 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
What if the sort of extreme weather that has left the University of Iowa inundated in floodwaters is not a freak event? What if it is a sign of things to come? (Photograph by AP Images)
Art & Architecture Renovations Near Completion at Yale U.
Paul Rudolph's 1963 Brutalist icon is getting a makeover, plus an addition by Charles Gwathmey.
Guest Blogger: Anne Stephenson
Even the greenest construction project increases a college’s carbon footprint.
Other News
Land-Rich Universities Weigh New Options for Real-Estate Development
Universities are taking advantage of new ways to develop their holdings through corporate partnerships, a new report says.
U. of Iowa Begins Mucking Out and Assessing the Damage
The university's insurer spent the weekend starting to assess the damage to the auditorium and 19 other flooded buildings.
U. of Iowa Flooding Takes Costly Toll in Research and Equipment
Parking lots are under water, some roads leading to the campus are closed, and the campus utility infrastructure is damaged.
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
Subscribe
Subscribe to Buildings & Grounds in a feed reader.
Get the Buildings & Grounds widget for Facebook, Myspace, or your own blog.
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.
At Yale, Stern Offers Architecture Writers a Hard-Hat Tour
Paul Rudolph’s Art & Architecture Building is due to reopen this summer. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)
New Haven, Conn. — What Robert A.M. Stern says about Yale University’s Brutalist masterpiece, the 1963 Art & Architecture Building, is that persuading the university to renovate it was a “hard sell“—and that he only succeeded in doing so because the building would have cost too much to demolish. Mr. Stern, dean of Yale’s architecture school, is the first to admit that the architecture building “was not beloved by anyone who was not an architecture student or faculty member.”
Nonetheless, he got his way, and the renovation is due to be complete later this year, along with a big addition by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. This morning Mr. Stern and Charles Gwathmey, who were architecture-school classmates at Yale when the building was built, lead a hard-hat tour of the project for architecture writers.
The Art & Architecture Building was designed by Paul Rudolph, one of Mr. Stern’s predecessors as architecture dean, and it’s one of the best-known examples of the Brutalist style. For good measure, it’s right across the street from Louis Kahn’s first famous building, the Yale Art Gallery. The tour promises to be interesting.
The addition, at right, has taken shape north of Rudolph’s building. Among other things, it will provide handicap access to the older building’s main levels.
A large, limestone-clad element is the addition’s most prominent exterior feature. That’s the Yale Daily News building tucked in just beneath it.
Comments
Previous: Postcard From Emory U: a Walk in the Preserved Woods
Next: To Trim Energy Bills, Colleges Try 4-Day Summer Weeks
Beautiful!
— DesignNewHaven-dot-com May 20, 11:33 AM #
The Yale Daily News building seems more than tucked beneath the addition, as described in the caption. Children are tucked into bed, this image is more akin to being shoved out of bed! Perhaps it is the wide angle photo.
— Jim Anderson May 20, 04:13 PM #
The A&A Building has been in the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings (and I could also name a current prominent architect as well)— of buildings that look interesting but never work very well.
— luigi May 20, 04:19 PM #
NB the extension will officially be the Loria Center for the History of Art:
http://www.yale.edu/opa/v35.n21/story1.html
— Benjamin.L May 21, 04:10 AM #
While evaluating the success of a design——especially an addition to iconic architecture by a master——is extremely difficult when just viewing the architectural rendering of one elevation, in this instance it is not difficult to make a judgment. The new Gwathmey addition fails to have any “dialogue” with the exiting Rudolph building. It makes no connection with respect to scale, materials, and any other aesthetic synergy. While Messrs Stern and Gwathmey are brilliant architects in their own right, this formal or informal collaboration results in a melange of materials, and positive and negative forms that do not respect the original architecture.
Perhaps Prof. Scully was correct to suggest an entirely glass facade-a much more deferential approach to adding on……instead of piling on. Yet when the dust settles and the architectural critics have their say, we will NOT face a chorus of “the Emperor has No Clothes.” The Eisenmans, Scully’s, and other arbiters of good architecture will hail the new addition as a masterpiece of 21st C. architecure. They don’t dare rain on the parade of their colleagues.
All who knew the original Rudolph building, while appreciating the brilliance of that architecture, also recognized very quickly the design flaws of the interior spaces that resulted. Once the future Yale architectural students have “lived” and worked (and trust me architectural students do “live in their design studios) in both the new addition and the retrofitted Rudolph Building, then it would be appropriate to have a true post occupancy evaluation of both structures.
Martin Zelnik RA/AIA
Professor of Interior Design (ret)
SUNY/FIT
— Martin Zelnik RA/AIA May 21, 05:44 PM #
There is a design by architect Richard Meier for this history of art building which is radically different from the Gwathmey structure. Quite striking and, typical of Meier, predominately glass. It was commissioned first, but Yale choose not to proceed with it, not on aesthetic grounds, I understand, but because of an astoundingly high construction cost estimate.
— jon May 21, 06:10 PM #