University Architecture

Gibson Hall at Tulane as seen from Audubon Park.

So my sister (a visiting professor at Case [2016 UPDATE – she is now an Associate Professor of History at UNH]) sent me a link to a funny web-comic illustrating american collegiate architecture. This comic hits the nail on the head for a number of different styles of campuses across the country. Of course, because this is the media of a web-comic it only grazes the surface. One of the things that I have always found interesting about architecture is the ideas and concepts that a building can convey to the individual observer, and how institutions can co-opt these signs and signifiers to reinvent their identity and develop a new grammar of style. The other thing is that overtime the connotations of these buildings can get lost, and new un-trained observers start to create a new grammar of form. The interesting thing about this is that the untrained observations seem to have almost a viral growth factor. I think the best example of this from my experience is the original buildings on the campus of Tulane University. The oldest buildings are all ashlar limestone/marble in a Richardsonian Romanesque style, these buildings were the original natural science buildings on campus. Which makes sense because their stone skin evokes the classics and natural sciences which was the school’s specialty in the late 19th century. After a while the campus added two red brick buildings, which became the liberal arts and physics buildings. This makes sense based on the architecture as well, red-brick buildings/universities are associated with the new world and post-industrial society.

This language of buildings, which would have been evident to students 100 years ago, is lost on the population today. Instead, the student lead admission tours explain that these buildings don’t match the rest of the “front quad” because there was a mix-up in between Vanderbilt’s bricks and Tulane’s. This bit of canonical fallacy achieves a similar end result as the “real” reason – the University ends up claiming a piece of legitimacy as a liberal arts institution by comparing itself to a more prestigious school. As an interesting aside, this story of mixed up bricks (which would NEVER happen in real life and not result in a multimillion dollar lawsuit) seems to have propagated to so many different schools that it is hard to figure out where it started and how.

Article: D.C. Paves Way for Environmental Responsibility

US Green Building Council\'s LogoOn tuesday the DCist ran an article about the National’s Stadium being the first LEED rated stadium in the country and the general move of DC towards what may be perceived as “Green Architecture”. (Click here for the article)

I feel that this article fails to clarify some key issues and understand a few things about the difference between “Green Architecture” and LEED. First, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) to quote their own website is “a 501(c)(3) non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings accessible to everyone within a generation.” This group is not affiliated with any state government, and I feel that it bears questioning the merits of requiring new construction to comply with a private non-profit agency (as DC is doing), instead of a public agency. This smells a little too strongly of privatization for me, but thats another post for another day. Second, the LEED system is a method of ranking a building based on points for certain qualifications. While this system requires certain points to be achieved and assigns value to certain points, it is important to understand that the value of these points. A certified building is the lowest tier, silver is third, gold second, and platinum is at the peak. It is possible for a building to garner enough points for a certification by a combination of existing infrastructure, choosing the right products, and painting your roof white. While it is true, all of these help decrease the carbon count of a building and are worth doing, I would hardly say that this is being on the forefront of “Green Design.” In addition there are some green design points which do not figure (or figure very minimally) into LEED ratings, such as operable windows, brownfield redevelopment, and products from renewable resources.

All of this speaks to a larger issue here, what is Green Architecture? Is it designing a building to achieve a punch list of environmentally friendly goals as one would fit a building code or the ADA, or is it something greater? An embracing of alternative design strategies that permeate the entire essence of the building? If we start labeling all LEED buildings as Green Architecture we are doing a disservice to architecture; whilst they may be Green not all are Architecture.

Article: This Diamond Isn’t a Gem

The Washington Post ran an article critiquing the National’s Stadium on the Anacostia Waterfront. (Click here for the article). The author’s main thesis is that while the new stadium functions much better than RFK, it is lacking in charm and thoughtful design.

I personally feel that Mr. Kennicott is both on track and off base at the same time. What he maligns is one of my greatest issues with American contemporary architecture, engineered buildings. The majority of our construction today are buildings meant to function as “machines for living,” they are tweaked and altered to arrive at the lowest cost most program efficient yet bland and boring structures; wouldn’t Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius be so proud?

The Washington Post ran an article critiquing the National’s Stadium on the Anacostia Waterfront. (Click here for the article). The author’s main thesis is that while the new stadium functions much better than RFK, it is lacking in charm and thoughtful design. This can be illustrated in the two quotes below:

The old and much-maligned RFK Stadium, where the Nationals played the past three seasons, might be a better building — more visual interest, more presence on its prominent site, and a better mix of modern style with the city’s vernacular gravitas — but it was a lousy experience. Today, we have a great experience but, alas, a lousy building.

and

[A]s sports lovers know, sports is never just sports. And architecture, especially in a world capital, is never just architecture. Nationals Park might be a better experience than RFK, but it fails to say anything larger to the city, or the world.

I personally feel that Mr. Kennicott is both on track and off base at the same time. What he maligns is one of my greatest issues with American contemporary architecture, engineered buildings. The majority of our construction today are buildings meant to function as “machines for living,” they are tweaked and altered to arrive at the lowest cost most program efficient yet bland and boring structures; wouldn’t Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius be so proud? The new Nationals Stadium was built by HOK, which while known for sports architecture and building stadiums that can turn a profit, is not on the cutting edge of any designs. This is the direction we’ve been moving towards since the last World War, secluding the contemporary avant-garde architecture of Greg Lynn, Morphosis, and the Metropolis/Dwell set to pages of architecture magazines and shimmering California cities, while the rest of the country focuses on the fabric that fills in our aging cities. This is where Mr. Kennicott is off the mark. He discuses iconic stadiums around the world, Calatrava and Herzog and de Meuron’s olympic stadiums, and does not realize that these buildings have arisen out of a new form of critical regionalism – or rather critical regional idealism. Those stadiums show the sense of self that Greece and China wish to be, as does the Nationals Stadium. It shows a Federal Government who functions well without good form, or if you’d rather an ideal of the pinnacle of American utilitarian structures – a building to fade into the background. In this way, the Stadium is a success by all counts.

Article: Architecture and the Ability to Draw People In

The Washington Post has an article (click here for the article) in this Sunday’s “Style” section about two different urban landscape projects in DC. This article is an intersting analysis of two urban landscapes on the boards for DC. The author examines these landscapes in two dimensions: first to see if they fit with the DC status quo and second to explore whether they would be welcome and beneficial explorations of urban space.

The thing about this article that strikes me is that since moving here 3 years ago, DC has always seemed to be a city out of scale. The monumental city is so large and the same rules of planning and vistas have been applied to the commercial districts to create a city which – to the pedestrian – rarely feels crowded. I compare this with Manhattan and Paris and immediately see where they differ (succeed if you will). Both of these cites have broad monumental axis where it is appropriate, yet in the pedestrian commercial corridors space is a commodity. This allows the individual to feel the herd-like nature of the crowd and truly understand the modern city and its perpetual quixotic noise, motion, sights & smells. DC, by creating grand avenues and pedestrian poor business centers, maintains a stoic “each man is his own island” nature that can be easily read as being quintessentially part of the city. The author’s exploration of scale and context for the convention center alleyway speaks volumes to this issue.

On the other hand, the street scape he explores near the stadium seems to be a discussion solely about one rendered image and disregards the reality of this image already in practice within the city. To me, this image – which is included above – could easily be Chinatown, Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Silver Spring, Bethesda or any other gentrified part of the city and its surroundings. It is not against the DC character to populate new urban landscapes with national brands and mega merchandising in a simulacrum of a true urban mixed use development which is closer to Reston Town Center than Old Town Alexandria. As for the whitewashing of the crowd, of which the author is critical, this is slowly becoming the new reality in this city. In areas of urban wealth, minorities are less visible; look at any of the developments I’ve mentioned above and you will see that the crowd or shoppers and diners are mostly white, middle and upper-class, and in their late 20’s and 30’s. I am not an urban ethnographer, so I can’t cite sources and censuses, but this is what i’ve observed. The large lower-class african-american population of DC is slowly being forced into Prince George’s County and those who remain are mostly middle class and do not seem to be the target of the gentrification projects.

In the end, I’m glad that this article is opening the lines of dialogue about DC as a living as well as working city. The need to innovate and recreate has for too long been suppressed for the sake of municipal identity and federal aesthetics. I hope that the architectural spirit of DC is able to adapt and change not just at the monumental and municipal level but also at that the small scale residential.