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November 4, 2008, 10:42 AM ET
Addition to Yale's Rudolph Building Gets a Lukewarm Review
Now that the cranes are gone and the construction fences are down, there’s finally a decent photograph of Charles Gwathmey’s addition to the Yale University Art & Architecture Building, the 1963 landmark by Paul Rudolph that is one of the best-known survivors from architecture’s Brutalist era. Unfortunately for Yale and Mr. Gwathmey, the photo accompanies a lukewarm review by Robert Campbell, the longtime architecture critic of The Boston Globe. The building, open since the beginning of the fall semester, will be dedicated Friday.
Mr. Campbell says that Mr. Gwathmey’s firm, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, “has done a great job” renovating the original building, which Yale now calls the Rudolph Building. But he says the addition, called the Loria Center, “is forgettable architecture, a random collage of surfaces of limestone, zinc, and glass that don’t add up to anything particularly expressive or satisfying.”
He adds: “You can’t help feeling sympathetic, though, to an architect who was faced with the task of putting something next to Rudolph Hall, a building that simply radiates power and self-confidence. And when the architect’s client is a faculty of other architects, there’s sometimes too much kibitzing.”
Mr. Campbell’s evaluation is considerably more gentle than that of Stephen Vincent Kobasa, whose review in the New Haven Advocate was nothing short of scathing. It begins: “Not since the house fell on the Wicked Witch of the East has a work of architecture proven so damaging as the new art history center at Yale.”
Over the top? Well, sure. But you can’t say that’s not a great lead. And you can’t say we didn’t warn you.
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