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Academic Centers for Athletes Draw Donors
More than a dozen university athletics programs have added lavish new facilities in recent years, and academic-services budgets are soaring, a Chronicle survey finds. (Photograph courtesy of Texas A&M U.)
College Employees Value Campus Environment, Survey Finds
When a Chronicle survey asked college employees what they value about their jobs, they put the physical environment in which they work at the top of the list.
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)
Other News
After Hurricane Gustav, Campuses Clean Up
Cleanup crews scoured Gulf Coast campuses, removing downed limbs and repairing broken windows, while students and staff members forced out by Hurricane Gustav waited for word that they could return.
Lessons From Katrina Improve Colleges' Evacuations for Hurricane Gustav
College officials across the Gulf Coast were cautiously relieved when initial reports suggested the damage wasn't severe.
College of Southern Idaho Cafeteria Goes 'Tray-Less'
Students are also wasting less food because they no longer have the option of overloading their cafeteria trays, says the college's food-services director.
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
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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.
Guest Blogger: The Campus as Petting Zoo for Starchitects' Designs
Lawrence Speck, one of May’s Buildings & Grounds guest bloggers, is professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was dean of architecture from 1992 to 2001. He is also a principal in the architecture firm Page Southerland Page.
Should university buildings be showpieces for the individual style of a particular star architect? Can a fine campus be built of a series of iconic, idiosyncratic buildings that focus attention on themselves, becoming landmarks or even logos? In a world often driven by hype and attention grabbing, should universities join the fray and seek to create buildings that will become controversial and grab media attention?
 Lawrence Speck |
Top universities are frequently drawn these days to star architects—“starchitects,” they’re sometimes called—because their names can bring visibility to emerging projects. Like some museums or theatres, a university may seek to gain prominence and a sense of high aspirations in early stages of planning a new facility by linking itself to an architect with an impressive client list and a track record of attracting big donors. In these early stages it is often hard to get people excited about something that is not visible or tangible. Once the name of a well-known architect is attached, an image can be conjured in one’s head—especially if the architect has a clear signature to his or her buildings that might be reliably replicated: Have you seen the Gehry at Minnesota, or MIT, or Case Western Reserve, or Cincinnati?
I should make a distinction between the contemporary star or signature architect and someone who is just a very fine architect with a reputation for doing excellent buildings. The former must be a brand. One must know what to expect, and the product in each case must be a clear reflection of its author. That is what a signature is all about. This group includes architects like Michael Graves, Daniel Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid, as well as others who have a strong personal style from which they seldom stray.
Someone who is just a very fine architect may produce a wide range of buildings with no singular style, no overwhelming personal signature. His or her work might respond more to site, climate, program, and economic situation to produce buildings that vary widely from instance to instance. This group includes architects like Peter Zumthor and Herzog & de Meuron, as well as countless architects who are less well known—in part because their buildings do not make a very marketable package in terms of consistent image.
What is the impact of a building that is a clear expression of its architect’s personal signature on a campus? In the case of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the impact may not be so bad. That part of the MIT campus was drab and characterless. It was filled with pretty banal buildings, save one by Lawrence Anderson from the 1930s. The Gehry building sucks up all the attention and shuns its context in a fairly effective way.
But in most good campus settings, these prima-donna buildings can strike a crushing blow. A campus with a whole series of strutting divas could become just a petting zoo for famous architects’ personal statements. Is that really what institutions of higher education should be communicating about themselves?
You can read Mr. Speck’s earlier posts here and here.
Buildings & Grounds | Wednesday May 28, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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The Frank Gehry building at Case Western Reserve has a history to make the most rational of us believe in luck—particularly bad luck. I worked at Case (although not in the building itself) during its construction, dedication and opening. After the opening there was an internal flood, a deadly invasion by a crazed armed gunman and a philanthropic boycott of the whole Cleveland community by the building’s principal donor and namesake who was outraged at how the cost of construction had mushroomed.
But it wasn’t all bad. The building was particularly entertaining in the Cleveland winters. Many’s the time I warmed myself for a few minutes in the solar-oven effect produced by the sun’s reflection off the stainless steel siding. The same heating qualities caused snow on the upper levels to melt, move and refreeze, eventually cantilevering over the sidewalk as if in homage to Frank Lloyd Wright. The cantilevering snow would eventually fall, creating mini avalanche conditions that necessitated the closing of the sidewalk below. From across the street you could gauge the power of the goundskeepers’ snowblowers by looking at the levels of tarnish on the side of the building from salty snow.
Inside, on the ground floor, it was hard to talk over the rattle and hum of the HVAC noises coming from a machine room near the café. In certain rooms, you could look out windows and see accumulated pigeon crap in places unreachable to any cleaner without a cherry picker.
To me, these add up to a high price to pay for a few fawning articles by architecture writers, a moderate trickle of Gehry fans and “bragging rights.”
I think most campuses will find one “diva” building to be quite enough without taking on a whole “petting zoo.”
— J. McClain May 28, 12:08 PM #
i have also visited the gehry building at Case. as a separate entity it is a beautiful sculpture. unfortunately it is located in an urban setting and is frequented by 100+ students and visitors daily. if you hire gehry you have to know that u do not get a practical building, but a very detailed sculpture.
i want to stress that when most talk of bad university buildings they mention gehry or eisenmen’s mulit-million dollar interesting yet poorly constructed facilities at ohio state and cincinnati, yet few mention the great structures that can be produced from responsible architects such as mayne’s student center at cincinnati.
— j. morschl May 28, 03:16 PM #
i went to university at a campus that has a fair few famous buildings by well known architects (in australia at least), some of the buildings being the best work of said well known architects.
apart from the archi tour group we had wandering through our studios when we were having class, which was very weird and made us feel like pieces in an exhibit, it was fantastic! having more than one ‘diva’ building lent the campus an exuberance that it wouldn’t have otherwise had.
coincidentally, i also went to a primary school and secondary school that are famous buildings in melbourne archi circles (not that i knew it at the time). the best thing about those buildings to me at the time was that you could tell that someone really cared about them and really put in a lot of effort. also, they didn’t just look like bog-standard school buildings, they felt unique.
so call me shallow if you will, but having gone to university, secondary school and primary school in well known buildings made me proud of those institutions.
— anna May 28, 07:46 PM #
As an architectural historian who taught on a campus that had iconic buildings from star architects — FL Wright, Saarinen, Mies, Netsch, Graham — the “petting zoo” was of enormous pedagogical value. Art and architecture courses could tour the history of American architecture on campus. We live in a culture that demolishes buildings at every turn. If campuses are not a place for fostering AND KEEPING architectural statements, where is?
— A. Stephenson May 29, 09:19 AM #