpected
effects in building plan and ground plane, as in Paul Rudolph’s Southeastern
Massachusetts University development (1963), or Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center
for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), with the structure pivoted from the street,
and the pedestrian ramp slashing through the site, physically and esoterically. These
le dernier cri go unappreciated, perhaps, if one is not tuned in to the designer’s phi-
losophy or knowledgeable about generation fashions. Evaluating Corbu’s building,
Graham Gund writes that Carpenter Center stands apart from the University’s his-
toric architecture, announcing to visitors and students “avant-garde exploration and
visual comment.” Rejecting the “tight orthogonal arrangement of formal Georgian
buildings which line Harvard Yard...(the design) is diagonal and different from its
‘surroundings as if art itself is slightly outside the regular academic life.”

Paradigms and Projects (OF.

 to induce an image and reality specifically its own. Thus the conceptualization and
design of paradigms—buildings and landscapes mutually engaged for a common
result—can help extend to infinity the realization of a campus being or becoming
a splendid place.
If the past offers any experience, it is likely that each generation can be expect-
ed to exercise or initiate its own judgments as to what constitutes good architec-
ture, either freestanding structures or ensembles. Arguably, with Modern having
run its course, and the styles that followed rapidly exhausted, one senses a renew-
al of earlier aesthetic debates. In settling a direction, the principle outlined above
can be applied in several ways: loosely for those advocating diversity and variety,
or strictly for those seeking to establish and maintain a dominant visual order, or
as a mediated position that provides continuity with latitude for skillful divergence
when conditions permit or encourage, via paradigms and projects.

PARADIGMS
Paradigms are configurations, frameworks, and molds which shape, structure, and
contain the campus or campus sector, i.e., macroscale campus architecture.
Architectural and institutional histories chronicle pendulumlike swings in taste and
preferment among the forms, from the Dionysian to the Apollonian, and back
again, in no predictable sequence. For those comforted by contemporary analogies,
the differences are as striking as the contrasts between a painting by Ad Reinhardt
and a late-phase Jackson Pollock.
Apollonian paradigms (Reinhardt) tend to be linear, rectangular, and hard-edged,
immediately perceptible in their organization, with connected beginnings and ends.
The composition shows a hierarchy of dominant and subordinate architectural ele-
ments. Massing, elevations, and interior spaces are informed by functions. The
overall building designs are generally marked with facades of consistent materials,
with motifs, and detailing richer or reductive as the style would command. Thus,
the Collegiate Gothic ensemble at the University of Chicago and the Modern idiom
at State University of New York, Purchase, provide a visual unity for buildings
functionally different. In both instances the adjacent landscapes are geometric and
muted, reinforcing the ordered site compositions. Easy to achieve at the start, when
significant construction is completed at one time, Apollonian coherence is difficult
to keep intact stylistically. As one university president was reported to have said,
when asked to select a style and set some firm design guidelines, “He could not,
because he did not believe in prejudicing the future.”
What style cannot command, consistent use of building materials (or related ver-
sions of color and texture) will produce some degree of visual unity where such is
desired, as discussed earlier. Good examples are the brick architecture at the
University of Virginia, the palette of gray to white masonry at Pomona College,
Pennsylvania fieldstone at Swarthmore College, and sandstone and red-tile roofs at
that paradigm of campus design, the University of Colorado, Boulder. There, fol-
lowing Charles Z. Klauder’s lead, successive generations of architects have utilized
the palette for consistency and coherence in external appearance, while exercising
some latitude in massing, configuration, and detailing. The University design

196 Chapter Four

guidelines aim for “a serendipitous mix of open space and building mass, attention
to human scale,” and the preservation and extension of “the architectural design
themes and building materials,” so as to allow the architect to “bend the rules with
care when needs arise.”
Dionysian paradigms (Pollock) are generally looser in site composition. Few build-
ings are connected. The site design is less hierarchical. There is greater variety in
styles and materials, the kinds of campuses that apparently gave classicists such as
Ralph Adams Cram artistic dyspepsia. “A harder (design) problem. ..assimilating the
heterogeneous repast of varied types of aesthetic food [Princeton University] had
wolfed down during her formative period, with scant attention to gustatorial har-
monics or the possibilities of a normal digestive system.” So burped Cram (1906),
engaged by Princeton to create “ultimate unity” from “congeries of subordinate
units (so as to) tie the anarchy of the past into the order of the present.”
In terms of plantings, the Dionysian is a richer fabric. The landscapes tend to
be more informal and picturesque. Seemingly natural, the matured landscape, is, of
course, a design invention, often with superb results, as at Mount Holyoke College.
There, the idea of purposeful gardens, functional and horticultural landscapes, bits
and pieces, woven by generations into a campus design theme, started early and has
continued thereafter. A student writes on opening day (1837): “There were no
trees, no fence, not a blade of grass, but a deep bed of sand around the (building).”
Two years later nurseryman Samuel Wells, seeking to sell plant materials and a
design concept, inquires of founder Mary Lyon, “As your building is a plain one
and the ground perfectly level, I suppose you would not think of rusticating the
area in the present most approved fashion.” A century later, a cluster of clearly
modern buildings by Hugh Stubbins and Associates are pleasantly ensconced by a
Mount Holyoke landscape, a collegiate ambiance of Dionysian rustication which has
few equals. Playfields wrapped in groves, the lakes, quads, nooks and crannies,
courtyards, and the views to Prospect Hill—Mount Holyoke’s informal beauty tran-
scends critical judgments of the constituent elements of the college’s architectural
ensemble, including some buildings, inevitably in older institutions, that Cram
probably would have called “the indiscretions of the munificent but misguided.”
The categorization, “geometric versus loose” is an approximation, of course. Some
site development schemes, which in their derivation would be the typical Apollonian
progeny of T-square and right triangle, are sometimes broken and arranged eccen-
trically, with Dionysian results. The slanting and odd angles produce unexpected
effects in building plan and ground plane, as in Paul Rudolph’s Southeastern
Massachusetts University development (1963), or Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center
for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), with the structure pivoted from the street,
and the pedestrian ramp slashing through the site, physically and esoterically. These
le dernier cri go unappreciated, perhaps, if one is not tuned in to the designer’s phi-
losophy or knowledgeable about generation fashions. Evaluating Corbu’s building,
Graham Gund writes that Carpenter Center stands apart from the University’s his-
toric architecture, announcing to visitors and students “avant-garde exploration and
visual comment.” Rejecting the “tight orthogonal arrangement of formal Georgian
buildings which line Harvard Yard...(the design) is diagonal and different from its
surroundings as if art itself is slightly outside the regular academic life.”

Paradigms and Projects 197,

 ts,
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198 Chapter Four

 |x 344
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UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, COLLEGIATE GOTHIC, 1893. Henry Ives Coss. (facing page, top) (Source: University of Chicago)
State University OF New York, PURCHASE, MODERN, 1971. EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES. (facing page, bottom) (Source:
State University of New York)
Apollonian consistency and visual unity in both a traditional style and Modern idiom.

KLAUDER IN COLORADO. (above) Versatile and imaginative, Charles Z. Klauder’s accomplished work represents the continuing and
eventually successful attempts to define an appropriate architecture for American higher education. His work with traditional styles, his
explorations in form (such as the skyscraper Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh), his informative book (College
Architecture in America, 1929) were all preludes to his masterwork at the University of Colorado. There Klauder introduced a style of
architecture that expressed variations in function with variations of forms, cloaked with regional building materials, and arranged with
diversified open space patterns and landscapes. The ensemble produced paradigm campus architecture, an approach which permitted
reinterpretation and continuity by later generations. To the left, above, original Klauder. To the right, an interpretation. Since the late
1950s an aware and wise campus stewardship has guided new development with the principles established by Klauder, creating an
epitome of American campus design.

Paradigms and Projects 199

 THE VILLAGE COMMONS F
Shops, Theaters, and Restaurants

Mount Hotyoke COoLtecE. (above) Founded in 1837, the 800-acre site is a fascinating example of the mature Dionysian cam-
pus. Groves, hills, lakes, play fields, courtyards, lawns, views, and vistas in all directions —the campus design is a rich fabric of land-
scapes and buildings. The Willets-Hallowell Campus Center and the 1837 residential hall (The Stubbins Associates, Inc.) demonstrate
how commendable Modern architecture could be fitted into generation-binding campus design pattern. (Source: Mount Holyoke
College)

WILLETS-HOweELL Campus CENTER. THE STUBBINS Associates, INC. (facing page, top) (Source: The Stubbins Associates, Inc.;
photographer:J.W. Molitor)

1837 HALL. THE StuBBins Associates, INC. (facing page, bottom) (Source: The Stubbins Associates, Inc.;
photographer: J. Green)

200 Chapter Four

greensboroLai neHe

Paradigms and Projects 201

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202 Chapter Four

SOUTHEASTERN MassACHUSETTS UNiversiTy, 1963. PAUL RUDOLPH. (facing page, top) Apollonian into Dionysian. Rudolph's
rendering defines a site development pattern consistent with his manipulation of interior spaces and architectural expression, a clas-
sic from the 1960s. The skewing of open space, greensward, and buildings creates distinctive campus architecture. (Source: Paul
Rudolph)

DESIGN sTuDy, 1983. (facing page, bottom) A geometric Apollonian university courtyard design concept from the Middle East,
with buildings using a limited palette of materials on the facades, takes on a Dionysian characteristic with its variegated arches,
pavings, fountain, and landscapes. (Source: CRS)

FOOTHILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE, 1958. ERNEST Kump, MASTEN AND Hurb, SASAKI, WALKER AND ASSOCIATES, INC.
(above) Shown under construction is the landmark design. For site sensitivity and functional architecture, collaborative efforts made
it a paradigm of campus architecture. The creation of a hilltop precinct, free of automobile traffic, the melding of buildings and land-
scapes, set a standard emulated worldwide.

Paradigms and Projects ? 03

Zz
 PALO Atto COLLEGE, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, 1987-1991. JONES KELL AND DeLarA
ALMOND, ARCHITECTS. A creative
variation of the open-plan campus with building shapes and forms expressing the region's Spanish-Ameri
can heritage. The space-
defining landscape elements however are in crude contrast to the sophisticated building designs,
thus diluting the paradigmatic
effect. (Source: Palo Alto College)

204 Chapter Four

 New buildings are occasionally inserted into loose schemes so as to bring sever-
al buildings into visual alignment, the Dionysian gravitating toward the Apollonian,
with site organization disciplined and the outlooks channeled to and from prede-
termined vistas. The resulting site design is strengthened in its perceptible geom-
etry when nearby circulation elements are also clarified and become armatures for
additional landscape.
Contemporary buildings of this character (variegated Dionysian) have left
Apollonian designs from the 1960s (with their somber and structured facades and
their predictable geometric open spaces) apparently in the dust bin of history.
“When you think Florida State University, think arches,” said its President Modesto
Maidique, announcing the 1995 plans for the University expansion. “Departing
from the school’s stark Modern architectural vision, hundreds of arches will appear
on new buildings over the next decade; part of an effort to achieve a visual unity
and image as FSU becomes one of the top 25 urban research universities in
America.” Exploratory design studies by CRS for a new Pakistani university (page
202) a decade earlier give a fair impression of the possible scale and beauty—and
another revealing example of ideas and concepts that designers seek, find, and share.
Less satisfactory are attempts at loose or tight compositions which ignore topog-
raphy, i.e., the campus design equivalent of the Ordinance of 1785, the gridding
and calibrating of physical development irrespective of undulations in terrain and
related site influences. Good campus architecture begins with an understanding of
the character of the earth’s surface, as in Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.’s advice
(1906) for the Amherst College grounds. Lacking site sensitivity, he believed the
results could only be additional “crude, ill designed and poorly built structures of
an unfortunate period in American Architecture.” The successful melding of land
and building demands adequate site information, the skill and training to handle or
create changes in topography, and the experience and judgment to know how best
to work with nature’s fundamental contribution to the resulting design, Apollonian
or Dionysian. Foothills Community College, California (1958), became a paradigm
because a team of talents was able to find in the natural setting the clues for arrang-
ing and joining buildings and site into a landmark design.

CHOICES AND DECISIONS

Jacob C. Harper (college agent and lawyer, 1925-1940) was without any doubt
the guiding spirit behind the physical development of the Scripps Campus. The
record shows him to be a man of diverse talents, amazing energy and attention
to detail. He was instrumental in the choice ofarchitect for the Scripps College.
He was involved in the setting of educational policy and in the developing of a
vision for the new campus and its buildings; he questioned aesthetic or pragmatic
planning and design decisions with a great deal of curiosity and firmness. Neither
the architect nor the supervising engineer escaped constant probing.”
Stefanos Polyzoides
The Design of the Scripps College Campus, 1992

To set the terms for defining paradigms, and to flesh out our definition of campus
architecture, we will pick up some historic strands left dangling in the prospectus

Paradigms and Projects 205

 and weave a tighter mesh of influence and interactions among people, ideas, and
the built environment.
No campuses are designed at their inception or extension to be inferior, second-
rate, or out-of-touch with the aesthetic of their time. What that aesthetic might be,
or should be, is never universally conceded, particularly not during the advent of
the new American colleges and universities in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, when wealth and wisdom would combine to afford an unusual
moment for elevating campus development from a cluster of disparate buildings
built over time to grand schemes, visually unified, and completed expeditiously.
Some of the heroes were designers, others were administrators, trustees, and coun-
selors. When they worked in tandem, good things happened.
Although the styles under consideration might contradict each other in philoso-
phy, the manifestos that announced the eventual selection were reiterative in sug-
gesting that the projected academic excellence would be encapsulated in distin-
guished architecture. Presidents and trustees would travel and study, debate and
discuss choices and options while searching for convincing arguments to adopt the
old or experiment with something new. Most believed they had unparalleled oppor-
tunities to fashion an overall plan and an architectural character that would help
transform stodgy and still-born academic programs, curriculum, modes of teaching,
and campus life. The principle goal of a new aesthetic excellence was not strong
enough, however, to cast out the architectural past.
Nonetheless, grand plans were conceived and nurtured. Among the notable and
enduring results from those inquiries were Collegiate Georgian, chosen for
Southern Methodist University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Duke
University East Campus; Collegiate Gothic, favored for The University of Chicago
and the City College of New York; and Richardsonian-Romanesque, appropriated
for Leland Stanford Jr. University. In retrospect, all were safe choices, with pre-
cursors and precedents acceptable to preceptors and patrons. The last was not least.
Noted the Architectural Record (1899), “nobody who knows the campus at Yale will
be disposed to dispute that Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt was happily inspired” when
choosing Charles Coolidge Haight for the proposed dormitory complex (1894).
Haight was, said the magazine, “the most successful designer of college buildings
in this country, the man who more than any other succeeded in making a college
building look like a college building.” That look was Collegiate Gothic, which
Haight had implanted successfully in such disparate locations as Trinity College,
Connecticut, and the University of the South, Tennessee. Haight would continue
a streak of “architecturesque” successes at Yale, which in its variety after the Civil
War was a vivid expression of the historical fact that Yale was, “in the intention of
its founders, a non-conformist institution.” With apparent delight, the Record crit-
ic crowed: “Thirty years ago there was nothing to be seen on the (Yale) campus
but the bleak works of the Puritanical artisan who had expressed his contemptuous
disregard for the looks of things, the same ‘honest bricklayer’? whom Professor
Huxley so warmly commended to the trustees of Johns Hopkins, what (sic) time
he warned them against the wiles of the delusive bricklayer.”
Later annotating Haight’s Vanderbilt Hall, Russell Sturgis noted: “welcome for
a man of taste who does not aspire to be original, who looks in many places for

206 Chapter Four

what suits him, changing his styles with his needs, and who is as sure as anybody
we have of an exact appropriateness to the work at hand.” Around the corner, on
Temple Street, facing New Haven Green, lies Bruce Price’s Welch Hall (1891),
imitative of Henry Hobson Richardson, and another example of Yale seeking
release from its colonial heritage. Price had that skill. His American Surety
Building in downtown Manhattan was high-class wedding cake office architecture.
Price’s designs for Chateau Frontenac (Quebec) were the work of genius, func-
tionally and in terms of evoking a regional architecture for the peak of Canadian
railroad expansion. His Japanese Cottage in Tuxedo Park (New York) was one of
forty different residential structures he designed and built on the estate in a six-
month period. “An engineer was in charge of the grounds,” said Price retrospec-
tively, “but the architectural requirements were naturally permitted to dominate all
essential matters.” These were the people and the times, then, when Yale’s “archi-
tecturesque” adventure was all plums and no pudding, leaving the college treasur-
er, William W. Farnham, the task of sketching a campus plan that would rational-
ize and integrate the building placement.
Not atypical then in the search for suitable campus architecture was the Rice
University experience (1910). “I reassembled all the elements,” wrote Ralph Adams
Cram, “creating a measurably new style” for buildings and the campus plan. As
traced in David Dillon’s conspectus, architects Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson’s
concoction included Mediterraneanlike loggias and arcades to ameliorate the
swampish Houston environment. They paid homage to their client’s version of aca-
demic history, utilizing medieval cloisters and quadrangles in devising their long-
range site development concept, and married selected elements of the Gothic with
“details cribbed from dozens of picturesque sources” to give the buildings a tex-
ture and color that became uniquely Rice.
Ironically, it was the founder’s intention for Rice to emulate Cooper Union (New
York City), by providing Texans with science and engineering coursework encased
within the humanities and arts. Arguably, as we will see, an architecture that might
have been suitable for such was 20 years and 2000 miles distant at the Illinois
Institute of Technology. What constraints existed to imagine that kind of architec-
ture, or a solution as simple and dramatic as Don M. Hisaka’s 1972 buildings at
Cleveland State University? Materials? Constructon technology? Fashion?
Institutional ethos? An architect’s reputation or persuasion? No mind, the quibble
is hindsight. The fortress of style was seemingly impenetrable at the century’s
hinge. As discussed earlier, the new campus for Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (W. W. Bosworth, 1913) was wrapped in a Roman toga. Outside sym-
bol, inside function and technology. This would be the fate of many buildings in
the first half of the twentieth century, where traditional styles ruled in a dream-
land that ignored oncoming reasons for aesthetic change. In mid-twentieth centu-
ry, the succeeding designs at Rice were slack versions or crude reminders of the
original work. Recognizing the differences, the University began corrective mea-
sures. In the commissions that followed, buildings and a revived campus plan aimed
“to fit in rather than take over.” The latest buildings succeeded in echoing aspects
of the earlier design principles, whether as attachments to existing buildings or
freestanding structures. Especially commendable are renditions of the Rice’s first

Paradigms and Projects 207

 NS

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CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY, ATRIUM, 1972. DON M. Hisaka. The engagementofbuilding and landscapes defines campus
architecture, a tour de force of Great Walls and great spaces. Questionable in terms of energy conservation and maintenance,
nonetheless a dramatic and audacious concept. (Source: Don M. Hisaka; photographer; G. Cesrna)

208 Chapter Four

masonry architecture, new Great Walls such as the Cambridge Seven’s George
R.
Brown Hall (1991).
At Rice, and other strong-image campuses with lengthy histories, places where
strong styles prevail, the mix of acceptable creative reinterpretations, the occasion-
al elegant mockery, and the dispiriting imitation is as evident in appearance as it is
perplexing for cause. For -example, in succeeding versions of Collegiate Tudor, a
once popular and dominant style, one can find and appreciate successive, subtle
variations in detailing and substance. Categorized critically, one can then position
the specific building at the beginning, middle, or the end of that fashionable run.
The last phase—a kind of design entropy—can be seen by contrasting two func-
tionally sound buildings at Loyola University. The facade and composition of
Marquette Hall (circa 1920) is a rich composition of materials, fenestration, door-
ways, and roof lines. The 1960 library is a feeble imitation, with the two vestigial
lanterns at either side of the main entrance, a declarative statement announcing a
vibrant style gone bankrupt. Modern and contemporary designs are not, intrinsi-
cally by the nature of their style, free from this disabling tendency to distill the
essence of a style until it looses flavor, strength, and defining character. Some such
projects were illustrated earlier, including failures that are worthy as efforts, efforts
now seen as failing against contemporary criteria, and projects easily dismissed for
their patent and visible indifference to architectural standards.
With little interest in invigorating a dead style, such as Tudor, and weary and
wary of the Modern movement’s simplistic formulas, contextual architecture, as
noted earlier, gained prominence in the 1970s. The canon was easily codified; the
new designs taking their clues from older buildings in their environs. Here was a
way for disputing the myth that all significant designs must strike out in a new
direction and invigorating the reality of cultural attitudes and professional practice
that all new buildings cannot all be different from each other. Where once the
directions for giving a building a Modern look were often expressed in unmeasur-
able moral statements (e.g., Adolph Loos’s “Economical space is beautiful”), the
rules for context were readily ascertainable. Response to five criteria would yield
an acceptable solution. Thus, the building size and mass should be in scale and
proportion to its progenitor; contour and form should be reminiscent, the texture
and colors on the exterior should either imitate or recall the older materials; the
design of doors, windows, and selection of detailing should restate or evoke an
impression of the building being emulated. This is not eclecticism, argue its pro-
ponents, since the borrowings are specific to the inspiring archetype.
Context solutions came in two packages: the staid and studied interpretations and
exaggerated forms and polychromatic stylization. Given the variations of expression
in the other plastic arts, from the same period, might some of the resulting archi-
tecture be a generation equivalent of pop-art, color field painting, and assemblage
sculpture, and thus another example of unity in creed and caprice among the plas-
tic arts, an echoing of societal values and cognoscenti preferment? Such judgments
may be best left to historians and philosophers. If memories of discussions in the
drafting rooms are reliable, the attraction of context architecture, and all that fol-
lowed, has a simpler explanation, we think, i.e., generation shifts in designer inter-
ests and attitudes.

Paradigms and Projects 209

 H

i Te Hae: = anes
E 2 ij : aU eee ti * we — i ae os:
EAN : Se a awe a “@ “ 4

Ee
a ae ag me

Rice University, Lovett HALL, 1908. Cram, GOODHUE AND FERGUSON. (top)
Rice University, GEORGE R. BROWN HALL, 1991. CAMBRIDGE SEVEN ASSOCIATES. (bottom)
Paradigm campus architecture with the blending of green lawns and the Great Walls. (Source: Rice University)

10 Chapter Four
 xd
gt
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=f

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LoyoLa UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, MARQUETTE HALL, C. 1920. (top) (Russ Creson.)
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, LIBRARY, C. 1960. (bottom) (Russ Creson.)
Over time without creative reinterpretation, the fate of all styles: design entropy, changing tastes, new values, indifference? (Source:
Loyola University of the South)

Paradigms and Projects PAH

 Arguably, young designers were attracted to Dionysian with its richer design
expression. Their creative agitation catalyzed new approaches to problem solving
and began to affect and inform designs that were coming out of firms that were
growing stale in working up Apollonian variations of Modern. Sensing change in
critical regard, and aware of economic necessity, firms had few choices but to pro-
mote the emerging aesthetic. There were generation shifts in clients, also.
Architecture is not a mail-order business or the end product of robotics manu-
facturing. Personal interaction between client and designer, individually or in
teams, affects design innovation and acceptance. With little memory or experience
with projects as they were developed before Word War II, the rising senior
administrators and trustees, and faculty and student committees—many more
immersed in new culture than old—were both willing and ready to consider some-
thing new. The process was furthered by institutional planning officers, or con-
sultants, trained to see, appreciate, and advance, where appropriate, the new
architecture.
Thus, on many campuses in the 1980s, architects working the context approach
were able to detach themselves from the relentless search for inventing another ver-
sion of Modern, whose dogma was suspect and whose visual appearance seemed
dated. If the floor plans provided the spaces desired by client representatives, if the
buildings were intelligently sited in accordance with a campus plan, and if the pre-
liminary budget was reasonable, then polemically the faux aspects of context were
not troublesome. If needed for precedent, designers could cite Christopher Wren’s
painted-like-marble columns in the Sheldonian, Sansovino polishing Istrian stone
to resemble Venetian marble, or the vocabulary of High Victorian, with its delight-
ful transferring of color and texture of Byzantine churches and Arabian vernacular
buildings to the sober and somber institutional buildings of smog-ridden England.
Acceptance of the new style gained momentum as peers followed one another in
emulation, as they had in utilizing traditional styles.
Pragmatically, context concepts fitted well the design profession’s continuing
quest to try something new, rather than copy and imitate something established.
This habit, of course, is the essence of the art, the dividing line between repetitive
banality and creative emulation. The mode is encouraged in schools that train
architects. Differentiation is highly prized. It is honored by awards from peers and
encouraged by the resulting publicity which then helps gain commissions for fur-
ther innovation. Instinct matched with opportunity is the fuel of architectural
progress. As Jacob Bronowski observes, “The most powerful drive in the ascent of
man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well, and having
done it well, he loves to do it better....You see it in the magnificence with which
he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery.” Amen, notes
Washington University Chancellor William H. Danforth (1978): “Dr. Bronowski’s
insights are corroborated in the building of our great educational institutions by
their architects and their trustees.”
To be caught at the intersection during changes in styles can be hazardous. Early
in Modern’s ascendancy (1950), critic Frank G. Lopez saw the challenge of pro-
ceeding a “half step at a time, the blending of the new ‘style’ so imperceptibly into

212. Chapter Four

the old forms of existing buildings that an unappetizing architectural
sawdust,
much like unseasoned, crumbly hash, results. This is probably the toughest
archi-
tectural form the campus problem can take, but it can be licked. To make
good
hash one must season with both vigor and compassion.” Those cooking Modern
architecture made good hash—assisted by professional societies who promoted the
menus of the new architecture shrewdly, with spicy and tantalizing seasoning by
influential newspapers and magazines that gave significant space for architectural
criticism and scrumptiously served up by museum shows that celebrated both com-
pleted projects and ideas not yet proved. On some campuses, the excitement gen-
erated by some of the new architecture provided a stimulating diversion from the
expediency induced by rapid growth, a tonic still savored today at some campuses
immersed in the economic and demographic trials and troubles now afflicting high-
er education.

KLAUDER’S CLARITY
Accepting those understandable sources of creativity and opportunity, and their
relationship to nurturing a professional practice, will there be another shift in
design attitudes in the near future? Are there fundamental principles that can be
(or have been) followed which would rationalize a design direction, say formal
Apollonian versus informal Dionysian, with particular regard to designing para-
digms, and in preferring one approach over the other? America’s most accom-
plished campus designer, Charles Z. Klauder, thought so.
Charles Z. Klauder (1872-1938) was responsible for the University of
Pittsburgh’s “Cathedral of Learning,” several fine buildings in the collegiate Gothic
style at Ivy League campuses, and the masterwork of seminal, regional architecture
that graces the University of Colorado, Boulder campus (shown on page 199). As
a coeval commentator said in nominating Klauder for work at the University of
Texas, he “was a really first-class architect—an expert in campus planning and
more than that a creator of noble buildings.”
Assisted by office partner Herbert C. Wise, Klauder wrote College Architecture
in America (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1929). Their purpose was “to
define standards, to make comparisons, to aid, if possible, in envisaging a completed
work of art that will win approval as nearly as unanimous as may be.” For Klauder
site influenced style, there being only two choices, the “Formal” and the
“Informal.” The first included “Classic, Renaissance, Georgian, Colonial”; the
other was “Gothic.” Perhaps reflecting Klauder’s then-current work (the
University of Colorado commission, his major contribution to posterity, had not
yet blossomed), he favored the second. Klauder believed that Gothic forms, with
their “adaptability and elasticity” could be molded to any terrain and their interi-
ors shaped for any function. In doing so, Gothic would also remain “hospital to a
few classic motifs if skillfully introduced.” Klauder stressed the virtues of “an inte-
grated whole...that permitted expansion.” Such schemes were “conducive to beau-
ty of the scene and architectural effect, to convenience of daily use and to economic
and affective administration.” His sketch plan for the University of Chicago expan-

Paradigms and Projects 213

 sion (1927) was a brilliant rendering of Collegiate Gothic’s best features: connect-
ed courtyards, animated roof lines, textured facades, vertical and horizontal ele-
ments composed to read independently and ensemble.
For Klauder style would breed unity, but equally important, he thought, was
“Joining top and bottom.” Subsurface, the nuisances of inclement weather and
accessibility for repairs and additions to infrastructure were problems “that should
be bravely faced and solved by constructing connecting tunnels....Above ground
there should be contrived (sic) a planting composition sympathetic with the archi-
tectural composition, whether the grouping of buildings be open and park-like or
more closely knit and arranged.” Klauder’s quote and our italics reinforce the prin-
ciple espoused: campus architecture as buildings and landscapes engaged and meld-
ed for function and effect. But Klauder’s work at Colorado or elsewhere settles no
preference as to Apollonian or Dionysian paradigms. Might aspects of architecture
more modern than his clarify choices and offer direction?

NEW FORMS/NO APOLOGIES

Klauder’s views echo the convictions of his period and peers, cognizant of but not
embracing the new aesthetics then crossing the Atlantic in the 1920s. The incom-
ing aesthetics, promoted with passion, persistence, and diligence by its advocates,
would topple giants in campus. design, such as the formidable classicist Ralph
Adams Cram, whose vivid writing, much quoted herein, made and make an infor-
mative sounding board for contrary opinions. In the academic world, the Beaux
Arts proponents would be replaced with faculty that would preach and practice the
new idiom. “An open invitation to aesthetic chaos and expediency,” thought some.
For others, the necessities of institutional purpose and size occurring with the
unprecedented expansion of higher education after World War II would rational-
ize “New forms of architecture...with no apologies.” The quotes are Paul V.
Turner’s. He captures the tension and explains the results in his epic history,
Campus (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984). Turner begins his ency-
clopedic work on the “eve of American Colonization.”
We pick up our account of contemporary choices, drawing on his and other
sources, at the dawn of contemporary campus architecture. And, it was, truly, a
new day with the arrival of seminal figures and the resulting significant events at
the Cranbrook School (Eliel Saarinen), the Illinois Institute of Technology (Mies
van der Rohe), and Harvard University (Walter Gropius). Educators, promoters,
practitioners, creators of college and university architecture—these were the three
giant trees, to continue our earlier metaphor, in the forest called Modern architec-
ture. Their roots were nurtured by a dismissal of traditional architecture as ancien
regime, blossomed through an interest in rationalizing forms and shapes by their
interior functions, and reached full leafing with the utilization of the materials cre-
ated by advanced mechanization of industrial processes. They had a firm grasp on
how and why parallel artistic expressions in painting, sculpture, and crafts could
be blended into and inform their building concepts. They were comfortable in an
America that was being stirred by political and cultural events that ripened expec-
tations for novelty, innovation, and experimentation.

214 Chapter Four

 Acknowledging differences but synthesizing their commonality, might not the
three trees and their arboreal companions be arranged as a hierarchy of preferme
nt,
thus offering some rules for variations of campus architecture, paradigms and
pro-
jects, within the general definition established earlier? A series of design secessions
and new sects have usurped their once solid role as givers of form and arbiters of
taste. But in quantity alone; and in the clarity of their doctrines, the work of each
is nonetheless worth examining; not for contemporary justification or post facto con-
descension but for the clues and cues they offer in launching new campus archi-
tecture in the twenty-first century. Nearing, we believe, the end of contemporary
architecture’s version of classical eclecticism (the string of words compresses
today’s semantic and design confusion), might not campus architecture now be on
the threshold of taking creative repossession of the fundamental reasons. that
Modern architecture was appealing in the first place? Can such architectural con-
cepts be recast to avoid earlier and later deficiencies and excesses? The examina-
tion is propitious for an additional reason. How much of the heritage these con-
cepts inspired is worth resuscitating and saving as age and obsolescence take their
inevitable toll on buildings whose construction quality may have been reduced orig-
inally by inadequate budgets or by artisans unfamiliar with ways to craft and build
the style? What do colleges and universities owe history as owners and stewards of
an extensive architectural patrimony labeled Modern architecture?
The vocabulary of Classical architecture applied to domestic structures was once
explicit, with its application channeled by rigid rules that no aesthetic broker dare
violate. Ionic porticos were associated with the aristocracy, the middle class and
landed gentry had Doric doorways, and the housing of the poor was usually left
unadorned. The Tuscan order was deemed appropriate for farm buildings and bar-
racks, the Corinthian for religious edifices, and the Composite for palaces. So much
is now familiar about the Modern, that, looking backward a crude sorting out can
be argued for the three trees based on principles espoused, patronage attainable,
commissions completed, and influences on others.
Mies’s work would seem right for schools of science and engineering, being mea-
sured and exacting, favoring function and simplicity. Saarinen’s ideas would appear
“well suited for schools sheltering the creative arts and campus housing, with designs
scaled down and textured on one hand and on the other, sited and arranged to fit,
as he said “the next larger thing.” In this group, Gropius and company would hold
the middle ground, with concepts growing from program analysis, with exteriors
that have limited detailing and materials, and the whole conceived in collaboration
with the planning and plastic arts.
Each had their devotees. “I was invited to Mies’s house, and with other aspir-
ing architects, sat at his feet with my eyes watering from cigar smoke, knowing I
was in Mecca. At 25, I was ready to sell my soul and all I had for a Barcelona
chair. I believed that simplicity was holiness and less just had to be more,” remi-
nisced Bruce Abrahamson, 40 years later. Each had their critics. Groused one edi-
tor in compiling a list of projects from Harvard-trained designers: “Gropius is
proud of the fact that it is difficult to tell the work of one of his pupils from anoth-
er...what is this anonymity that the Chairman of the Harvard Department of
Architecture admires in his pupils’ work.”

Paradigms and Projects B15:

 MIES

The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) was founded in 1892 to “stress the
importance of technical training to industrial progress.” Thirty years later the
trustees thought the school had “lost its way architecturally,” diverted by the
seductive, emotional architecture of Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition and
the eclecticism it stimulated through the City Beautiful movement. To reverse
course, Mies van der Rohe was hired “to lead without fail to a clear and unequiv-
ocal spiritual orientation,” reported Architectural Forum, October 1938. Under his
guidance architecture at IIT was to be a school where students “will tackle...the
nature of materials...the nature of functions...(engage in) actual creative work in
architecture.” The Mies appointment inaugurated an aesthetic progression that
would strip Chicago, metaphorically and literally, of “the romantic notion of archi-
tecture as an art of embellishment and ornamentation.”
As his sponsors expected, Mies soon planned the IIT campus extension. The
geometric plot plan drawing and model were calibrated essays in imposing on the
site an Apollonian scheme devoid of references to its surroundings. Its simplicity
was appealing to critics, and convincing with the buildings and spaces organized to
reinforce Mies’s aesthetic. One enthusiast saw the approach as a useful way to san-
itize an adjacent 6 square miles of aging Chicago real estate. In varying ways the
design was a precursor and model for the extensive urban renewal that destroyed
wholesale sectors of the American city in the 1950s. For many years, in its rejec-
tion of classical motifs and regional idioms, in its manifestation of the new and open
versus the old and closed, versions of IIT were a popular pattern for new campus
development throughout the world, of which Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Air
Force Academy exemplifies the Miesean disciples and discipline.
In the design of his first building at ITT (1942) Mies demonstrated a rationalized
building method that used steel framing, glass, and a few materials, exquisite in
their simplicity, seemingly machine-made and assembled, but nonetheless requiring
crafted tolerances and masterful joinery. Successive buildings have faithfully emu-
lated the style at IIT, and sometimes elsewhere, producing a campus design image
honored for its creator and followers, though the style is now considered dated and
passé. In some instances the imitations are functional disasters, out of scale and
poorly detailed, and in the instance of several midwestern college buildings, the ele-
gant glass facades were replaced with energy-saving masonry designs. As Reginald
R. Isaacs has concluded, “his lasting impact was Mies’s concern with theoretical
concepts; clarity of image, careful attention to detail, and rightness of proportion.”

GROPIUS
During the same period that Mies rose to prominence in Chicago, Bauhaus col-
league Walter Gropius was appointed (1937) to lead the architecture department at
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Through astute faculty appointments he
would enlist a cadre of teachers and attract a host of students that shared his view
that “architecture can be rational without being dogmatic, experimental without
yielding to design tricks, and socially responsive.”

216 Chapter Four

 ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, AIR VIEW,
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Paradigms and Projects uly

 Like Mies at IIT, Gropius was able to build an example of his philosophy early
in his tenure at Harvard, via his office, The Architect’s Collaborative, soon to be
known worldwide as TAC. Parenthetically and importantly, and not sufficiently
appreciated historically, was Gropius’s attitude toward women practitioners. ‘wo
of the seven TAC founders were female, Jean B. Fletcher and Sarah P. Harkness.
TAC’s first work, the Harvard Graduate Center complex (1949), was for its time
a refreshing demonstration of clarity in building forms and simplicity in materials;
of the integration of interior design, landscape, and architecture as a holistic con-
cept; and of a site plan that promoted the idealization of an academic community
through its circulation and space relationships. Unlike many campus buildings, the
presence of art was planned and anticipated from the beginning, not added as an
afterthought. In color, texture, and exterior detailing the facades made little refer-
ence to historic and nearby Harvard buildings. “How can we expect our students
to be bold and fearless in thought and action,” Gropius once asked, if we encase
them “in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which long has disappeared?” The
Harvard scheme was significant for being a trial run at applying a design process,
for its attempt to implant a design direction previously unacceptable to university
officials, and in providing a group of young designers the prominence and experi-
ence needed to gain college and university commissions in the modern mode. As
to the latter, Gropius’s career was crowned with enormous success. TAC became
a breeding ground for hundreds of planners and designers, who at TAC and in
their own firms would fill the American campus with an extraordinary range of
Modern and later contemporary architecture. Regretfully, the office closed in 1995.
Where Mies’s followers were notably Apollonian in their aesthetic, with his prin-
ciples applied, with a few exceptions, through corporate practice such as Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill (SOM), the Gropius graduates seem to be more personal and
less formula-driven in their designs and site arrangements, perhaps influenced, one
thinks, by the presence of Harvard’s landscape and city planning department and
a schoolwide design philosophy that encouraged the three disciplines to collaborate.
“My intention,” Gropius once wrote, “ was not to introduce a [style from Europe],
but rather introduce a method of approach which allows one to tackle a problem
according to its peculiar conditions.” If diversity and variety are the ultimate proof
of his influence, then these names among many, and their campus architecture, are
testimony to his teaching: Edward L. Barnes, Ulrich Frantzen, I. M. Pei, Paul
Rudolph, Hugh Stubbins.

SAARINEN THE ELDER

For sometime Eliel Saarinen’s work has been shadowed by that of his prolific son,
Eero, whose buildings at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of

CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF THE ArTS, ELIEL SAARINEN. (facing page, top) View of central campus
area,
1994. Buildings and landscapes conjoined for campus architecture. (Photo courtesy of Eugene J. Mackey Ill.)

HarVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE CENTER, 1949. THE ARCHITECT'S COLLABORATIVE. (facing

page, bot-
tom) Building elevations and landscape Spring 1995, an historic example of campus architecture as
defined.

218 Chapter Four

Paradigms and Projects 219
 Technology have few parallels and no equals. Finnish-born, and unlike Mies for-
mally trained as an architect, Eliel arrived in the United States in 1923, heralded
by a body of honored work that included the Helsinki Railroad Station and a sec-
ond-place design concept for the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition.
Settling near Ann Arbor he taught at the University of Michigan and then the
Cranbrook Academy of Arts, where he eventually became president. He helped
institutionalize its founder’s vision (George G. Booth) of “integrating arts and
crafts into contemporary culture.” The complex includes elementary and secondary
schools, a science museum, and a higher education design school, whose graduates
in reputation hold their own with IIT and Harvard. Saarinen’s crop range from the
urbanist Edward Bacon to the authoritative stylist Charles Eames.
From 1925 through 1945, the elder Saarinen designed for Cranbrook what was
and still remains a lovely case study of building designs and integrated site plan-
ning. The ensemble respects many modern-day principles of function fashioning
form. Heavily landscaped, the composition is inflected with continuity in materi-
als, with detailing that soothes the eye rather than irritates the imagination.
Cranbrook combines the logic of the Apollonian and visual delights of the
Dionysian. “Architecture,” wrote Saarinen (1933), “is not necessarily building, but
it includes everything which man has created as a practical organization of his rela-
tion to his environment....There is no assembling of stylistic forms for the solution
of a problem, but dependence upon common sense.” Students were not given a set
piece or program to be designed but brought with them a design problem of their
own choosing. The Cranbrook milieu did not breed and propagate designers and
concepts as did the Mies and Gropius venues. As a place, however, recent opin-
ions would give Cranbrook high marks for visual consistency and a self-confidence
that appeals to those rejecting the rapid oscillation of architecture as fashion. Where
Jefferson’s academic buildings at the University of Virginia are considered the best
American work from the nineteenth century—so voted the American Institute of
Architects on its one-hundredth anniversary—the diadem for twentieth-century
campus architecture may eventually be Cranbrook’s.
The intersecting influences of these three design teachers, the status conveyed
by their institutional affiliation, their own commissions, and their student’s work
after graduation, and the enormity of their productions, which proceeded in lock-
step with the impressive growth of higher education after World War II, is a sub-
ject that deserves a history of its own, an architectural equivalent of Gibbons’s Rise
and Fall of the Roman Empire. For good reasons, we have isolated Gropius, Mies,
and Saarinen as progenitors. Also meriting significant attention in that inspection
of cause and effect would be Pietro Belluschi (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology), William C. Caudill (University of Texas), Louis I. Kahn (Yale
University and the University of Pennsylvania), Ralph Rapson (University of
Minnesota), and Gropius’s successor at Harvard, Jose Lluis Sert. How much of
their views and work remains valid and useful today?
Although one hesitates to generalize from such a large compendium of complet-
ed work, at this writing those works which are Apollonian in site planning and
building execution seem less attractive to today’s patrons and practitioners than the
Dionysian. Hard-edged buildings, stripped and septic, tough concrete, a limited

220 Chapter Four

range of colors and textures, geometrically arranged glass and aluminum—the MouNT VERNON COLLEGE LiBRaARY, 1988.
PERKINS AND WILL, ARCHITECTS; AND Doser,
trademarks of Modern campus buildings are out of fashion. As indicated, more
Lipsky, CRAIG AND ASSOCIATES, SITE
appealing and prevalent in journals and critical articles are buildings with articu- SELECTION AND Campus DESIGN CONSUL-
lated forms, loaded with texture and color, with detailing excerpted from traditional TANTS. Campus architecture in the post-Modern
style. (Source: Mount Vernon College)
Collegiate Georgian and Collegiate Gothic styles, and cobbled with signaturelike
visual effects associated with the designer. Should a name be required, Collegiate
Modern should do, and Perkins & Will’s felicitous design for Mount Vernon
College Library (1988) serves as a surrogate for numerous good examples. The
machined exterior look is not uncommon in recent projects either, a kind of Neo-
Functionalism descended from the Constructionivist movement and early-twenti-
eth-century Modern architecture. Regionalism still inspires good work in New
England, Florida, New Mexico, and California. On the horizon may be the return
of Classical architecture, signaled by the 1992 University of Notre Dame design
curriculum and nostalgic stirrings for a style with a formula that can be used to
measure and evaluate an architect’s creative bent for finding something new in
older paradigms.

DEMISE AND RESURRECTION

If it is fair to describe universities as the country’s depositories of learning, it is
obvious, too, that a large number have not learnt enough about architecture and
planning. Although some are using modern architects, they do not necessarily
appreciate the full meaning of modern architecture. Many appear to think of it

Paradigms and Projects 221

 eS Dappee. .
tiie

OKLAHOMA State University, NoBLe RESEARCH CENTER, 1989. TAC. Dedicated to the “wise stewardship of the land and
sustainability of the environment, “it expresses time and technology. Aspects of early Modern are clearly evident (flat-roof, hard-edge,
simplicity in materials) as well as contemporary design gestures (indented facade and atrium). The minimal landscape, however,
denies, if not dilutes, the ideal of campus architecture, a situation not beyond redemption by filling the foreground with suitable
plantings. (Source: Oklahoma State University)

222 Chapter Four .

 merely as a style which is more fashionable than traditional styles. They do
appreciate—and it is up to the younger members to bring this home to them—that
they cannot get the efficiency of performance they require from their buildings, at
@ price they can afford, save by accepting modern, functional, architecture.
Editors
The Architects Journal, January 9, 1959

For two decades after 1945, an architecture flexible enough to include a Mies, a
Groptus, and a Saarinen, and their second-generation interpreters, would seem like
the logical conclusion to a Darwinian progression in architectural theory and prac-
tice. At high water the style floated an enormous fleet, with commanding admirals.
“I will give you the soul of technocracy,” promised Mies. But not everyone want-
ed to take that voyage. Prescient, Henry-Russell Hitchcock licensed the search for
a “new proper pattern and program” in his 1951 critique, The International Style,
Twenty Years After. The style was “not intended to be the whole of modern archi-
tecture, past, present and future,” wrote Hitchcock: “Many docile architects, and
even builders outside the profession, have followed the rules dutifully enough, but
their buildings can hardly be considered aesthetically sound...now we are ready,
probably too ready, to extend the sanctions of genius widely once more.”
With his 1962 rallying cry—“less is a bore,” Robert Venturi encouraged those
seeking a revived orthodoxy for older ideas. Multivalent visual effects, ornamenta-
tion, the conscious suppression of structural elements as indicators of style—thus
post-Modernism and variations that followed. The popularity of context architec-
ture was noted earlier. Enervated and demoted. Modern is now seen as another
shift in fluctuating taste. Trend-chaser and explicator Charles Jenkins dates
Modern’s demise: July 15, 1972. On that date the American Institute of
Architecture award-winning Pruitt-Igoe housing project, in Saint Louis, was blown
up, demolished as being beyond salvage, having been designed “in a purist language
at variance with the architectural codes of the inhabitants.” Ironically, a high-rise
dormitory at the University of Cincinnati, in a similar style, was demolished in
1990, being a campus housing design philosophically, physically, and operationally
beyond salvage.
Modern architecture, as defined, has few champions on most campuses these
days. If some physical plant administrators had their way, additional demolition
could be expected. They argue logically that for many Modern campus buildings,
“the cost of repairs to fix original deficiencies and/or adaptation for functionality”
exceeds the cost of new construction. Especially vulnerable are buildings from the
Korean War period, when a shortage of materials and labor, and pressures for addi-
tional space at lowest possible cost, sired expedient architecture. Unfortunately,
because the style did not require embellishment and could be imitated in crude and
cheap variants of the original, many such structures were essentially faux Modern.
Flat roofs, simple brickwork, walls punched out for windows, scaleless boxes—these
trite simulations gained few friends for the Modern movement. On cost and aes-
thetic grounds, few have cause for continuance.
Leaving aside the fatalities induced by expediency, where then did “Modern
architecture” go stale, sour, fade into insignificance? The constant push for design
of
invention is one explanation; the inevitable erosion of creative reinterpretation

Paradigms and Projects boDo

 the first-tier designs is another. A third factor is shift in cultural attitudes and
expectations. The Apollonian conviction that function shapes forms and that the
technology of structure and materials determines appearance generates buildings
which in their simplicity run counter to the contemporary desires for the instant
impact of Dionysian expression. Our time constantly seeks novelty, and in finding
something new it is quick to discard the old or to treat it with disdain as out of
fashion. Think of art museums with their survival now dependent on “blockbuster
shows” or the reformatting of newspapers so text and graphics can be read for con-
tent and meaning in short bursts of attention.
The dismissal of Modern architecture as an institutional style appropriate for our
time may also relate to the style’s general indifference to campus landscape as a
design factor. Few of the Modern masterpieces are remembered also for their
greenery. The conscious integration of buildings and landscapes—apparent in work
such as Jefferson’s University of Virginia and its spawn, and the grand plans of
nineteenth-century college and university expansion—was diminished and trivial-
ized in the Modern movement, despite Gropius’s plea for collaboration and inte-
gration and the self-evident charm of Saarinen’s Cranbrook masterpiece.
Retrospectively, and in the main, landscape architecture was not stirred in the 1920
to 1950 period by the equivalent changes occurring in architecture. Jens Jensen, the
Olmsted Brothers, and Charles A. Platt were the historic figures. As recorded in
Norman Newton’s standard account, Design on the Land (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971), the notable achievements were estate gardens,
parks, highways, and subdivisions. Despite campuses having enough greenery to fill
a century of calendar art, apparently landscape designers played subsidiary roles in
campus development. Some, sympathetic to Modern art and architecture, available
and talented, were largely ignored. Presumably synoptic, Newton’s history, for
example, overlooks James Rose (circa 1939), who saw in abstract art the possibili-
ties of using in landscape designs forms, colors, and textures free of historic refer-
ences and unencumbered by regal symmetry or the nostalgic picturesque. Where
once they helped lead the charge in shaping the campus design, landscape architects
now followed. Lacking interest and status, with few exceptions, their contributions
to early Modern campus design were marginalized. Compare project credit lines
from architectural magazines prior to 1950 and those in the subsequent years.
How contrasting, then, the eventual emergence and welcomed work of the suc-
ceeding generation. With skill, acumen, and professionalism, landscape designers such
as Thomas Church, Ralph Cornell, Dan Kiely, and Hideo Sasaki demonstrated the
benefits and delights of campus architecture as a collaborative endeavor in the Modern
idiom. “The ideal campus design,” wrote their peer, Garrett Eckbo, “contains, in var-
lous ways, equal inputs from architecture and nature.” Many a stark Apollonian cam-
pus design would be softened and made human in scale with regional plant materi-
als, in varying combinations of ground covers and paving, outdoor furniture, and
related landscape site elements. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, Church
would inspire an epitome of Dionysian contemporary campus designs, clusters of
buildings tucked in the redwood forests, approached through meadows and fields.
As to the future, the kaleidoscope is not yet in focus for predicting what aes-
thetic philosophy will take hold, through which leaders and practitioners, and at

224 Chapter Four

wien college and university campuses. At the end of the twentieth century
all
directions seem possible. Stylistically, we see four trends, as noted above, Collegiat
e
Modern, Neo-Functionalism, Regionalism, and Classicism—thus participating in
the “great naming game,” which critical speculation inevitably engenders. Steady-
state preferences have clearly given way to multiple choices. And, as in the college
classroom, one may also argue, in response to the question of preferment, “none of
the above.” An agreeable and productive base for departure into a new realm
would, we believe, include the form-to-function simplicity of Mies, the processes
and multiartistic collaboration advocated by Gropius, and the concern for scale,
site, texture, and surrounds manifest in Eliel Saarinen’s screeds and best work.
Back, briefly, to the beginning. Unlike IIT, where Mies and Mies-like buildings
would continue to fill the campus to the master’s pleasure, the Graduate Student
Center project was not, however, an aesthetic which Harvard would emulate in
buildings that followed, even those by TAC. Constructed on a tight budget, diffi-
cult to maintain, with mechanical systems designed for cheap energy, on land that
might be used more intensely, the building’s survival in the future may be deter-
mined by its status as an icon of ideals and ideas more than as an example of work
perfected. As a depository of knowledge, the university’s obligation to keep the
building as a memory of a pivotal moment in the history of campus design seems
self-evident.

ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Some retrospection, further grist for the mills of definition and emulation. Those
seeking certitude and comfort about the fundamental and desirable characteristics
of college and university architecture will find in these probings no formulas or
absolutes other than diversity and variety as the alphas and omegas of campus
development—architecturally, that is the origin of species. Campuses are cauldrons
of ideation, invention, and innovation, and at the same time conservators of knowl-
edge past and societal values as signified in architecture. To serve and remain vital,
architecture must respond to initial needs and functions and provide the capabili-
‘ty to adapt to later change, when necessary, without losing the physical attributes
which made the buildings noticeable at inception. Good campus buildings, as old
as Harvard’s first dormitories or Jefferson’s academic village or the spawn of late-
nineteenth-century “architecturesque,” and many Modern landmark edifices have
demonstrated that physical capacity and solidity for renewal.
Campuses are proving grounds for celebrating place and aspiration through
architectural styles—sometimes leading, sometimes following the trends, fashions,
and aesthetic convictions of their period and locale. Where the ethos favors diver-
sity, the results can be a delightful, museumlike collection of buildings, such as
Brown University’s main campus. Where unity is considered important, continuity Drart Campus PLANNING MODEL AND
in interpretation, not repetitive emulation of style, will produce high-quality cam- Procepures. (over, facing pages) Definitions,

pus design. Thus, at Pomona College and the University of Colorado, Boulder (pic- purpose and structure, campus plan objectives.
Ten-step process. Prepared for the 1994 Society for
tured on page 199) decades of buildings have a beguiling resemblance in their use College and University Planning Annual Meeting
of masonry materials but individual distinctions expressed in the elevations that are by Richard P. Dober, AICP. and Clinton N. Hewett,

generated by interior functions and time and taste-related detailing. ASLA.

Paradigms and Projects 225

 DISCUSSION DRAFT - CAMPUS PLAN - SCUP STANDARD MODEL

Definitions Campus Plan Objectives

A campus plan focuses on and is concerned with To provide the physical setting for supporting and
the physical resources—buildings, grounds, and advancing the campus’s mission and existence as a
infrastructure—that serve and symbolize an distinctive institution of higher education, and
institution’s existence. Three-dimensional and employing a participatory planning procedure, a
mutable, these resources should be periodically campus plan will:
examined and evaluated as to their condition,
utilization, and functional suitability. 01. identify and use beneficially site realities such
as climate, topography, infrastructure, site
Based on those assessments, proposals should be aesthetics, boundary conditions, and the
articulated to improve existing facilities, and where surrounds;
justifiable and feasible, to add those facilities which
are required to support and advance the college or determine and delineate the desired shape and
university’s missions. size of the campus property and articulate
appropriate campus land use patterns;
The individual proposals should be coordinated
and integrated into an overall physical development ascertain and facilitate the optimum utilization
concept, i.e., the campus plan. Occasionally, where of existing and proposed physical resources;
warranted, some facilities may be declared
redundant and eliminated. These proposals, too, promote contact, communications, and
should be noted in the campus plan. collegiality, among the campus constituencies
and visitors by positioning buildings, outdoor
areas, circulation systems, and modes of
transportation so as to nurture institutional
goals and foster participation in campus life;

establish an accessible, ecologically sound,

Purpose and Structure physically and psychologically safe, and
energy conserving campus development
As a steward and advocate of planning, the Society concept;
for College and University Planning (SCUP) urges
all institutions to prepare and keep current a campus define actions for reducing deferred
plan. maintenance, blight, decay, obsolescence;

To foster that objective SCUP has established a justify the location of new construction
Standard Model Campus Plan. The Model can be programmatically, functionally, aesthetically,
adapted to the specific sites and circumstance which and operationally;
make each college and university distinctive and
different. Circumstances here means such affecting designate specific actions for conserving,
factors as institutional history, current and projected embellishing and extending the campus
missions, priorities, and enabling resources. landscapes;
Operationally, the campus plan does not stand alone
as a beacon and guide for action, but reflects and is celebrate the campus heritage, natural and
concordant with other institutional planning efforts. constructed—buildings and grounds—by
recognizing and integrating significant historic
The SCUP Standard Model consists of 12 features in the campus plan;
objectives and a 10-step procedure. The former
describes the desired campus plan content and coordinate, integrate and phase capital
coverage. The latter outlines a process that investments so each project contributes to the
encourages collegial participation in plan overall campus design concept;
preparation. Both are intentionally flexible so each
institutional campus plan will reflect (as it must) promote beneficial development at the
local conditions, priorities, emphases. The institution and community interface, and in the
intertwining of product and process is deliberate. environs;
A process without sufficient coverage is a vision
without substance; a comprehensive plan without depict and document a comprehensive and
campus participation lacks credibility and certitude. aspinng view of future development.

226 Chapter Four

Establish a Plan for Plannin ;
and Participatory Campus Plan ; Synthesize and Evaluate i
Coheacas: me Pena of
Process Step 3a, 3b, 3c Findings . Campus Plan

10
Document and
Disseminate
Campus Plan

Articulate
Campus Plan Agenda

A‘ Identify and Confirm |

, Campus Plan Goals and | Campus Reviews and
: Objectives Discussions of Work to Date

- Determine List of | prepare Draft Campus Plan

Capital Improvements ! and Alternatives
ceca eon ae =e oe oe eee ee

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Survey and Analysis of Campus Reviews of t
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Paradigms and Projects 227

 Campuses are political arenas for powerful and persuasive presidents, deans,
donors, and trustees to impose their views, sometimes with singular and beneficial
results. Klauder thought: “Fortunate indeed is the institution the development of
whose physical plant is long in the hands of a wise and wide-visioned autocrat who
brooks no detours in reaching the goal of a fine architectural plan.” The preferred
route to excellence these days is a well-lead consensus, with a clear goal and a con-
sistent effort to obtain appropriate campus architecture. At the least, the process
requires a campus plan and a facility program. The first identifies the project loca-
tion, thus ensuring that building and landscapes relate and contribute to the
broader development scheme, or a mediation thereof. The second is a disciplined
description of the specific building characteristics, space requirements, criteria,
and budget targets. The document provides the design team with a level of speci-
ficity for which there is no substitute in achieving accomplished campus archi-
tecture.
Campus plan and facility program are the double helix of viable campus archi-
tecture. Whether Apollonian or Dionysian at inception, they help overcome the
shortcomings of expedient process, the dissemblance of aesthetic plutocrats, and the
musings of misfired genius. Campus plans will vary in intention, scope, and detail.
The campus planning process and product has to be tailored to the needs and
resources of the individual institution. Typical coverage is noted in the routines sug-
gested by members of the Society for College and University Planning, page 226.

PARADIGMS AND PROJECTS: A TAXONOMY APPLIED

The earlier scan of definitions and illustrations of the canon indicated abundant
theories about design methods and desired results but few references to the spe-
cific challenges of college and university commissions. As one comes closer to the
history and reality of campus development, some broad outlines of theory and prac-
tice can be detected, which provide a conceptual route for moving good buildings
into the realm of exemplary campus architecture. These are paradigms, ideal forms,
the terra firma of the designer’s voyage of discovery and invention. As indicated
earlier, however, a single physical form for all higher education institutions is nei-
ther likely nor appropriate and historically has slender justification! Like cities and
towns with a vibrant life and distinctive physique, most campuses are multigener-
ation developments whose current expression is an accumulation of earlier work.
The accumulative forms are thus categorized by perceptible prototypes of
macroscale campus architecture, i.e., paradigms, some Apollonian, some Dionysian,
some mosaics of both.
Paradigms are both symbolic images of place and dimensioned prototypes of
macroscale campus architecture.-As templates in a design process, paradigms can
be used to examine, decipher, evaluate, and critique an existing campus or campus
sector. The inspection would yield an appreciation of what exists, expose opportu-
nities to strengthen a paradigm, and/or give cause to protect, preserve, and enhance
physical features which might otherwise be neglected or diminished by new devel-
opment. Such surveys and scrutinizing will help avoid ad hoc, expedient architec-

228 Chapter Four

 tural conceptualizations and elevate building and site design to the desired
level of
campus architecture. Not all buildings are great architecture. But in principle, how-
ever constrained by pragmatic matters, the spirit and execution of even quotidian
campus improvements can be charged and excited when they contribute to the par-
adigm within which they are situated. A rising tide lifts all the boats.
Though higher education reigns as a kingdom of knowledge, there are no for-
mulas for shaping the campus and its architecture that apply to all places.
Campuses are not towns configured, as were Spanish colonial cities, by edict from
a central authority, nor are they the result of mandate and custom as were Roman
precincts established in the empire’s borderlands. Nonetheless, Klauder’s book can
be read as a design manual whose certitude, problematical as to style, is illuminat-
ing in its comments on site composition and convincing in its plea for unity. Batey
and Oxford offer insights on how tastes change and landscape forms can respond
by melding greenery and buildings. Turner and others provide a fine exposition on
the history and significance of campus design paragons. All affirm the principle of
diversity and multiplicity as the defining characteristic of the American campus.
One finds no apparent priority given to formal versus informal campus design con-
cepts. Apollonian campuses may be sprinkled with Dionysian designs. Dionysian
campuses, pentimento, may have sectors laid out in classical geometric configura-
tions, those being the commanding aesthetic at the time they were developed.
Accordingly, using these sources, experiences, and observations, our objective of
describing and defining campus architecture is constructively concluded by distill-
ing that rich history and categorizing the essence of campus architecture through
a taxonomy of paradigms. Some are Dionysian, some Appollian, some take on the
characteristics of both. They are groves, closed quadrangles, courtyards and atriums,
plazas, lawns and greens, open quadrangles.
The paradigms are illustrated with specific projects, i.e., microscale designs
which help create and extend the paradigm design concepts. As examples of cam-
pus architecture, the projects are not just buildings but structures and landscapes
engaged in a unified concept that informs and advances the sense of place inherent
in the paradigm. Projects can be likened to the end product of a healthy food chain:
‘campus plan (place making) > campus design (place marking) —~ paradigms
(macroscale campus architecture) > projects (microscale campus architecture).
The examples selected below demonstrate the paradigm-project relationship,
buildings and landscapes intertwined, and thus define campus architecture. Given
~ more than 3500 colleges and universities, and probably 10 times that number of
examples of campus architecture, opinions will differ as to what projects might be
shown to make the desired point. The bias in selection leans toward projects we
have seen and enjoyed or works-in-progress which we expect will eventually be rec-
ognized as fine examples of campus architecture. We include a few older places
whose accomplishment recalls a legacy worth remembering. The taxonomy begins
by acknowledging the primacy of precedence, honoring the place where campus
architecture began, buildings in the groves of academe. We end with lawns and
greens, paradigms universally seen in admirable campus designs, seemingly tran-
scending time, style, and geography.

Paradigms and Proyects Y

bsNo
 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, BOTHELL CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT—1992. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
FACILITIES PLANNING COMMITTEE, SIMON MARTIN - VEGUE WINKELSTEIN Morris, ARCHITECTS, HANNA OLIN, LTD.,
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS. A satellite campus, the Bothell site will offer upper-division and master’s degree courses in selected disci-
plines. The design was expected to foster a sense of tradition through a landmark architectural concept and a symbolic association
with the Northwest region ethos and cultural traditions. The concept aims at a dense building group, with a strong form that can be
phased, each segment carefully inserted into the existing landscape i.e., buildings in the groves of academe. The University intended
that the “physical environment of the campus should explicate the qualities of the natural environment of the region, and promote
stewardship of the land.” (Source: Simon Martin - Veque Winkelstein Morris, Architects)

230 Chapter Four

 GROVES. Founded by Plato (378 BC), closed by Justian (529 AD), and situated
in a botanical garden or grove, near Athens, the Greek academy is considered the
direct ancestor of all Western colleges and universities. For centuries young peo-
ple in classical times would travel to Greece to complete their education. Those
who gained that experience were valued as advisors to political leaders, served in
the civil service, were engaged by the states or wealthy to create, promote, and
propagate the arts and science. A mosaic uncovered in Pompeii provides a view of
the site: library, residential hall, outdoor places for instruction and discourse, and
the all-embracing epic Groves of Academe. A nineteenth-century etching of
Exeter College, Oxford, communicates the image of sagacious exchanges in a tran-
quil grove backing up to the College’s Great Walls. Another variation on the
theme are the groves encircling Meyers Hall (1846), Wittenberg, Ohio, which have
matured to define the site and building relationship, a landmark hilltop temple of
learning.
Of recent accomplished epochal works, benchmarks, two are polar paradigms.
Apollonian, Simon Fraser University is a geometric megastructure strung across a
site created by carving into the dense hilltop groves of British Columbia. In con-
trast, the development at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Dionysian, con-
sists of clusters of buildings inserted into the redwood forest. At the University of
California, Los Angeles, a smaller-scale grove has been created as an outdoor, land-
scaped sculpture gallery, helping to humanize the scale of surrounding buildings.
Hardy, Holzman, Pfeifer plant and use a grove to define and embellish a central
campus space, an Apollonian embracement of their proposed octagonal library—
University of Kentucky, 1995. At the University of Nebraska, cited earlier for its
landscapes, an existing mature grove of white oaks helps mark the library site, and
in the surrounds the “inviting walks winding through masses of shrubs and trees
grows ever more appealing as the landscape matures.”
The Bothell campus (University of Washington, 1994) resonates with a skillful
and dramatic engagement of contemporary building forms and the surrounding
groves, including a clever scheme for campus expansion and the parking concept.
The new hilltop campus for the College of Integrated Science and Technology
' (James Madison University, 1994) supplements the existing site landscape with a
grove of broadly spaced hardwoods. Planted to form a high canopy, the tree mass-
ing accentuates the topography and scales the buildings to human dimensions. The
grove plantings are not intended as barriers or screens but veils through which
views outward and inward can be glimpsed day and night.

CLOSED QUADRANGLES. Closed quadrangles are the oldest extant campus archi-
tecture. Buildings and walls are connected to frame the interior landscapes. Early,
the greenery would include flowers for the altar, herbs for healing, and vegetables
for the kitchen. Later, horticultural effects would be the prime objective. Quad
entry is limited and controlled. Epitomes are found in Oxford and Cambridge. Less
publicized but highly prized is Trinity College in Dublin. Designed for defense in
an era of town and gown acrimony, the value of enclosure now is the repelling of
swarms of tourists attracted to superlative campus architecture and the tranquility
offered by being removed from the noisy surrounding city development.

Paradigms and Projects Bah

232 Chapter F.
WITTENBERG University, Meyers HALL,
1846. (facing page) Perhaps the best extant
example of the early American hilltop campus, sit-
uated in a grove. The landmark building was res-
cued and reconstructed for housing in 1972.
(Source: Wittenberg University)

OXFORD, THE GROVES AT EXETER COLLEGE,

c. 1860. (right)

SIMON FRASER UNiversity, Cc. 1968. (below)

Now a classic of Modern architecture, truly a cam-
pus ina grove. (Source: Simon Fraser University)

PROPOSED GROVE-SETTING FOR UNIVERSITY

OF Kentucky Lisrary, 1995. (bottom) The
symbol and beauty of the groves of academe are
given a renewed expression in the Hardy,
Holzman, Pfeifer concept for the landscape sur-
rounding the projected new library. (Source:
University of Kentucky)

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Paradigms and Projects 233

 ACADEMIC

234 Chapter Four

 Usually Apollonian rectangular, the longer the construction period, the more
likely the expression of the architecture within the paradigm will change, though
not necessarily the overall form. The inevitable results can be seen and appreciat-
ed in Holabird & Root’s 1984 physics building (University of Chicago). The pro-
ject completed a multiphase quad concept, faithful to the original collegiate Gothic
campus plan concept, which thus affected the building site configuration; at the
same time the last building was designed to read as contemporary architecture,
manifesting purpose, period, and technology unchained from the influence of the
earlier style. Recent Oxford quads are also instructive examples of that continuity—
contemporary buildings in a traditional site configuration.
The closed quad paradigm has stimulated imaginative Dionysian variations, such
as the Aston Webb and Ingress Bell concept for a bastion of learning at the
University of Manchester. Their 1900 design concept called for six quadrangles
radiating from a Byzantine style central tower. Domes then being a popular place-
marking element, ten were proposed. Six were built, along with a mediated version
of the design, which ended up being more courtyard than connected quads. Of jew-
els conserved and sensitively modified, Paul Helpern’s remedy for “benign neglect”
at General Theological Seminary (New York) sums up challenges and opportuni-
ties for revitalizing historic landmark closed quads. His approach included remov-
ing incongruous sheds, renovating dated interiors, and strategic in-filling for
requirements that cannot be otherwise satisfied.
Of modern American idiosyncratic schemes, Eero Saarinen’s Morse and Stiles
Colleges (Yale University, 1962) is one of higher education’s best. The site draw-
ing has become a campus design icon, with the authoritative interlock of buildings,
walls, paving, and greenery. Sarrinen’s melding of forms, spaces, and materials has
medieval ancestors. Ironically, his Yale design has no progeny. Little & Associates
development for the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (1993), brings the
closed quad into the twenty-first century: responsive to security, radiant with its
site configuration and open space pattern, reasonable in cost of construction,
responsible in recalling but not mimicking regional Collegiate Georgian architecture.

COURTYARDS AND ATRIUMS. Courtyards and atriums are extended architec-

ture, settings for campus life, configured, defined, enclosed by a building or build-
ings. Often neglected because of expedient cost-cutting measures, these are superb
opportunities for creating significant designs—places were people can gather to par-
ticipate in institutional life informally during daily routines. Should there be a will
to generate a significant surge in the quality of campus architecture in the near
future, courtyards and atriums would be a productive area to achieve such effects,
adding Great Spaces to the Great Walls. For good reason there is a reluctance to
build and operate more space than required by statistical norms. But such norms

JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY, COLLEGE OF INTEGRATED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 1993.

Metcatr, TOBY & PARTNERS; SHEPLEY, BULFINCH, RICHARDSON & ABBOTT, Doser, LIDSKy,
Craic AND Associates; EDAW. (facing page, top and bottom) A new hilltop college in a landscaped
grove, with facades and siting arranged for vistas and views. (Source: James Madison University)

Paradigms and Projects 235.

 TENTH AVENUE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
DEVELOPMENT PLAN, 1994. PAUL HELPERN &
Associates. (left) A landmark closed quadran-
gle, a New York City rarity, designed by Charles
Haight and constructed between 1883 and 1900.
Helpern’s task involved cleaning out extraneous
structures that cluttered the original design, interi-
or restoration work, and inserting building addi-
tions to meet space requirements not otherwise
satisfied. (Source: Paul Helpern & Associates)

YALE UNiversity, Morse STILES COLLEGE,

1962. (facing page, top) Eero Saarinen and Dan
Kiely’s paradigm courtyard, an idiosyncratic ver-
sion of Yale's closed quads. The scheme produced
troubled criticism and was a startling departure
from the designer's earlier work. Though not a
landmark in campus housing pragmatically, it is a
landmark of design in context.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, PHYSICS BUILDING,

1984. HOLABIRD AND ROOT, ARCHITECTS.
(facing page, bottom) By this date the University
has given up collegiate Gothic and imitations
thereof. The idea of quadrangular development,
however, prevailed as a campus design theme. The
Holabird and Root building exemplifies contempo-
rary period campus architecture, neither copycat
context nor audacious departures into a new
realm but a convincing completion of a major
campus open space. (Source: Holabird and Root,
Architects)

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236 Chapter Four

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Paradigms and Projects 237

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, C. 1900.
(above) Webb and Bell’s delightful reminder that
the Apollonian quadrangle could be expressed in
a canon-stretching Dionysian variant.

UNiversiTy OF NORTH CAROLINA,

GREENSBORO, CLOSED QUAD HOUSING,
1993. LITTLE AND Associates. (right) As is
now popular, the site composition breaks the geo-
metric grid to achieve some beguiling spatial and
visual effects. A fine example of campus architec-
ture with paradigmatic open space and late-
twenty-first-century interpretation of Collegiate
Georgian. (Source: Little and Associates)

boSoCo Chapter Four

have to be interpreted with an occasional allowance for informal activities
and inter-
actions which promote communications and collegial exchanges. Grandiose
designs
are not necessary as evident in two contrasting projects at Colorado College
and
The Claremont Colleges. The first an interior space with art, plants, and scientif-
ic objects displayed (vide Chandler Hall) also yields on entrance an immediate sense
of building purpose and spatial organization. The second shows a small courtyard
and simple sunscreen animating an austere building.
Wallace, Roberts & Todd’s Engineering II Apollonian courtyard (University of
California, San Diego, 1993) demonstrates how visual experiences can be orches-
trated in the paradigm: the landscaped approach to the Great Wall, the emphatic |
and inviting portico, and then the courtyard itself, with attractive views outward.
Whether Robert Alexander would find the building “chaos or control” cannot be
ascertained, but the design unequivocally confirms a university’s willingness to
build an instructive example of contemporary campus architecture.
“Cobblegate”—less structured, symbolically rich, an ingenious Dionysian design
in concept and execution—is the eponym courtyard at West Hall (Portland State
University, Oregon, 1992), giving new life to adjacent quotidian architecture. Basalt
paving stones from the old city thoroughfares, circa 1880 to 1910, were recovered
and used sculpturally to transform the courtyard into a “topographic and kines-
thetic experience, metamorphosing the region’s man-made urban and natural/geo-
logical history.” The Santa Fe Community College courtyard is a grass carpet with
trees and sculpture; an exquisite contrasting landscape setting for the adjacent ado-
belike buildings, in an otherwise arid setting.
Don M. Hisaka’s atrium at Cleveland State University (shown on page 208)
melds the atrium and courtyard spatial effects into a singular dramatic composi-
tion, creating a convincing and persuasive example of late-Modern twenty-first-
century campus architecture.

PLAZAS. In civic design, a plaza is a public square in a city or town. Associated

with palaces and halls of dynastic empires, and thus suspect, plazas did not become
a prominent campus design feature in the United States until the colleges and uni-
COLORADO COLLEGE, BARNES SCIENCE
_yersities adopted and adapted the formal design concepts of the City Beautiful
CENTER, 1987. CLIFFORD S. NAKATA &
movement. Plazas at the University of California, Berkeley (Sproul), and Columbia Associates. (over) The four-story atrium sym-
University (Low Library) are remnants from that era. Low is an extension of the bolizes the openness of the science curriculum and
the commitment to encourage students and facul-
building; Sproul is a nexus space. These are the kind of spaces which by size and ty to engage in cross-disciplinary activities.
location and history—City Hall plaza in New York City and Trafalgar Square— Symbol and service aside, the spatial effects are
attract participants during momentous times and celebratory occasions. stunning, particularly with the play of sun-shad-
ow through the day and the beckoning light
In campus design today a plaza is a significant space, geometric in configuration through the oculus at night. (Source: Colorado
or informal, hard space or soft greenery, at the campus entrance or portal of a College)

major building or at the junction of several campus path systems. The academic
CLAREMONT COLLEGES, COURTYARD,
precinct plaza at the University of New Mexico is an attractive combination of sey- J. M. Keck SCIENCE CENTER, 1991.
eral such features, serving also as a centroid for pedestrian traffic moving in and ANSHEN+ALLEN, ARCHITECTS. (over, facing

out of the adjacent buildings. Nearby is Garret Eckbo’s incongruous but inspired page) The courtyard between two wings serves
as an informal meeting area and social area for
“New England pond.” In tandem with the paved plaza, the yin and yang of dry the faculties and staff of the four colleges sharing
and moist, creates memorable campus architecture on the desertlike arid the science teaching facility. (Source: Claremont
Colleges)
Albuquerque mesa.

Paradigms and Projects 239

240 Chapter Four
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Paradigms and Projects 241

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO,
ENGINEERING UNIT I, 1992. WALLACE,
Roserts & Topp. (this page) Building and
courtyard, engaged for campus architecture.
(Source: Wallace, Roberts & Todd)

SANTA Fe COMMUNITY COLLEGE, 1985. (fac-

ing page, top) A courtyard gem waiting to be rec-
ognized nationally.

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY, COBBLEGATE,

1992. (facing page, bottom) Jerry Mayer's
homage to time and place. (Source: Portland State
University)

242 Chapter Four

ALBERTOPOLIS, SIR NORMAN Foster, 1994.
(right) (Source: Imperial College of London)

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, LIBRARY PLAZA,

oy) c yes may

Sane
Ta Sal
1988. SASAKI AND Associates. (bottom) A

(Source: Sasaki and Associates; photographer: Bob

Freund)

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244 Chapter Four

 .
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cossmenemucnscrautihre

WasHINGTON University, DETAIL, 1900. Cope AND STEWARDSON. (top) (Source: Washington University)

of campus archi-
WASHINGTON University. (bottom) 1995 view of Cope and Stewardson’s entrance plaza, an enduring example
tecture. (Source: Washington University)

Paradigms and Projects 245

 Norman Foster’s Albertopolis plaza serves and symbolizes the converging pro-
grammatic interests of several institutions and the cooperative use of their build-
ings and land (including Imperial College, the Royal College of Art, and the Royal
College of Music). The plaza concept, suitably urban, establishes a pedestrian
precinct and a festive air for an institutional conglomeration extraordinary in its
architectural variety. The library plaza at the Arizona State University, Tempe,
ingeniously reads like a formal landscaped campus open space, and like
Albertopolis, provides a pleasant traffic-free zone. On closer inspection the Sasaki
and Associates design reveals the main entrance to the library via a small plaza in
a sunken courtyard. Paving, landscape, architectural gestures combine to shape and
animate a superb campus design concept.
At Washington University, open space, greenery, and the steps traversing a sub-
tle rise in topography are an integral part of the 1900 Cope and Stewardson quad-
rangular plan—a soft plaza. Their full scheme was never completed, but the
Brookings Hall side is a splendid version of the architects’ intention. Edging and
enfolded into the informal plaza, the crenellated towers and archway punctuate the
Great Wall and lead the eye and the visitor to the inner quad. The concept is an
elaboration of the architect’s Blair Hall at Princeton University (1896).

GREENS AND LAWNS. Swards, swatches, nature’s outdoor carpets, typically

grass, sometimes edged with shrubbery and flower beds, and planted with trees,
ever-inviting for rest and relaxation and informal games, fabled venues for rites and
rituals—these legacy landscapes and adjacent buildings are enduring emblems of
higher education worldwide. Green carpets can be found in the fourteenth-centu-
ry Mob Quad (Merton College, Oxford) as well as late-twentieth-century campus
precincts. Our focus here is a paradigm of specific architectural effects, the
greensward sweeping up to the Great Walls and surrounding groups of buildings.
Greens and lawns conjoined are treasured symbols linking America’s first col-
leges and the institutions that followed. American architecture continually uses “the
past to redefine the present, to make things that solve our needs, and to make an
extraordinary dialogue with things that went before,” comments designer Robert A.
M. Stern, lecturing on his work at St. Paul’s School (1988). Though not address-
ing college and university architecture specifically, Stern’s insights underline cause
and effect in the associational appeal and linkage between campus greenery and an
evolving American culture. The list of grasslike artifacts is impressive: the village
green, town common, cemeteries, city parks, play fields, small plots in front of
Victorian row houses, median dividers along early parkways, suburbia. The cam-
pus lawn fits well into that spectrum, icon and analog of aspiration and achievable
campus architecture, each generation adding another gesture, sustaining “the vast
structure of recollection.”
No account of lawns and greens would be complete without reference to Harvard
Yard and Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia scheme, circa 1817. Jefferson
designed the Charlottesville campus to avoid the dullness he thought evident at
William and Mary. With his lawn, Jefferson established a design pattern that he
thought, philosophically, might overcome the deficiencies he saw in the closed
English quadrangles, places which Edward Gibbon disparaged as physical environ-

246 Chapter Four

University OF LOUISVILLE, Cc. 1910. (top) Jefferson's paradigm reinterpreted.

TsincHuA University, c. 1925. (bottom) An American campus paradigm, lawns and building constructed in mainland China.

Paradigms and Projects Za

 we ae

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI LECTURE HALL, 1958. Atvar AALTo. (top)

HAVERFORD COLLEGE, CAMPUS CENTER, 1992. DaGit-SAYLor, ARCHITECTS.
(bottom)
Campus architecture, paradigm elements: a distinctive building and green lawn setting, a tradition
expressed in two place-marking
projects.

248 Chapter Four

ments “stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes
,
and private scandal.” Of equal consequence was Jefferson’s faith that a grand
scheme would draw, from the power of its imagination and invention, financial and
political support at a time when coeval institutions were as impoverished architec-
turally as they were operationally.
Jefferson’s building and linked greenery is a revered and pervasive model; as
indicated in the Southern Methodist University concept, and the late-nineteenth-
century version at the University of Louisville, and the 1926 rendition at Tsinghua
University, Shanghai, which was configured to look like an American campus.
Alvar Aalto’s lecture building, University of Helsinki, bows to no tradition but his
own genius, but the green lawn, again, evokes a universal image of campus.
“Traditional ideals and simple settings form the basis for college expansion,” writes
architect Charles E. Dagit, explaining how the terrace at the rear of the Haverford
College building serves as an outdoor cafe in good weather and becomes a defined
edge to a new green lawn. The green and building in combination sustains the col-
lege’s Quaker tradition of a visually unpretentious academic precinct.
Are lawns and greens, an ever-present companion to good campus buildings, an
appropriate paradigm for future college and university architecture? With one of
those statistics intended to be awesome and alarming, one economist has estimated
that turf management is a $25 billion business nationally, with millions of acres
under cultivation as recreational and aesthetic grass. Ecologically, grassy lawns and
greens are suspect by those who fear their financial costs and environmental impact,
including water charges, grounds maintenance, artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and
expedient disposal of brush, leaves, and clippings. Preferable to the “Industrial
Lawn,” so-called by landscape architect Diana Balmori and colleagues at Yale
University (1993), would be the “Freedom Lawn,” their phrase for a landscape not
dependent on technology and artificial sustenance. In the Yale screed on weeds and
natural ground covers, the designer’s desired color and texture would come from
locally determined species and combinations of nonstandard materials such as tim-
othy, crabgrass, dandelions, violets, and bluets. Serendipitously, in campus design
terms such lawns would be reminiscent of medieval scholastic enclaves, grasses and
flowers, wild and cultivated, which later were denuded and lost in favor of mani-
cured grass. The prospect is favored by those seeking a relief to boring greensward.
Others would regret losing an emblem of higher education.
With traditional lawns, it may be difficult to get an institution to adjust its tune,
however persuasive the ecological premises. Since 1989, head gardener Simon
MacPhaun (Trinity College, Cambridge) has been advocating “an environmentally
sympathetic attitude” toward lawns and adjacent gardens. “You are turning gar-
deners into sprayer operators not skilled gardeners,” he warned the Fellows. In a
reasonable compromise, the faculty determined that Trinity’s great lawn and fram-
ing buildings, truly campus architecture, would be left intact as the chief amenity
of an ancient place, but modern ecological principles would be applied to all the
other campus greenery. Though focused on landscape, the debate is, itself, a
metaphor for determining why and how campus architecture must change through
the resolution of four affecting factors—tradition and technology, function and
appearance.

Paradigms and Projects 2 49

Zz
 fe wk

x
(FE

Re AS:rete a,
fe
se 2 Tas -
S,

Bates COLLEGE, CAMPUS PLAN, FOUR QuaDs EQUAL FiFTH QuaD. Doser, LiDsky, CRAIG AND ASSOCIATES, INC.
(Above) Central campus (the fifth quad) evolved in four phases. Quad A was configured in the nineteenth century. Quad B was
formed with a new library and science building in the 1980s. Quad C was anchored with the TAC fine arts building at the north end of
the College pond. Quad D was shaped by the 1992 campus plan, which relocated the stadium, provided a site for the 1994 housing,
and clarified parking and automobile circulation routes to create a central campus pedestrian precinct, i.e., the fifth quad. (Source:
Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates, Inc.)

Bates COLLEGE, OLIN Arts CENTER, 1986. TAC. (facing page, top) A landmark building for several reasons: the engagement
of building and landscape to generate campus architecture; a building whose form and shape establish a strong sense of place ona
critical site; and one of the last college buildings designed by TAC, and thus a symbolic ending to an era and a design philosophy.
(Source: Bates College; photographer: B. V. Brink)

Bates COLLEGE, CAMPUS HOUSING. 1994. WILLIAM RAWN AND Associates INC. (facing page, bottom) Buildings and land-
scapes intertwined, with a contemporary style that honors the older Bates buildings. (Source: Bates College; photographer: Steve Rosenthal)

250 Chapter Four

Paradigms and Projects 2 ]
 OPEN QUADRANGLES. The old Bates College in ancient New England, or new
Palo Alto College, San Antonio, Texas—both use the open quadrangle as a partic-
ularly American paradigm. Fear of fire and contagion if individual structures were
connected, the requirements for ventilation and daylight prior to mechanical means,
slow-paced development, the wishes of donors and architects to keep their edifices
apart from others, the symbolism of a landscape that could be immediately seen
from streets and road—all these were factors and conditions that affected the con-
figuration of early American campuses. As the progenitors matured, the design
forms were codified as epitomes of collegiate architecture, more Dionysian than
Apollonian in their mix of different architectural styles and greenery. New England
examples were carried south and west in the migration and growth of higher edu-
cation. When purged of parking and through traffic, the open quadrangles are
attractive pedestrian precincts. As in the instance of Bates College, the concepts can
be enlarged and enhanced beneficially generation by generation, without compro-
mise to expressing period architecture. Palo Alto College (1994 view) illustrates the
paradigm’s vulnerability when the landscape falls short of the architectural quality
(pictured on page 204). Palo Alto’s evocation of mission-style shapes and forms can
be considered a grand interpretation of regional design themes. The panoramic view,
however, is diluted by the awkward and seemingly incongruous site development.
* * *

As with a Stradavarian cello, age in time imparts a music of its own. Taken
together the paradigms, projects, and commentary point the way to future campus
architecture: buildings and greenery creatively conjoined, the conservation and con-
tinuing use of heritage buildings and landscapes; the commitment to explore and
experiment with new ideas through collegial design processes; and the willingness
to confront and redefine architectural traditions when new knowledge, technology,
and the craft of construction presents opportunities to do so.
And fear not,
The uncertain glory of an April day;
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away...

Campus architecture has and will have its Shakespearean Aprils but also designs
that will hold fast in their integrity and visual appeal through all seasons in all
places.

walLSS) Chapter Four

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campus Architecture is a book of opinion, advice, and encouragement for those

responsible for determining and designing college and university buildings and
landscapes. It contains examples and references gathered during many years of pro-
fessional practice and brought up-to-date through some delightful hours spent at
the Loeb Library, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. There, Ms.
Hinda Sklar and her colleagues were very helpful in identifying and obtaining ref-
erence sources and materials. It was a pleasure and privilege to work with an out-
standing collection and a dedicated professional staff. The provenance for most of
my quotations are given directly in the text. In addition, the following are listed as
the bibliographic map of the author’s recent journey through the fascinating liter-
ature of campus planning and design.

Architectural Record. Architecture of American Colleges. New York: 1909-1912.

Audrain, Calvert, with William B. Cannon and Howard T. Wolff. 4 Review of Planning
at the University of Chicago. Chicago, 1978.
Batey, Mavis. Oxford Gardens. Scholar Press; Amersham, England, 1986.
Brolin, Brent C. Flight of Fancy, the Banishment and Return of Ornament. St. Martin
Press, London, 1985.
Brooke, Christopher, with Roger Highfield and Wim Swaan. Oxford and Cambridge.
Oxford University Press, Cambridge, 1988.
Bunting, Bainbridge. Harvard, an Architectural History. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1985.
Cheney, Sheldon. The New World Architecture. AMS Press, New York, 1930.
Crook, J. Mordaunt. The Dilemma of Style. Architectural Press, London, 1987.
Davey, Norman. 4 History of Building Materials. London, 1961.
Dober, Richard P. Campus Design. John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1992.
, Campus Planning. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1963.
—, New Campus in Great Britain. EFL Publications, New York, 1964.
 “Dormitories at Smith College.” Architectural Forum, 1923.
Downes, Kerry. Hawksmoor. Praeger, London, 1979.
Encyclopedia of Architecture, Design, Engineering and Construction. Wiley, New York, 1990.
Gombrich, E. H. Style, Vol. 15, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New
York, 1968.
Granger, A. Architectural Style of the College Group. American Landscape Architecture,
New York, 1930.
Harrison, W. K. School Buildings of Today and Tomorrow. Pencil Points, New York, 1931. 7}
Hayes, Harriet. Planning Residence Halls. Columbia University Press, New York) 1932:
Hibbert, Christopher, with Edward Hibbert. The Encyclopedia of Oxford. London, 1988. |
Holden, Reuben A. Yale, A Pictorial History. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, |
1967.
Jenks, Christopher. The Language of Postmodern Architecture. Rizzoli, New York, 1977.
Klauder, Charles Z., and Wise, Herbert C. Campus Architecture in America and Its Part
in the Development of the Campus. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1926.
L’Architecture D’Audjourd ’hui—Ecoles. France, 1934.
Macmillian Encyclopedia of Architects. New York, 1972.
Morgan, Keith H. Charles A. Platt as Architect. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985.
Morrison, Hugh. Early American Architecture. Oxford University Press, New York, 1952.
Munby, Alan E. “Design of Science Buildings,” R.J.B.A. Journal, 1929.
Newton, Norman T. Design of the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture.
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1971.
O’Donnell, Thomas E. University of Illinois Campus Plan. Western Architect,
Champaign-Urbana, IL, 1929.
Parsons, Kermit C. The Cornell Campus. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1968.
Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting of the Society of Directors of Physical
Education in Colleges. Rice Institute, 1929.
Rashdall, H. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1936.
Roos, Frank J., Jr. Bibliography of Early American Architecture. University of Illinois
Press, Urbana, 1968.
Rudolph, Frederick. The American College and University. Knopf, New York, 1962.
Smith, F. A. C. Selecting the Site for the Small College. American Landscape
Architecture, New York, 1930.
Shurtleff, A. A. Program for Campus Development of Mount Holyoke College. American
Landscape Architecture, New York, 1930.
Thomas, Mary Martha Hosford.
Southern Methodist University, Founding and Early
Years. SMU Press, Dallas, TX, 1974.
Thompson, Paul. William Butterfield. Architectural Press, London, 1971.
Tishler, William H., ed. American Landscape Architecture, Designers and Places. National
Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington, DC, 1989.
Turner, Paul Venable. Campus, An American Planning Tradition. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, 1984.
“University Buildings Reference Number,” Architectural Forum, 1925.
“University Buildings Reference Number,” Architectural Forum, 1926.

254 Bibliography
 INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by / indicate Benedictine College, St. John’s Univ., 10 Carver Hawkeye Arena, Univ. of Iowa, 66f
figures. Bennington College, 101, 102/ Case-Western Uniy., 54
Biddle, Owen, 167 Cathedral of Learning, Univ. of Pittsburgh, 213
Aalto, Alvar, 249 Biology Institute, Univ. of Paris, 14f 14-15 Catholic Univ., 63f
Abrahamson, Bruce, 215 Biomedical Science Tower, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Caudill, William C., 122-123, 220
Academic model, 149, 150 110 Cecil and Ida Green Center, Uniy. of Texas,
Addison, Joseph, 190 Biophilia Hypothesis, 190 Dallas, 181f
Admissions House, Connecticut College, 84, 86f Blair Hall, Princeton Univ., 246 Center Hall, Wabash College, 56, 59f 60
Alberti, Leon B., 171 Bloomfield, Byron C., 140 Centre Pompidou, 133
Albertopolis Plaza, 244 246 Booth, George R., 220 Chandler Chemistry Laboratory, Lehigh Univ.,
Aldrich, Henry, 194 Boston College, 170 122f
Alexander, Christopher, 171 Boston Univ., 101, 102 Chapel of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Saint
Alexander, Robert E., 159, 239 Bosworth, W. W., 207 Paul’s School, 127
Alice Lloyd College, 136 Bowdoin Chapel, 127 Chapels, 54, 58f 127, 163f, 164
Allegheny College, 126 Bowdoin College, 127, 128, 129f Charlotte College, 45f
American Surety Building (New York City), 207 Breuer, Marcel, 9f, 10 Chateau Frontenac (Quebec), 207
Amherst College, 205 Bright, John Irwin, 2 Chemical Building, Lehigh Uniy., 121
Anderson, Patricia M., 128 Bromley, D. Allen, 104 Chemistry and Physics Building, Univ. of
Apollonian paradigm, 196, 205, 220-221, 224, Bronco Mall, Western Michigan Univ., 155f California, Los Angeles, 3
pap esy| Bronowski, Jacob, 212 Cheney, Sheldon, 2-3
Architecture, definitions of, 167, 170-171, Brookings Hall, Washington Univ., 246 Chicago Tribune Tower, 220
173-174 Brooklyn College, 73 Christ Church College, Oxford, 20f 21
Arizona State Univ., 1f, 183, 185f 244f, 246 Brown, Capability, 183 Church, Thomas, 224
~ Arkansas College, 168/ Brown, Paul B., 92-93 City Beautiful movement, 239
Art of Building, (The) (Alberti), 171 Brown Univ., 60, 69f 81, 92, 93, 96f 130, 131f City College of New York, 206
Arts buildings, 1f, 3, 5f 49, 51f 71-77, 72f 73, 133, 142, 145, 147, 158f 160, 162f 194, 225 City Hall Plaza (New York City), 239
76f, 128, 177, 179, 197, 251f Bulfinch, Charles, 133 City University of New York, 195
Association of Technical Institutions, 114-115 Burgone, F. J., 87 Claremont Colleges, 239, 241f
Athletic buildings, 60-67, 65/, 68/ Butler, Anne M., 192 Clark, Arthur T., 121
Atriums, 235, 239 Butterfield, William, 167 Clark Univ., 28, 29f
Auditoriums, 33/, 34 CLASP system, 115
Cabrini College, 148 Classical style, 215
Babson College, 152f 153f 155 California Institute of Technology, 92, 96f Classroom buildings, 21, 22f 23f, 25f 67-71
Bacon, Edward, 220 California State Uniy., Fullerton, 46/ Cleveland State Univ., 207, 208/ 239
Balmori, Diana, 249 Cambridge Univ., 81, 91-92, 92, 94// 140, 142, Cobblegate, 239
Barnes, Edward Larrabee, 128, 218 150, 161, 209, 231 College Architecture in America (Klauder and
Barnes Science Center, Colorado College, 113f Campus (Turner), 214 Wise), 213
123 Campus, definitions of, 166-167 College of Integrated Science and Technology,
Bates College, 250/, 251f, 252 Campus centers, 77-84, 78f 79f 181f, 248/ James Madison Univ., 231, 234f
Batey, Mavis, 180 Campus life model, 149, 150 College of St. Benedict, 72/, 73
Baylor Univ., 11, 12f 13f 14 Canady House, Harvard Univ., 26, 27f College of Saint Catherine, 186
Bechtel, Robert B., 171 Carl A. Kroch Library, 91 College of Staten Island, 195
Bechtel Building, Massachusetts Institute of Carleton College, 40, 42, 43f, 123, 124f, 125/, Collegiate Georgian style, 14, 21, 170, 206, 221
126, 1595194, Collegiate Gothic style, 170, 206, 213-214, 221
Technology, 71
Carlson, William H., 97 Collins Hall, Baylor Univ., 13f 14
Bell, Ingress, 235
Carnegie-Mellon Univ., 115, 117/ 130, 131f Colorado College, 113f 123, 239, 240f
Belloc, H., 21
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard Columbia Law School, Univ. of Missouri, 93
Belluschi, Pietro, 220
Univ., 197 Columbia Uniy., 239
Beloit College, 81, 81f 84, 138

Index 255
Complexity and Contradiction tn Architecture Flansburgh, Earl, 140 Illinois Institute of Technology, 21, 22/ 103f,
Fletcher, Jean B., 218 214, 216; 2177; 225
(Venturi), 173
Florida Southern College, 177, 178/ Iludnut, Joseph, 49
Computer-generated designs, 39-40, 40/
Concordia Univ., 178f Florida State Univ., 205 Imperial College, 246
Focus, 49-52 Indiana Univ., 3, 5, 73
Connecticut College, 84, 86/
Foothill Housing Complex, Univ. of California, Information and Computer Sciences Engineering
Construction economies, 10—11
Berkeley, 150, 151f Research facility, Univ. of California, Irvine,
Contextual architecture, 209, 212
Cooper Union, 207 Foothills Community College, 203f 205 42, 44, 46f
Foster, Norman, 246 Institute of Asian Research Building, Univ. of
Cornell, Ralph, 180, 191, 224
Cornell Univ., 77, 89f 91 Fowler Elementary School (Fresno), 2, +f British Columbia, 192
Cosby Academic Center, Spelman College, 69/, Franklin Pierce College, 78f 80 International Style, Twenty Years After (The)
7 Frantzen, Ulrich, 218 (Hitchcock), 223
Court of Technology, Texas Technical College, Frederick R. Weiseman Museum of Art, Univ. of Isaacs, Reginald R., 216
130 Minnesota, 179
Courthouse (KS), 16/ Functional diversification, 53-60 Jacobson, Arne, 21
Courtyards, 235, 239 Furman Univ., 76f, 77 Jacobson, Hugh N., 91
Cram, Ralph Adams, 127, 128, 130, 170, 197, Jahn, Helmut, 67
207, 214 Gaudet, Pierre, 108 James Madison Univ., 231, 234f
Cranbrook Academy of the Arts, 214, 219f 220, Geddes, Robert, 171 Japanese Cottage, 207
224 Gehry, Frank, 42, 44, 177 Jefferson, Thomas, 194, 220, 224, 246, 249
Cret, Paul P., 170 General Theological Seminary, 235, 236f Jenkins, Charles, 223
Crosby Library, Gonzaga Univ., 26, 28, 28f George M. Low Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Jenneret, Pierre, 21
Crowe, Norman, 171 Institute, 123 Jensen, Jens, 224
George R. Brown Hall, Rice Univ., 209, 210f John Carter Brown Library, Brown Univ., 101,
D. K. Martin Hall, Baylor Univ., 12f 14 George Washington Univ., 158/ 158f
Dagit, Charles E., 249 Georgetown Univ., 64, 154f 155 Johns Hopkins Uniy., 108, 206 |
Dana Science Building, Hollins College, 120/ Georgia Institute of Technology, 21, 24f Johnson, Frederic B., 138
123 Gerhard Hall, Univ. of Mississippi, 40, 41/ Johnson, Philip, 10, 21
Danforth, William H., 212 Gettysburg College, 91, 92, 95f Justinian, 231
Dartmouth College, 71, 73 Gibbon, Edward, 246, 249
Dedham Hall, Southern Methodist Univ., 54, 56 Gibbs, James, 21, 92 Kahn, Louis, 1, 133, 220
Design on the Land (Newton), 224 Gideon, Sigfried, 159 Kansas State Univ., 15, 17f 21, 175
DiBerardinis, Louis J., 104 Gioyannini, Joseph, 119 Keble College, Oxford, 170, 172f
Dickinson College, 56 Gombrich, E. H., 164 Kedzie Chemical Laboratory, Michigan State
Diller, Burgoyne, 73 Gonzaga Univ., 26, 28, 28f Univ., 121, 126
Dillon, David, 207 Gores, Harold, 136 Kellor, Rolfe P., 192
Dining facilities, 155-156 Gothicization, 44, 47 Kent State Univ., 193f 194
Dionysian paradigm, 197, 205, 220, 224, 229 Goucher College, 73, 92, 93, 98f Kentucky State College, 35, 36f
Divinity School building and chapel, Drake Grand Slam Canyon, 192 Kenyon College, 28, 29f, 53, 55f 56, 170-171
Univ., 54, 58f Greek academies, 231 Kettering Neuroscience Center, Oberlin College,
Downing, Andrew Jackson, 167 Greens, 246, 249 108
Draft campus planning model and procedures, Gropius, Walter, 1, 159-160, 214, 215, 216, 218, Kiely, Dan, 224
226-227f 220, 224, 225 Kimball, Fiske, 67
Drake Univ., 54, 58f Groves, 231 Kings Chapel, Cambridge Univ., 92
Duke Univ., 15, 137f 175, 176f 206 Gund, Graham, 97, 173, 197 Kirby Learning Center, Illinois College, 61f
Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis, 171 Klauder, Charles Z., 11, 196-197, 213-214, 228,
Durie, Bruce, 174 Haight, Charles Coolidge, 206—207 229
Halfpenny, William, 167 Kline Biology Tower, Yale Univ., 122
Eames, Charles, 220 Hamlin, A. D., 11, 128 Koch Hall, Wittenberg Univ., 138
Early Modern style, 11, 26 Hamlin, Talbot F., 2 Kolb, David, 53, 54
Eastern Michigan State Univ., 33f 34 Hamline Univ., 109f Krannert Center, Uniy. of Illinois, 73
Eckbo, Garrett, 8, 224, 239 Harkness, Sarah P., 218 Kutztown Univy., 148
Educational Facilities Laboratories, Inc., 136 Hartley, David, 189-192
1837 Hall, Mount Holyoke College, 201f Harvard Univ., 1f, 26, 27f, 53, 56, 81, 119, 121, Laboratory buildings, 21, 24f 25f 54, 55f 63f
Eiseman, Peter, 173 128, 133, 134f 141f 142, 143, 145, 148, 150, LOF=138 21205 1225 24 12532730 |
Electrical Engineering/Computer Science 197, 214, 218, 219f 225, 246 Laboratory of Life Sciences, Washington Univ.,
Building, Univ. of Minnesota, 115, 118f/ 119 Hauf, Harold D., 11 21, 24f
Elmira College, 64, 68/ Haverford College, 248f 249 Lafayette College, 54, 55/
Emory Uniy., 80, 82/ Helpern, Paul, 235 Landscape, 8, 35, 36-38f 39, 40, 47, 164, 166,
Engelhardt, N. L., 138 Helsinki Railroad Station, 220 177, 180-186, 195-196, 224, 246, 249
Engineering II Apollonian courtyard, Univ. of Hisaka, Don M., 207, 239 Late Modern style, 14, 26
California, San Diego, 239 Hitchcock, Henry Russell, 223 Latrobe, Benjamin, 56
Evenden, E. S., 138 Hofstra Univ., 180 Lavalle Uniy., 161, 162f
Exeter College, Oxford Uniy., 189-192, 231, Hogarth, William, 189-192 Lawns, 246, 249
233f Holland Library, Washington State Univ., 92, Lawrence Univ., 49, 50f
Expansion, 47-49 98f Le Corbusier, 21, 128, 197
Experimental Public School (Los Angeles), 2, 4/ Hollins College, 54, 58/ 120f 123 Leatherbarrow, David, 173
Hollis Hall, Harvard Univ., 142 Lehigh Univ., 121, 122f 126
Faculty of History Library, Cambridge Univ., Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, 71, 73 Lescaze, William, 2
91-92, 94f Hornbostel, Henry, 115 Levine Science Research Building, Duke Univ.,
Faculty office buildings, 67—71 Howe, George, 2 137f
Farnham, William W., 207 Hudnot, Joseph, 26 Lewis Thomas Laboratory, Princeton Univ., 130
Faunce Hall, Brown Univ., 81 Hutton, Addison, 121 Libraries, 19f/ 20f 21, 24f, 28, 29f 30, 32f, 34,
Ferrum Junior College, 37/
35, 40, 42, 42f 43f 87-104, 158 170-171,
Fine Arts Building, Univ. of Minnesota, 177 Illinois College, 54, 61/ 211f, 221, 244f

256 Index
 Library Field, Union College, 189 National Acoustics Laboratory, Univ. of
Library Learning Resources Center, Gettysburg Quadrangles, closed, 231, 235
Mississippi, 132f 133
College, 95/ Nature and the Idea of aMan-Made World R. Howard Dobbs Univ. Center, Emory Univ.,
Licklider, J. GC. R., 101 (Crowe), 171 83f
Loos, Adolph, 209 Neo-Functionalism, 221 Radcliffe Camera, 88/; 92
Lopez, Frank G., 3, 212 Netsch, Walter, 93 Ramee, Joseph Jacques, 189
Lovett Hall, Rice Univ., 210/ Neutra, Richard, 2, 10-11, 171 Rapson, Ralph, 220
Low Center for Industrial New College, 183 Recreation centers, 67
Innovation, Rensselaer New School for Social Research (New York Redemptive architecture, 147
Polytechnic Institute, 113f (Gin Oe lsh) Reed Library, State Uniy. of New York,
Low Library, Columbia Uniy., 239 New World Architecture (The) (Cheney), 2-3 Fredonia, 88/, 104, 105f, 106f
Lowell House, Harvard Univ., 26, 27/ New York Uniy., 33f 34 Regeneration, 47-49
Loyola Univ., 209, 211f Newton, Norman, 224 Regionalism, 221
Lycoming College, 25/ Nichold, A. R., 8 Reisman, David, 150
Lyon, Mary, 197 Norberg-Schulz, Christian, 171, 173 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 113f£ 123
Northwestern Univ., 62f 93 Repton, Humphrey, 189-192
Macalester College, 126 Norton, Charles Eliot, 138 Restoration, 47-49
MacPhaun, Simon, 249 Nott Memorial, Union College, 188/ 189 Rhode Island Hospital, 166, 168/
Macroscale architecture, 174-175 Rice Uniy., 207, 209, 210f
Maidique, Modesto, 205 Oak Lane School, 2 Richards Medical Research Laboratories, Univ.
Mallinckrodt Laboratory, Harvard Uniy., 133 Oberlin College, 108 of Pennsylvania, 132f, 133
Mardaga, Pierre, 167 O’Connor, James W., 28 Richardson, Henry Hobson, 207
Marks, L. B., 97 Ohio State Univ., 173 Richardsonian-Romanesque style, 206
Marquette Hall, Loyola Uniy., 209, 211f Oklahoma State Univ., 222f Robbers Library, Univ. of Toronto, 95f
Mary Francis Searles Science Old Main, Kenyon College, 53, 55f 56 Robbins Science Center, Hamline College, 109/
Building, Bowdoin College, 127 Old Morrison, Transylvania Univ., 175 Rock Valley College, 164, 165f
Mary Hufford Hall, Texas Old West, Dickinson College, 56 Roe Art Building, Furman Univ., 76f
Women’s Uniy., 140, 142 Olin Arts Center, Bates College, 251f Rogers II Dormitory Dining Hall, Indiana Univ.,
Maryland Institute College of Art, 148 Olin Hall of Science, Carleton College, 124f 3
Maryville College, 3, 5f Olmsted, Frederick Law, Jr., 167, 170, 205, Roots of Architectural Invention (The)
Massachusetts General Hospital, 133 224 (Leatherbarrow), 173
Massachusetts Hall, Harvard Univ., lf 56 Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Rose, James, 224
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 71, 101, Technology, 183, 187f Rothko, Mark, 73
110, 115, 116f 127, 148, 189, 207, 218, 220 Oxford, 20f 21, 81, 140, 142, 150, 161, 170, Royal College of Art, 246
Maxwell, Robert, 160 172f, 183, 184f 229, 231, 233f 235 Royal College of Music, 246
May, L. J., 87 Oxford Gardens (Batey), 180 Royce Hall, Univ. of California,
McCracken, Henry Noble, 64, 67 Los Angeles, 3, 6f, 53
McHarg, Ian, 189-192 Palmer Hall, Colorado College, 123 Rudolph, Paul, 197, 218
Meem, John Gaw, 49, 167 Palo Alto College, San Antonio, 204/, 252
Memorial Field House, Middlebury College, 40, Panteldis, Veronica S., 87 Saarinen, Eero, 54, 218, 220, 235
41f Paradigms, 175, 196-205, 228-229 Saarinen, Eliel, 1, 214, 215, 218,
Memorial Hall, Harvard Univ., 27f 53 Parish Hall, Swarthmore College, 56 220-221, 224, 225
Memorial Student Union, Univ. of Missouri, Part, Anthony, 54 St. Benedicta Arts Center, College of St.
Columbia, 80 Pat Neff Hall, Baylor Univ., 12f 14 Benedict, 72/, 73
Memorial Union, Emory Univ., 82f Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Yale Univ., 65f St. Benedict’s College, 7f 8, 10
Merton College, Oxford, 246 Peckwater Quadrangle, 194 St. Catherine College, Oxford, 21,
Metcalf, Keyes D., 87, 97, 100 Pein levis 28 Bye
Meyers Hall, Wittenberg Univ., 231, 232f Pelli, Cesar, 34, 77 St. John’s College, 183
Michigan State Univ., 121, 142 Performing arts buildings, 71-77 St. John’s Univ. (MN), 9f, 10, 53
Middle Modern style, 11, 14 Periera, William, 44 St. Joseph College (CT), 189
~ Middlebury College, 40, 41/ Petalson, Jack, 44 St. Mary’s College, 67
Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 1, 21, 157, 173, Pfahler Hall of Science, Ursinus College, 109f St. Paul’s School, 127, 246
214215: 2165220) 223,225 Philosophy, 189-192 Sames, Richard, 136
Millikin Library, California Institute of Place-making techniques, 174 San Francisco State Uniy., 78f 80
Technology, 92 Place-marking techniques, 174, 175 Santa Fe Community College, 195, 239, 243f
Mob Quad, Merton College, Oxford, 246 Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings Sasaki, Hideo, 224
Modern style, 53-54, 213, 215 (Metcalf), 100 Sayles Gymnasium, Brown Univ., 69/, 160
beginnings of, 1-11 Plato, 231 Scarborough College, 84, 85f
demise and resurrection of, 221-225 Platt, Charles A., 224 Schmertz, Mildred F., 73
development of, 11-234 Plazas, 239, 246 Science and Engineering Quad, Stanford Univ.,
early, 11, 26 Polyzoides, Stefanos, 205 110f
Pomona College, 126, 150, 180, 181f 191, 196, Science Building, Lafayette College, 54, 55f
late, 14, 26
middle, 11, 14 225 Scripps College, 150, 195, 205
Modularity, 100-101, 114-115 Pope, Alexander, 35 Searles, Henry Vaughn, 128
Porphyos, Demetri, 160 Searles Hall, Bowdoin College, 129f
Molecular Science Building, Uniy. of California,
Los Angeles, 112f Portland State Univ., 239, 243/ Sentiment, 26
Predock, Antoine, 77 Sert, Jose Lluis, 1, 220
Montana State College, 64, 65/
Price, Bruce, 207 Shaffer, Peter, 1
Moore Ruble Yudell, 77
Price Campus Center, Uniy. of California, San Shelter model, 149
Morgan, William, 127
Morse Stiles College, Yale Univ., 235, 237f Diego, 79f 81 Sherman Fairchild Building, Harvard Univ., 133,
Mount Holyoke College, 42, 42f 97, 197, 200f, Prime activity, 60 134f
Princeton Univ., 49, 51f 84, 85f 128, 130, 197, Signature architecture, 60
201f
246 Signatures, 114
Mount Vernon College, 221
Projects, 175 Simon Fraser Univ., 231, 233f
Mudd Hall of Science, Carleton College, 125/ Smith, Hamilton, 9f
Muhlenberg College, 20f, 21 Pruitt-Igoe housing project (Saint Louis), 223

Index 257
 Turner, Paul V., 214, 229 Upjohn, Richard, 127
Smith College, 169/170
Society for College and University Planning, 228 Urban, Joseph, 2
Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon Union College, 188f 189 Ursinus College, 109f
Institute, 130, 131f U.S. Air Force Academy, 163f 164, 216, 217f
University Hall, Univ. of Denver, 35 Van der Ryn, Sim, 140
Sorbonne, 81
Univ. of Akron, 113f 123 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 206
Soul, Charles C., 87
Southeastern Massachusetts Univ., 197, 202/ Univ. of British Columbia, 192 Vanderbilt Hall, Yale Univ., 206-207
Southern Methodist Univ., 54, 56, 57f 206, 249 Univ. of California Vanderbilt Uniy., 25f, 67, 164
Spelman College, 69/71 Berkeley, 150, 151f, 239 Vanderhef, Larry N., 194
Spence, Basil, 164, 166 Irvine, 42, 44, 46f Vassar College, 64, 67, 183
Sproul Plaza, Univ. of California, Berkeley, 239 Los Angeles, 3, 53, 110, 1124 119, 133, 146f Vaughn, Henry, 127
Stadium Gate, William and Mary College, 18f Riverside, 175 Venturi, Robert, 173, 223
Stanford Uniy., 15, 110, 110f 159, 206 San Diego, 79f 81, 159, 239, 242f Village B, Georgetown Univ., 155
Stark, Freya, 177 Santa Cruz, 224, 231 | Virginia Polytechnic Univ., 164, 165/
Etate Univ. of New York niv. of Chicago, 196, 198f 206, 213-214, Visual Arts Center, SUNY-Purchase, 128
Fredonia, 88f 104, 105f 106f 235, 237f Vitreous State Laboratory, Catholic Univ., 63f
Purchase, 72f, 73, 196 niv. of Cincinnati, 223
Stern, Robert, 160, 246 niv. of Colorado, 196-197, 199f 213, 214, 225 Wabash College, 56, 59f, 60
Stirling, James, 77, 91-92 niv. of Connecticut, 145 Walker, C. Howard, 53
Stowell, Kenneth K., 54 niv. of Delaware, 171, 172f Walker, Ernest E., Jr., 35
Strayer, G. D., 138 niv. of Denver, 35, 37f Walls, 127-136
Stubbins, Hugh, 218 niv. of Detroit, 92-93 Walter Royal Davis Library, Univ. of North
Student housing, 19f 21, 22f 40, 41f° 53, niv. of Helsinki, 248f 249 Carolina, 90f, 91
138-156, 170, 172f 223, 251f niv. of Illinois, 73, 157f Ward, Jaspar D., 136
Sturgis, Russell, 206-207 niv. of Indiana, 73 Warner Art Building, 128
Support facilities, 49, 50f, 84-86 niv. of Iowa, 64, 66f 193f 194 Washington State Univ., 92, 98f 143, 146f
Swarthmore College, 56, 196 niy. of Istanbul, 81 Washington Univ., 21, 24f, 245f, 246
Swearer, Howard R., 194 niv. of Kansas, 16f, 51f Watkin, William Ward, 130
Swiss Student Hostel, Univ. of Paris, 21, 22/ niv. of Kentucky, 231, 233f Webb, Aston, 235
Switzer, Stephen, 189-192 niv. of Louisville, 247f, 249 Webster College, 73
Symbolism, 186-189 niv. of Manchester, 235, 238f Welch Hall, Yale Univ., 207
niv. of Maryland, College Park, 73, 74f, 75f, 77 Wellesley College, 133, 135f
Tarry Research and Education Building, niv. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 108 Wells, Samuel, 197
Northwestern Univ., 62/ niv. of Mexico, 167 West Hall, Portland State Univ., 239
Taylor Hall, Kent State Univ., 193f 194 niv. of Miami, 9f, 147 Western Michigan Uniy., 155f
Technology, 161, 164, 190-191 niv. of Michigan, 101, 107f Wexner Center, Ohio State Univ., 173
library design and, 93, 100f, 101, 104 niv. of Minnesota, 110, 115, 118 119, 127, White Science Center, William Jewell College,
Temple Univ., 191 ROS WOE: 120f, 123
Terrace, Emory Univ., 83f niv. of Mississippi, 40, 41f, 132f 133 Whiteson, Leon, 44
Territorial Capitol Building, Univ. of Iowa, 193f, niv. of Missouri, 80, 93, 99f 101 Will, Phil, Jr., 159
194 niy. of Nebraska, 180, 184/ 231 Willets-Howell Campus Center, Mount Holyoke
Texas A & M Univ., 175, 176f niv. of New Hampshire, Manchester, 84, 86f College, 201f
Texas Christian Univ., 54, 56, 57f niv. of New Mexico, 15, 49, 50f 161, 239 William and Mary College, 15, 18f 19f 21, 160,
Texas Technological Univ., 130, 131f niv. of North Carolina, 90f, 91 175, 195
Texas Women’s Univ., 140, 142 Greensboro, 235, 238f William H. Chandler Hall, Lehigh Uniy., 121
Textile Engineering Building, Texas Technical niv. of Notre Dame, 221 William Jewell College, 120f, 123
College, 131f niv. of Oregon, 142-143, 171 Williams Hall, Univ. of Vermont, 163f, 164
Thompson, Godfrey, 87 niv. of Paris, 14f 14-15, 21, 22f Williston Library, Mount Holyoke College, 42,
Three-dimensional models, 38f niv. of Pennsylvania, 132f 133 42f
Tight, William G., 49, 167 niv. of Pittsburgh, 110, 213 Winn, Michael, 167
Tom Tower, Christ Church College, Oxford, niv. of Saint Thomas, 21, 23f Wise, Herbert C., 11, 213
20f, 21 niv. of Sussex, 164 Wittenberg Univ., 138, 231, 232f
Trafalgar Square, 239 niv. of Texas, 170, 213 Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 141f, 142
Transylvania Univ., 175 Dallas, 181f Wren, Christopher, 91, 108, 212
Trinity College (TX), 10 niy. of the South, 206 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 177
Trinity College (CT), 206 niv. of Toronto, 91, 92, 95f Wriston Art Center, Lawrence Univ., 49
Trinity College (Dublin), 91, 231 niv. of Vermont, 163f 164
Tsinghua Univ., 247f, 249 niv. of Virginia, 57f, 183, 186, 187f 194, 196, Yale Univ., 65f 122, 143, 150, 206-207, 235,
Tudor style, 209 220, 224, 246, 249 237f, 249
Tufts Univ., 136, 138, 170 ee niv. of Washington, 30, 31f, 32f, 34, 96f 161,
Geata)
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CieiaiceCcile(eGie Yamasaki, Minoru, 126
Turnbull, William, 183 230f 231 York Univ., 115

About the Author

Richard P. Dober, AICP, is a principal of Dober, Lidsky, Craig, and Associates, a design group
of long-standing experience in campus development. He is the author of several previous books on
campus planning and design. A graduate of Harvard University, Mr. Dober has consulted on the
physical development of over 350 colleges and universities worldwide and is the recipient of numer-
ous awards in the field.

258 Index
\s

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LB 3223 .D599 1996

Dober, Richard P.

Campus architecture

CAPE FEAR COMMUNITY COLLEGE

WILMINGTON,
M ' NC

3 3 3177 00090 3945