March 2008 Archive

Colorado State University’s new 700-seat, $16-million Ram’s Horn dining center has sustainability built right into the kitchens and dish rooms.

The ambitious goal will involve installing lots of green-energy technologies and retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient; that work will have to be done by local workers.

Laurence D. Spraggs, the college president, tussled with county officials over a communication-arts building and arrived at the college four years ago with a plan to build dormitories at the college, which have not been built.

“Boy, is that an oxymoron — the college trying to preserve the river shoreline after it built almost on the river’s edge.”

Buildings & Grounds news from across North America

Our March guest blogger offers some final words of encouragement for academe.

“You still have to choose the right markets,” says a vice president of Campus Apartments Inc., “and you have to design a project that is right for that particular market or your project will suffer.”

The company Metropolitan Lifelong Learning Center will line up higher-education institutions to fill the rooms with satellite classes and lectures.

Critics say a glass cube planned for a red-brick “Jeffersonian” gymnasium would spoil downtown Granville, Ohio.

And it’s not like the university is catching up. In 2005 the cost was estimated at $500-million.

Lewis E. Calver, an associate professor and chair of biomedical communications at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, beat out 120 other contestants to win The Chronicle’s Back-of-the-Envelope Bush Library design contest.

Construction of Auraria Higher Education Center will go on, campus officials say.

A 650-student institution on the reservation of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota is erecting a 290-foot-tall turbine that can generate 660 kilowatts of electric power.

After a major disaster, it will take three to seven days for federal assistance to reach Berkeley, so “students will have to be on their own.”

The State of Colorado has pulled $37.5-million out of a science-building project for a campus used by three institutions.

The university is “trying to create some breathing space” until major renovations can be completed.

One 104,000-square-foot building is already open, with a second due to be completed next year.

The topic of sustainable agriculture, education, and young people seems to be in the zeitgeist of the moment.

Courtyards can be exceptionally appealing places. But on American college campuses they’re comparative rare.

The university is $25-million in debt, and faces an estimated $60-million in deferred maintenance.

The chancellor’s house at the University of California at San Diego has been spared demolition after four years of protests—in part for its historic background, but mostly because of the ancient Indian burial ground on which it sits.

Penn State spokeswoman Lisa Powers said the new fee would raise $8.2 million in annual revenue for “non-academic facility improvements such as fitness and other recreational space, eateries and students office and meeting areas.”

The 130,000-square-foot structure, designed for both recreational and social uses, was incomplete at the time of the earthquake that wreaked havoc on the campus.

Tulane joins a nationwide movement of colleges committed to curtailing their emissions of greenhouse gases

Building users have difficulty believing that less space could really offer them greater benefits, but a tight fit may be one key to buildings that spark creativity.

Not only does the university’s 1999 administration building leak, but a newspaper reports that some floors are misaligned by as much as two to three inches.

At Lehigh University’s renovated Linderman Library the woodwork and detailing has been brought back to its original luster.

Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the C.V. Starr East Asian Library houses over 900,000 books.

The Association of College and Research Libraries and the Library Administration and Management Association have released a guide for architects and librarians who are planning new construction and renovations.

Edward Durell Stone probably didn’t have skateboard parking in mind when he designed Harvey Mudd College’s campus

Had we thought of a library-design contest back when the Clinton Library was proposed, you can bet we would have done it.

Buildings & Grounds news from across the country and around the world.

Can buildings strike a balance between protecting their occupants and encouraging a freewheeling exchange of ideas?

Campus Apartments Inc. plans a 398-bed apartment complex on land leased from the university.

The university is looking for building sites, and the three towers occupy a spacious “superblock” in Manhattan

The government will give the Pacific Northwest College of Art a surplus 1916 building that is included on the National Register of Historic Places

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Stata Center and the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Building are right across the street from one another—but they’re worlds apart.

A four-story, $74.5-million project will add new teaching and research labs.

Buildings & Grounds news from across the country

A two-building, 132,000-square-foot complex will house teaching, laboratory, and training space as well as campus amenities

Doing so would let “a psychopath govern … from the grave,” writes Steve Chapman.

Neil Denari, of the University of California at Los Angeles, has designed a striking 14-story condominium in New York.

James F. Barker, Clemson University’s president, says the kind of Renaissance education that architecture schools offer is a good preparation for campus leaders.

If higher education is really in the business of preserving and passing down knowledge, should agricultural knowledge be part of the mix?

A $12-million building for displaying, studying, and storing the university’s collection of more than 2,300 quilts will open March 30.

Susan Painter, a design psychologist who is a senior planner at the architecture firm AC Martin Partners, answers questions about campus housing.

Six architecture-school projects win awards for course development and architectural teaching.

Buildings & Grounds news from around the world.

Some architecture schools are housed in “some of the worst buildings on their campuses,” says Thomas Fisher

Pomona College spent $9.7-million renovating a 1999 campus center to fix problems that were keeping students away.

At Saint John’s University, midwestern carpentry skills, truckloads of local wood, thousands of tons of concrete, and the eye of a radical architect came together to defy gravity.

Ron McCoy works at Arizona State University, where the president plans on expanding—by a mere 30,000 students.

Less than a decade ago, architects and planners focused on developing hang-out spaces for campuses. Now the challenge is to respond to how today’s students actually build and live in their social networks.

In coming months, Buildings & Grounds will feature regular contributions from experts in architecture, sustainability, energy, and campus planning.

Scott Carlson takes a look at entries in our back-of-the-envelope George W. Bush Presidential Library contest.