April 2008 Archive

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Djuna Barnes, Paul Robeson, and Bette Davis once performed at the Provincetown Playhouse, in Greenwich Village.

Campus news from Louisiana State University, Northern Illinois University, Stanford University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Washington.

Midcentury modern has reached that unloved age that all architectural styles pass through.

Rafael Viñoly’s new building for the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles is “one of the most compelling architectural set pieces in all of Los Angeles” — mainly for the way it uses a tricky site.

Buildings and grounds news from the Universities of Colorado at Boulder, South Florida, and Wisconsin at Madison.

People at the University of Colorado believe that the new living arrangements will encourage the sort of serendipitous encounters between professor and student that lead to engaging discussion and learning.

Can a high-profile architect produce a masterpiece that appeals not only to big-name donors who want to put their names on a fresh and exciting design?

Carolyn Green Boone—the great-granddaughter of James E. Shepard, the university’s
founder—told a crowd at a meeting that the expansion would harm historic neighborhoods and that critics had been ignored in the planning process.

York College of Pennsylvania is refurbishing a manufacturing facility once owned by the York Narrow Fabrics Company, whose mainstay for decades was producing spools of red woven fabric — or “red tape” — used to wrap government documents.

Some of our fondest memories are likely of tree gardens—a densely planted courtyard of a campus quadrangle, an allée leading to an historic building, an orchard.

For Arthur Andersson, who likes working with natural light, designing the gallery space was a bit constraining because the clients wanted no windows. But he cheated, a little.

Mark McVay was in for some surprises when he visited his undergraduate alma mater.

The university paid just $109-million for the complex, a price that works out to $73 per square foot for state-of-the-art facilities that would have cost $650 to $700 per square foot if the university were to start from scratch in downtown New Haven, Conn.

The explosion damaged both the backup boiler and the main boiler, particularly a valve on the main steam line. More troublesome, it scattered asbestos around the blast site.

Buildings & Grounds news from across the country

The Lewis Science Library is as angled, eclectic, and interesting as any of Frank Gehry’s recents works.

A roundup of campus historic-preservation news.

Many institutions hire landscape architects only to shrub-up new buildings, says Gina Crandell, a Buildings & Grounds guest blogger.

In a class assignment, Audrey M. Copeland discovered that more than two million tons of polystyrene products are dumped into landfills nationwide every year. So she did something about it.

Harmony in the Age of Noise, which will be installed on the roof of the university’s library, is a little tricky to describe.

Buildings & Grounds News from Across the Country

Pope Benedict XVI will bless a 50-year-old building that is being renovated for a graduate school of theology.

Campus construction updates from Arizona, Hawaii, Indiana, and Pennsylvania

Short reviews of Elizabeth Farrelly’s Blubberland, Gwedolyn Wright’s USA, and Sanford Kwinter’s Far From Equilibrium

The organization’s Committee on Architecture for Education gave awards to buildings at Averett, Christopher Newport, Johns Hopkins, and Pennsylvania State Universities, and at Edison State Community College and Santiago Canyon College.

Designers did not charge more for laboratory buildings, which are traditionally complicated projects, than they did for residence halls, which are simpler.

Faced with a budget crunch, the university should sell off the island paradise in the South Pacific, critics say.

“Attracting and being able to hold our assistant coaches is a high enough priority to put some money into,” said the chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees, Burt McMurtry.

Chuck Dingus, very much in the tradition of The Daily Show, describes some of the sustainability initiatives at Lone Star College.

Buildings & Grounds news (or not) from colleges and universities across the country

Within the next couple of years, the college plans to start putting up enough solar panels to essentially take the college off the grid.

A state senate committee looks closely at an unfinished $45-million biotechnology and life science center.

A mistake during a renovation project has led to widespread lead contamination in part of one Manhattan neighborhood.

We understand natural processes better when we can contrast them with our interventions, Gina Crandell says.

Many campus construction projects are moving forward. And some colleges are trying to speed up projects to limit the damage done by rising construction costs.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania is mspending $270-million to replace all of its old student housing.

Getting a platinum certification in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program is not easy. Getting the highest-rated LEED building in academe, as Northern Arizona University did, is quite a feat indeed.

A story in this week’s Chronicle looks at the cost of LEED certification and features some colleges that have decided build green but skip certification, which they think is too costly.

Architects often confronts a difficult question: Who owns the idea of what the campus means?

New York University’s merger with Polytechnic University brings real estate and air rights, the State University of New York at New Paltz improves space utilization, and more.

Buildings & Grounds news from across North America

Offficials are debating whether to renovate or replace Assembly Hall, built in 1963.

The projects will provide 10 to 15 percent of the university’s power.

The hearing featured Robert Birgeneau, chancellor of the U. of California at Berkeley, Jacqueline Johnson, chancellor of the U. of Minnesota at Morris, and Richard C. Levin, president of Yale U.

Has your institution established a successful place for faculty learning?

Often what is done in an arboretum is simply subtractive—invasive species have been removed. But often an arboretum (as well as a campus) is a garden.

Matthias Ruth, of the University of Maryland, pointed out that even if all carbon emissions stopped tomorrow, climate change would continue to occur well into the future. “We should start thinking about adaptation,” he said.

The Millennial generation effortlessly juggles multiple sources of simultaneous information. How should that affect campus design?

Kelsey L. Felthousen, a Fine Arts graduate student, has built what she calls an “inside-out house” right in the middle of a campus quadrangle.