Even in a Recession, Yale U. Shows Off Its Architecture

Architecture writers heard about Kroon Hall, Yale University’s new forestry building, from Mike Taylor of Hopkins Architects and Mark Simon of Centerbrook Architects and Planners. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)

New Haven, Conn. — Yale University is so proud of its campus that it has gotten into the habit of inviting architecture writers to visit for tours of construction projects, both underway and completed. It’s an interesting publicity tactic — the university offers to pick up the cost of the Metro North train trip from New York (The Chronicle pays its own way, and in any case we’re located in Washington), and then shuttles writers from one site to the next, with each project’s architect on hand to offer to a presentation. Previous tours have centered on Louis I. Kahn’s University Art Gallery and Paul Rudolph’s Art & Architecture Building, now called the Rudolph Building.

A tour on Tuesday made it clear that, despite the economic downturn, the university still has plenty to show off. Barbara A. Shailor, the university’s deputy provost for the arts, noted that the university had recently put most new construction projects on hold, except those for which donors have picked up the tabs. Even so, renovations for two more residential complexes — Eero Saarinen’s 1962 Morse and Stiles Colleges — are still scheduled to proceed, and the vast 1932 Payne Whitney Gymnasium is surrounded by scaffolding for a pricey exterior overhaul.

The tour started out on a Modernist note, with a hard-hat visit to the 1958 Ingalls Rink, also designed by Saarinen. The building — which is really less a building than a huge, exuberant piece of sculpture inside of which you can watch ice hockey — is in the midst of a $25-million makeover by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates. A 12,700-square-foot underground addition, encompassed by a wall that echoes the curves of Saarinen’s original roofline, will house new locker rooms, offices, and training facilities. In addition, the project is adding air conditioning, rehabilitating the arena’s bench seating, and making other repairs.

Ingalls Rink is surrounded by fences as construction continues.

The rink’s wood ceiling was found to be in good shape, although some of its interior concrete required work.

Philip Johnson’s Biology Tower looms over Kroon Hall.

Laura Cruickshank, Yale’s university planner, then led the tour across Prospect Street to Kroon Hall, the university’s just-opened forestry building, designed by the British firm Hopkins Architects, which worked with Centerbrook Architects and Planners. The four-story, $33.5-million building houses faculty offices, classrooms, an auditorium, and social spaces for the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and is aiming to achieve a platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Besides rooftop solar panels that generate electricity and a similar solar system for heating hot water, the building relies on a geothermal heating-and-cooling system paired with masses of concrete that retain warmth in the winter and help keep the building cool in the summer. A computerized system tells occupants when to open windows and when to keep them closed. A new terrace beside the building was constructed on top of a loading dock that serves a number of nearby science buildings through a network of tunnels.

Some of Stoeckel Hall’s terra cotta trim was replaced.

The tour made two other stops. The first was at a sleek, understated sculpture complex constructed two years ago in the middle of a block on the west side of the campus, where it is surrounded by residential and retail structures. The $37.8-million complex, by Kieran Timberlake, includes a parking garage that Steven Kieran said was given pride of place on Howe Street so that its street-level retail space would help keep the neighborhood lively. The four-story, glass-shrouded studio building itself — which has achieved a platinum LEED rating — is tucked in behind a variety of other buildings and has a low, glass-and-wood gallery as its only connection to a street.

The tour’s final stop was at a recently completed renovation project, Stoeckel Hall, built in 1897 as a Venetian Gothic residence for members of a student science society called Chi Phi. Purchased by the university in 1935 and later used by the School of Music, the building has just undergone a $14.6-million renovation, by Charney Architects, that included a four-story addition to house new classrooms for the undergraduate music department and general academic use. One significant challenge was rehabilitating the building’s ornate terra cotta trim, much of which had deteriorated because it was attached to the walls with steel fittings that had rusted. More than 500 pieces had to be recreated. —Lawrence Biemiller

Architecture writers on the stairs in Stoeckel Hall at the end of the tour.

Not on the tour, but well worth walking past, was the 1963 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Marcel Breuer’s 1970 Becton Center was chosen as a test site for wind turbines.

Paul Rudolph’s 1963 Art & Architecture Building reopened last fall after renovation that brought an addition (right) by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. Here it is by day and by night.