Shop Talk: A Big Building in Vermont, Green Building in Arizona, and More

How big is it? The University of Vermont’s new $61-million Dudley H. Davis Student Center has come under fire for being too big, according to The Boston Globe. Some residents of Burlington complain that the four-acre, 186,000-square-foot complex is an eyesore looming over Main Street at the top of the long hill up from Lake Champlain. But the newspaper found the building humming with student activity.

How green is it? Arizona’s universities are showing the rest of the state how to build sustainably, but the Arizona Daily Star points out that buildings like Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute are hardly the first to make good use of passive solar technology and other tenets of the green-building movement: Native Americans’ cliff dwellings were sustainable centuries before anyone compiled the LEED standards.

How late is it? Riverside City College, in Riverside, Calif., is completing a quadrangle designed in 1923 by the college’s original architect, G. Stanley Wilson. The Press-Enterprise, in Riverside, says additions and renovations to the Renaissance-style quad include a clock tower based on Wilson’s drawings. Money for the construction comes from a $350-million bond measure that residents of the Riverside Community College District approved in 2004.