Baltimore Colleges: The End of Starchitecture, in the Classroom and on Campus?

On the way to the train in Baltimore, I picked up the latest issue of Urbanite, a local magazine that focuses on city living and sustainability. (Up-front disclosure: I’m a contributing writer there.) This month’s issue had a couple of articles that are relevant to readers of Buildings & Grounds.

The first is about community-centered design, the now-familar practice of getting designers — in particular, student designers — to go to needy communities and apply their talents. (See an essay about the topic from the recent Chronicle architecture issue.) The article in the Urbanite, “Building for the Better,” focuses in part on the work of students from the Maryland Institute College of Art, who were working in Greensboro, Ala., and on the architecture program at Morgan State University, which is organizing work in troubled West Baltimore.

“At Morgan we design with social responsibility and environmental stewardship in mind,” Mary Anne Akers, dean of Morgan’s School of Architecture and Planning, tells writer Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. “We try to make an impact in communities that have been neglected, especially in the inner city. We want to design for all, not just for those who can afford it.”

The recent economic meltdown, along with the fundamental challenges of the future, may indicate that the starchitecture era is dead, the article says. “The star system is broken now, and it might be for good,” says John Bielenberg, a do-gooder graphic designer who inspired MICA’s trip to Greensboro. “Instead of saying, ‘Look what I did!’ you say, ‘Look what I was involved in!’ It shifts from the self to a greater cause, and it gives you great satisfaction by being aligned with something rather than merely producing something.” (I would argue, however, that starchitecture has always been around, and as long as some people are able to pay, some starchitects will get work.)

This month’s Urbanite also includes a look at the recent academic building boom, and at how it played out in Baltimore. The writer, Brennen Jensen (a former Chronicle of Philanthropy reporter), highlights some of the buildings that have gone up at Baltimore-area colleges in recent years, then notes how the financial crisis has affected projects on the boards: A project was scaled back at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, debt has accumulated at McDaniel College, and a minor flap developed over the cost of the Athenaeum at Goucher College.

“The building boom hasn’t gone bust yet, but it might lose steam now that students and parents are more interested in financial aid than climbing walls,” Mr. Jensen writes. “In a more frugal era, opening a glitzy new student center might send mixed messages to wage-frozen faculty or tuition-squeezed parents.”