• At Stanford, Projects Worth $1.5-Billion Move Forward

• Architecture Firm Sues Ohio State U. Over Contract Cancellation

• Demise of Berkeley Museum Plan is 'Huge Disappointment' for Architecture Fans

• Lenoir Community College Will Construct New Health-Sciences Building

Among the New England Conservatory's newly renovated buildings is St. Botolph Hall. (New England Conservatory photos)

Concluding a $20-million overhaul of its four buildings, the New England Conservatory has reopened Jordan Hall, a 1903 concert hall celebrated for its acoustics. The buildings received new roofs and many new windows, and much of their brickwork was repointed. In addition, some damaged marblework was replaced in Jordan Hall, and new terra cotta ornaments were cast to replace sections that had decayed. New high-efficiency boilers were installed as well. The conservatory celebrated completion of the project—which was finished ahead of schedule and under budget by Tishman Construction—with a party for neighbors and friends (left).

The University of Central Florida Health Sciences Campus has a new 198,000-square-foot home for its Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences...

Campus architecture and facilities news from around the Web:

• Boston College Plans 160,000-Square-Foot Academic Building

• Yale Earns LEED Gold for Rudolph Hall Renovation and Expansion (Left: The renovation restored orange carpet to Paul Rudolph's best-known building; Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)

• Cret's Legacy Towers Over the U. of Texas at Austin

• Enjoy Thanksgiving!

Roosevelt University is planning a glass-sheathed 32-story building that will have classrooms, labs, faculty and administrative offices, housing for 600 students, and a recreation center. The building is necessary, the Chicago institution says, because it expects a 50-percent increase in enrollment from 2007 to 2017.

The building, designed by VOA, will replace an existing dormitory on a 100-foot-by-170-foot lot on Wabash Avenue. It will adjoin the university's main building, an 1896 landmark by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler that was constructed to house the Auditorium Theater, a hotel, and an office building (left: The new glass tower rises beside the stone-clad Auditorium Building; Roosevelt U. images). According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Roosevelt closed the existing dorm, the Herman Crown Center, after concluding that equipping it with a sprinkler system would cost more than the...

Campus architecture and facilities news from around the Web:

• Company Builds Pre-Fab Parapets for Mr. Jefferson's Pavilion X (Left: Pavilion X with its parapet restored; U. of Virginia image)

• U. of Delaware Acquires 272-Acre Chrysler Plant in Newark, Del.

• U. of Louisville Names a Building for Former President Who Later Resigned from U. of Tennessee

This week's Chronicle has an article about colleges that are working with heirloom or "heritage" foods in their dining halls or in their research. Emory University is one of them—last week Emory served up 1,600 pounds of Standard Bronze and Bourbon Red turkeys, two breeds that date back to the 1800s but are in danger of dying out for lack of demand. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Producers of heritage or "heirloom" foods are fighting an uphill battle against the agriculture industry, which selects animals and plants for mass production and broad commercial appeal. In the process, foods that fed generations have been lost, along with their DNA and their traditions.

The heirloom-food movement might be the philosophical ground where gourmands and sustainability advocates meet—perhaps over a plate of barbecued Tennessee fainting goat, a rare breed noted as much for its lean, tasty...

Campus architecture and facilities news from around the Web:

• Renovation of U. of Oklahoma Architecture Building Reaches Halfway Point (Left: Gould Hall rendering; U. of Oklahoma image)

• U. of Nebraska Regents Approve Plans for an Innovation Campus

• Cost of Campus Projects in Indiana Worries Some

A new contemplation garden at the University of California at Davis honors the Patwin people, who once inhabited the land that became the campus. The garden, part of the university's 100-acre arboretum, is located on the bank of Putah Creek and includes 34 kinds of trees and plants that the Patwin used. The garden identifies many by their Patwin names.

The shape of a seating area in the new garden at the U. of California at Davis recalls the initial coil of a Patwin basket. (U. of California at Davis photo)

The garden also includes a series of engraved basalt columns, one of which records the names of 51 Patwin men, women, and children who were removed to missions between 1817 and 1836, when California was controlled by Spain and, later, Mexico. You can watch a slide show about the garden by clicking here.

The garden is within view of the university's performing-arts center, on the ...

Campus architecture and facilities news from around the Web:

• Georgetown U. Shows Off a 10-Year Campus Plan (Left: the plan; Georgetown U. image)

• Virginia Tech and Blacksburg Pursue Sustainability Together

• Blue Mountain Community College Plans New Facility in Hermiston, Ore.

• New Jesuit Residence Adds Confusion to Look of Fairfield U. Campus

The University of California at Berkeley has scrapped high-profile plans for a $143-million art museum by the Tokyo firm Toyo Ito & Associates Architects, the museum's director said Wednesday. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the university canceled the project after raising only $81-million of the $200-million it sought in a capital campaign for the museum. But the museum's director, Lawrence Rinder, said it would still build an "innovative and affordable" new museum at some point.

The Toyo Ito building, planned for a site in downtown Berkeley, was to have replaced museum's current home, a poured-concrete Modernist structure on Bancroft Way that dates to 1970. Designed by Mario Ciampi and associates Richard L. Jorasch and Ronald E. Wagner, it was given a partial seismic retrofit in 2001 that allowed the museum portion of the facility to reopen. But the Pacific Film Archive,...