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THE ARCHITECTURE ISSUE
The Chronicle Review's yearly look at architecture examines buildings on and off campuses. Above, Caltech's new Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, designed by Morphosis. (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)
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U. of Tennessee Landmark to Move to Nearby Location
New campus buildings
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The artist James Turrell turned a Pomona College courtyard into a work of art worth waking up at dawn for.
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Boston Architecture Critic Visits U. of Cincinnati, and Misses Politeness
Moore, Ruble, Yudell’s Joseph A. Steger Student Life Center at the U. of Cincinnati.
Robert Campell, architecture critic for The Boston Globe, has paid his first visit to the University of Cincinnati in two decades, and he’s not sure he likes everything he saw.
“Cincinnati feels as if it must have hired every famous architect in the world,” he writes. “The campus is a celebrity party of what real-estate ads are now calling ‘signature architects.’” Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Bernhard Tschumi, Thom Mayne, and Buzz Yudell — among others — have all contributed buildings to a campus whose master plan was drawn up by the landscape architect George Hargreaves.
“What it all adds up to at Cincinnati is a heady air of both excitement and confusion,” Mr. Campbell says. “Big bold buildings belly up to Main Street on every side. They push and jostle at one another. There’s no feeling of architectural politeness. Quite the opposite, in fact. There’s an obvious love of congestion. Things crash together, often at bizarre angles. You get the sense of the colliding multiple initiatives of city life, rather than the calmer, more pastoral image sought by many universities.”
He adds that he likes Mr. Tschumi’s Richard E. Lindner Athletics Center, but he calls Mr. Mayne’s Campus Recreation Center (right) “grim” and “gloomy.” And he notes that Mr. Eisenman’s 1996 design-school building is among structures “already in need of serious repair.”
“Maintenance costs at Cincinnati are going to be high,” he says. “That’s true of most experimental architecture. And the most avant-garde design is, often, the one that dates the quickest.”
Bernard Tschumi’s Richard E. Lindner Athletics Center.
The exterior of Gwathmey Siegel’s Tangeman University Center.
The Gwathmey Siegel building’s interior.
Meanwhile, three of the university’s older buildings have a more traditional setting (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller).
Comments
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As I tell my journalism students, “you cannot cover an infanticide in such a manner that no one will read it. Let me see what you can do with a school board meeting.” Likewise graphic designers – anyone can create something memorable with die-cut, foil-embossed covers, deckel-edged linen pages, metallic ink duotones, and no concern for the intended use of the content. Let me see what you can do with a phone book and a budget.
Celebrity architects who pay no heed to the historical, physical, social and cultural environment in which they are designing, are simply entertaining themselves and seeking to impress their peers. That leaves those who will pay the bills, and use the buildings, out of the loop.
— mhb Nov 20, 03:40 PM #
seriously?!! University of Cincinnati is not an ivy and I applaud the school’s administrators for not trying to duplicate the ivy “ calmer, more pastoral image” that Mr. Campbell expects.
— ucfan Nov 20, 04:57 PM #
Robert Campbell totally misses the point! The University of Cincinnati is one of the nation’s top architecture schools. And students have always been encouraged to visit Chicago for the best turn-of-the 20th century architecture and Columbus, Indiana, for the best mid-20th century architecture. Now the triangle is complete with the University of Cincinnati’s portfolio of turn of the 21st century buildings as well as other outstanding examples of new architecture in the city, especially Zaha Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Center. Campbell, as an Easterner, is compelled to pooh-pooh anything that is done outside his precious East Coast!
— Owen Findsen Nov 21, 12:14 PM #