"It’s so cold that faculty members need layers of office rugs to keep their feet warm. It’s also confusing — a partially connected horizontal labyrinth spanning a city block. When it opened in October 1969, a student got lost and was late to class, establishing a UW rite of passage. 'Is this supposed to be some kind of maze?' the student huffily asked a Daily Cardinal reporter.
Current plans call for Humanities’ removal between 2029 and 2030, to be replaced by modern academic buildings..... How did such an ambitious project by one of America’s most innovative architects turn into a punch line?... [T]he state awarded the contract to Chicago architect Harry Weese... His tastes clashed with the dominant International Style of glass and steel. He remained partial to natural materials, though he often challenged them to do unnatural things..... 'Weese’s first impulse was to subvert the apparently logical way to do something and then see how he could resolve all of the problems brought on by the initial decision,' [art historian Robert] Bruegmann wrote."
The topic here is architecture, but I welcome comments that branch out into other situations where the idea seems to have been "to subvert the apparently logical way to do something and then see how [you can] resolve all of the problems brought on by the initial decision." Don't confuse this with the idea of rejecting tradition and going on logic. This is rejecting logic, thereby creating problems, and achieving greatness by solving the problems that you created.
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Mary Dahlman Begley, my daughter, previously wrote about the Humanities building and Ann was kind of enough to write a post about her essay.
Now that Mary Begley is an architect, she can design the replacement!!
Here's an idea. Don't design a building to be a work of art, especially one that requires an explanation of the art ("subvert the apparently logical way to do something ..."). Instead, design it so that the people who use it find it comfortable and useful. An idea so crazy it just might work.
If you want to get rid of it sooner, just start the rumor that Weese meant it to be a modern day plantation house, or that students once called it the slave shack.
What made me a conservative? I took a course in the 1980s called Congressional Politics and the thesis of the semester was "Just cut a check." That is, much of a Congressional effort revolves around creating policy, law and regulations that seek to benefit one group at the expense of the other, but they are loathe to simply transfer money between the two. Given this reluctance, Congress creates "programs" which "subvert the apparently logical way to do something" and then more laws and regs and policies are needed a few years later "to resolve all of the problems brought on by the initial decision". In short, just cut a check.
The problem with the building is not the 'look' or the style (I'm not a fan of Brutalism, but I kind of like this one), it's the lack of basic function; providing a shelter that actually shelters.
Nobody should be living/working in a place that leaks or lets in the freezing air.
I've read the same complaints by owners of Frank Lloyd Wright homes...they're beautiful and fit their environment, etc., but as shelters they are sub-par.
'“The state said, ‘Oh well, just build it for whatever money you have. It only needs to last 30 years,’ ” says Gary Brown ’84, the UW’s director of campus planning and landscape architecture.'
Only 30 years? Your tax dollars at work...
Bad architecture is a sign that a university culture has started to detach from pragmatics. Buildings strongly call for predictability and useful functionality.
There was a similar outcome at UC Berkeley in the 1960s when architects with conflicting visions were forced to work together. The brutalist Wurster Hall was the result, with the elegance of an unfinished prison plus a strange fixation on horizontal concrete oddities. Function? Dust, water, and debris catchers?
http://exhibits.ced.berkeley.edu/exhibits/show/donald-olsen-modern-master/wurster-hall
https://eastbayexpress.com/the-bay-is-brutal-a-love-letter-to-concrete-and-brutalism-in-the-bay-area-2-1/
I've always liked the place on the outside. On the inside, it's a tomb.
The symbolism I found in the Humanities Building was of a pair of millstones, ready to grind, after all the sifting and winnowing.
Neo-Greco Brutalism. That style never caught on.
Never been on the inside. Perhaps Bucky the Badger can serve as the Minotaur on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
"On the inside, it's a tomb."
They teach the modern version of Humanities. Tomb is what it should look like.
This building sounds like the opposite of the French Administration building at my alma mater, Washington State University.
It was derided as "Fort French" because it looked as if designed to repel an invasion, but inside it was airy, spacious and full of light.
The state said, ‘Oh well, just build it for whatever money you have. It only needs to last 30 years’
Old saying in software development projects: “There’s never enough resources to do it right the first time, but there’s always enough resources to do it over.”
Still, by 1969 everybody should have been aware of the need for double-pane windows even if the first energy shock was years in the future.
Socialist realism on the outside. Socialist delusion on the inside.
THe imposition of elite taste onto the unthinking masses. Castor Oil art.
Many of the large lecture halls in the building are infamously inaccessible to people with disabilities thirty years after the Americans With Disabilities act.
I have to disagree with an earlier comment that the problem with the building is not the look or the style. It is absolutely the problem, or at least, the most obvious one. The building more closely resembles a prison, with it's courtyard right out of a Solzhenitsyn novel. It's awful.
I've never been a fan of the Brutalist style. They don't age well. A couple of generations (or more) down the road and people look at it as a hideous beast. Great architecture should not be time limited. It should look great, even better, over time. People should be writing glossy accolades about it, not questioning it's looks, purpose, or asking the worst question of all: Why? Why was it built?
Interestingly enough, a long time ago, before mobile phones or laptops, I was in school at Michigan State University. I have not been back there since the late 70s. I'm planning a trip to Michigan later this fall and I'm taking a day to walk the campus and the small town of East Lansing. Just to jiggle some memories and see how things have changed. Looking at an image on Google maps, I saw the most contemporary Broad Museum of Art alongside the old Collegiate Gothic style of Berkey Hall (c. 1947), where I once took classes. It's pretty typical for this campus. The campus is a beautiful place, truly one of the more beautiful in the country, but the buildings vary, depending on which part of campus they are located. As the campus grew, new buildings in different styles were used. Collegiate Gothic, Beaux Arts, Richardson Romanesque, International, and Brutalist. Looking forward to a look at it, 44 years since I was last there. I'll probably find the same guys walking around the Philosophy Dept. in their sandals.
Speaking of tombs -
"Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness."
Matthew 23:27
Frank Lloyd Wright: “If the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough.”
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/roofing/21015353/wright-house-wrong-roof
Don't confuse this with the idea of rejecting tradition and going on logic. This is rejecting logic, thereby creating problems, and achieving greatness by solving the problems that you created.
This is a common problem. You can see it every time Apple does an "update" to the iPhone, a nd makes things worse.
Or, for that matter, notice how many stoplight intersections with left hand turn lights have the turn do something other than "left hand turn gets green at beginning of that direction". Notice how few times it is that teh change actually makes sense.
There's this class of people who are desperate to "put their mark" on something, but are too stupid to be able to have their "mark" be an improvement, yet who just don't care, they're going to "make their mark"
This building seems like an expensive case of that. "I can't come up with anything actually useful, so I will break what is known to be useful!"
Flat roofs in Wisconsin. They don't work well. Snow piles up and creates enormous weight that a pitched roof would simply shed. The weight requires extra strength in the walls and extra expense. And the rain finds all the cracks to seep through and all the low points to pool in. But Frank Lloyd Wright liked the look of Southwest architecture - flat roofed adobe structures in a dry country - and brought that look to Wisconsin. And we can't get rid of it.
Italian patio and piazza architecture in Wisconsin. Piazzas are made for strollers, enjoying the balmy Italian air. Wisconsin's not for strollers for most of the winter. You don't sit about outdoors on concrete. There's days where you'd die in half an hour if you were outside without covering. And the wind blows. There's a lot of days with cloud cover so architectural coverings that depend on blue sky and bright sun to look good don't work here.
They say we have the summers of France and the winters of central Russia. But we can't have one set of buildings for the summer and another for the winter. Also we have the American Fall. I guess I'm trying to say that architects have been designing in Wisconsin for Italy or New Mexico and then trying to make their designs fit the Polar Vortex area and then skimping on double windows and double doors.
I don't know. Fire pit areas with barbecues for sociability? Old station wagons parked about for tailgating parties? Ice fishing huts for party rooms?
I see UW's "Humanities" referred to as brutalist, and in an interview architect Weese said he was "anti Frank Lloyd Wright" in college; Wright was considered old-fashioned. Isn't this a bit like some of the Wright projects? Does the grid work resemble the "Mayan" features of Wright's Los Angeles homes, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo? Joe Smith mentions that Wright was often criticized for the lack of comfort or functionality in his buildings. In fairness, did he struggle during construction with challenges of his own making, and then force those who came after him to continue the struggle? Is this part of architecture as art--all users and viewers of a building should be grateful to be in the presence of the greatest architect in the world? This kind of stuff of course inspired Ayn Rand.
I like the debate about big glass panels on the outside of high-rises, which has come up in Toronto and Sydney. Clients and architects love the glass; engineers warn that no one can really guarantee the quality of an entire production line of glass--I'm not sure why. So in a somewhat random way, some of the sheets of glass will fall in a way that threatens lives. A noble struggle to explore the new, and then (secondarily) make it work? Like Columbus "discovering America," the example we're never supposed to mention?
Even the outside looks like a prison. Vertical slat windows. Very European city, right?
How did such an ambitious project by one of America’s most innovative architects turn into a punch line?
To ask the question is to answer it. A routine project by an architect who hews to tried-and-true designs and processes doesn't result in a punchline. The main failure here is not with the architect, but with the choice of the committee that hired him to chase greatness.
This is positively gorgeous compared with the U Of Illinois Chicago campus.
Every public university has at least one building known for being hideous and semi-functional. Penn State has the Hammond, A 60 year old piece of sterile architecture which cuts off the campus from the town. It's not as hideous as the Humanities at UW but it is a monument to 50s bland conformity.
That story you link to really doesn't tell what's wrong with the place, aside from the fact that they built it cheap, with the predictable problems from that decision.
It's ugly, but quite a few buildings are ugly. But I have no idea why it isn't functional, aside from the cheap construction.
I've often thought the building was designed for the wrong climate. It may have lasted longer in a dry, warm climate, but with freeze/thaw cycles, intrusion of salt -- concrete is going to deteriorate and water will infiltrate (as noted in the article).
I'm not certain a replacement building will be any better though. Low-bid architecture and construction as demanded by the State can't lead to anything good. I'm not willing to fund the creation of a new building either. (Nor am I able, to be clear)
Never been to Madison, and so can only react to the photos in the article. The first one presents the facade as a skewed form of a 1960s 'decorated box'. The Kennedy Center in DC, or some of the buildings in Lincoln Center in NYC, are more famous versions -- square boxy center, coupled with a peristyle of columns holding up a massive cornice/roof line. For my money, the East-West Center at UHawaii (I.M.Pei) is a more attractive example, also from the same period, and one that works with its setting rather than fighting it as does the UW building.
Unfortunately, the UW version seems to work hard to kill off one of the main advantages of the 'decorated box' -- a design focused on functionality, to make it easy for people to read and use the spaces for the intended purpose. The UW one achieves that dubious aim by marrying the 'decorated box' to the weirdness of such Brutalist classics as Boston City Hall or the Art & Architecture Building at Yale. The A&A Building, like this UW example, had lots of ramps, cantilevered levels and such, all executed in unadorned concrete, making the interior a confusing and off-putting maze. User friendly, A&A was not (as I remember from trying to navigate it back in the day).
Like a lot of projects that got tagged as 'art' in that time period, the aesthetic theory came to dominate the object, until with Conceptual Art it replaced the object as a focus of attention altogether. When this building was constructed, and even today, there are many who described it as a 'work of art.' And architecture, at its best, surely should strive to be. But used in this context, the 'work of art' shtick takes over from the main objective of architecture -- creating an inviting space that fosters the human activity for which the space is intended. As the Building-as-Art approach was expressed in this building, it looks like the aesthetic theories giving priority to the structure as an art object came to trump (!) more pedestrian ones of functionality, as the criticisms by the building's users reflect. The same is true of the A&A Building, among other more purely Brutalist misfires.
I suspect UW would have done far better if it had used an architect like Pei or Louis Kahn for this project. Their buildings from the same period embodied a similarly strong aesthetic idea, but fostered rather than frustrated the intended users, and have aged well in comparison.
I, like Enigma, was reminded of UC/Berkeley, but not of Wurster (which, incidentally, has been renamed recently IIRC). For me, the point of reference was Dwinelle Hall, whose architecture is unbelievably confusing. Not the outside, which is pretty unremarkable, but the interior. You'll be trotting along a floor and the 300s suddenly turn into the 6000s, and so forth. I don't think I had any coursework there, apart from the odd discussion section, but man was it difficult to navigate.
Does the roof leak?
It's wonderful what fulfillment an architect can achieve when being paid by a bureaucracy using other people's money. The violation of logic here is using tax money instead of tuition and endowment funds to build campus buildings.
I recall chaperoning eight 5th grade boys on a class trip to Madison that included a walk down State Street. Passing the sloped stone base triggered an immediate sprint whereby all eight were running all along the slope, laughing and carrying on, much to their and the passing university students' delight. None thought it brutalist at the time.
This is positively gorgeous compared with the U Of Illinois Chicago campus.
Yes. Thanks to the incompetent Brutalist architect Walter Netsche whose wife Dawn was a big politico in Illinois.
That campus was a travesty in the 70's and 80's, especially in the winter months. It was not just cold and Soviet-style ugly. It was unsafe, However, the UIC administration has made a lot of improvements over the past few decades.
I know this post is specifically about a university building but this penchant for visually painful architecture sadly became the norm rather than the exception.
It used to be that public buildings - post offices, courthouses, city halls - were designed in very specific styles. Pillars/columns, lots of stone, and regal, almost imposing entrances that just seemed to be right and proper for conducting official government business.
The old Rincon Center Post Office building in SF is a prime example. The Deco fonts used on the outside of the main entrance, on the signage inside above various windows; the plaques directing patrons to various windows for shipping/parcel collection. The interior of the lobby (now a museum) contains WPA murals all along the walls. Not my cup of tea, necessarily, but I recognize their significance.
https://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/the-embarcadero-san-francisco-november-19-2011.html
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Rincon_Annex_Post_Office
We have a modest FLR-student designed house. It has a shallowly pitched roof. My father's comment when he saw it (he was a roofer as a young man) "ANY pitch is better than flat", which makes sense since the water doesn't pool until it evaporates.
At the outset, the application of “logic” in the design of a building is a bit slippery, no? On one hand, there is the building’s visual logic, as an object in space. On the other, there is functional logic—it’s ability to serve the purposes for which it was built, while providing comfortable shelter for the occupants and users consistent with those purposes.
Unless one counts Weese’s rejection of the pervasive International Style, there is no illogic in Humanities’ visual logic. As an object, it partakes of the logic of the Parthenon, which is, presumably, unassailable, given the character of its creators.
Weese appears to have failed at the task that he set himself, according to Bruegemann, regarding the building’s functions. The University had proposed separate towers for each discipline—the most popular campus design at that time—and one not inconsistent with a certain logic. Weese instead attempted an integrated space that conformed with the existing skyline—perhaps representative of the unity of the humanities and the humanities’ concordance with the university and its location.
While Weese’s creation had a certain conceptual logic—that the humanities are a whole and not separate—it failed in its practical function: as a practical matter, the separate areas of the humanities needed . . . well, separated areas. Noise and fumes from sculpture studios, and sound from the music areas, for example, created problems for disciplines that needed quiet, stable environments. It thus seems that in subverting the logic of separate towers, Weese failed to resolve the functional problems created by his “continuous structure.” It was perhaps characteristic of mid-century western culture for the functional to trip over the theoretic.
Which leaves the question of the subversion of an apparently logical way to do something, while finding success through resolution of the problems brought on by the initial decision. One ready example is the visual arts’ evolution from the presentation of human experience in figurative/representational styles to its presentation in increasingly abstract and non-figurative/representational styles, e.g. from Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents” to Picasso’s “Guernica.” (A side note: abstract painting was initially “explained” by analogy to music. Later, the music of Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis was “explained” by analogy to abstract painting.)
An example in which a departure from “logic” created a greater logic through something of a paradox may be seen in U.S. Constitutional government as conceived by Madison and Hamilton, within the Enlightenment appurtenances of private property, security of contracts, and free markets.
For millennia, the logical form of government was a highly centralized autocracy—whether by Mongol warlord or Sun King. In the modern versions, whether embodied by Stalin, Xi Jinping, or Bernie Sanders, centralized political and economic decision-making, it is argued, produce efficiencies of focus and practical implementation, as well as equality.
Orwell captured some of that idea when he wrote, in “The Road to Wigan Pier”: “[t]he underlying motive of many Socialists . . . is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them . . . because it is untidy; what they desire, basically is to reduce the world to something resembling a chessboard.” Of course, the freedom of chess pieces is very limited.
Against the logic of centralized economic and political planning by government, the concept of separate branches of government—each with limited powers, and each with the ability to basically obstruct the others—within a free market economy, would seem to promise chaos. But, both systems profitably harness some of humanity’s fundamental, and potentially most destructive, instincts: for both the government and the economy to operate, competing independent interests must restrain themselves to find agreement through cooperation and compromise. As conservative writer Jonah Goldberg wrote of free-market capitalism:
The new collectivists want more “cooperation,” and that’s fine. But what they miss is that the market is the most cooperative system ever created. It allows people of different faiths, lifestyles, and even nationalities to cooperate with each other over vast spaces to satisfy specific wants and needs. Its only drawback is that it doesn’t feel cooperative, because it is so good at fostering cooperation without coercion.
The departure from the logic of centralized collectivism thus resolves through the paradoxes of separate, constitutionally competing and constitutionally restrained branches of government, on one hand, and economically self-interested parties, on the other, both of which must cooperate and compromise to function.
Taliesin Associated Architects, a group founded by Frank Lloyd Wright x1890 to carry on his work, was among the 15 firms considered for the South Lower Campus Project
Rather the missed opportunity.
Weese sounds like a lot of architects. Impressed by their own perceived intelligence, they see themselves as artistes, not builders.
@Michael, I love Hammond. The skyscraper that was lain down on its side. And it's scheduled to be removed in the next couple years too.
In a [2012] survey titled “Elementary Scientific Literacy for Architects,” 45% of respondents answered incorrectly to basic questions such as whether the wind pushes or sucks on building walls, and how it would change if the wind blew faster. Traditionally, architects concentrate on intangible, programmatic, and economic criteria of buildings, as opposed to their tangible functionality. The architectural curricula are effectively void of sciences and technology, and a building performance is not one of obligations of an architect under the average architect-owner agreement. The typical contracts . . . contain no language making an architect directly responsible for the building performance.
So, how the average architects deal with building performance? The answer is: they delegate it. If you are an owner, you may be surprised to learn that the average architect often delegates this responsibility to contractors. It explains why contractors charge so much. It is called a “delegated design” in architectural specifications which shift the design and engineering to the contractors. The results may vary. Contractors are dexterous and knowledgeable in their specific trades, but they cannot possibly design transitions between other trades without stepping on each other’s toes.
While the architect is certainly to blame for the confusing layout he may be partially or not at all responsible for the building being freezing. That may be the construction crew. Last 3 buildings I lived in had major flaws due to poor construction, only one of which was partially the architect's fault.
1. Just left 2 inch gap between the top of window and the wall. Not on the architects plan.
2. Improper concrete pouring which cracked and let in water.
3. Poor layout of drainage pipes which is the architects fault, but they would have caused less trouble if the plumbers had sealed them correctly.
For things like "building is too cold"it can. E hard to figure out the specific cause.
Condon Hall at the *other* UW.
It was home to the law school, and it felt like a prison. It might be a homeless shelter today.
I feel sorry for Harry Weese.
No, really.
I spent ages 2-21 in Columbus, Indiana, which is world-famous for its architecture (no, really). Harry Weese designed several buildings there, including one that I find among the most beautiful, First Baptist Church. It's not shown in the pictures at the link, but he paid particular attention to making the roofline harmonize with the roofline of the elementary school across the street—W. D. Richards elementary school.
My elementary school.
So as you can see, Weese was capable of doing much more than "Brutalist architecture on the cheap." It's a shame to get the sense that some people want to lay the "Inhumanities" building at his feet.
IIRC the site previously held the old Administration building on the State St side, various Queen Ann style houses used as annexes of L&S departments on Park and on an alley bisecting the block.
"subvert the apparently logical way to do something and then see how he could resolve all of the problems brought on by the initial decision"
That seems to be the theme of today's posts.
Yancey @ 9:53 - no doubt. False rumors worth starting! Eee gads that is an ugly building. Drains the soul.
I too live in a university town and most of the architecture on campus is lovely.
"CU Boulder's distinctive architecture style, known as Tuscan Vernacular Revival, was designed by architect Charles Klauder."
I have to admit I have never heard of "Tuscan Vernacular Revival" before. weird.
I thought CU's campus was a mix of gothic and Richardsonian Romanesque. and it is, but under that umbrella of that Italian roof tile, I suppose. The engineering buildings are the ugly ducklings of the mix. Not horrible, but some people complain. More recent additions to the campus, including the law school building, are amazing modern achievements that blend brand new architecture with the old.
'From Bauhaus to Our House.'
A Tom Wolfe critique of modern architecture. From the Amazon description:
"After critiquing―and infuriating―the art world with The Painted Word, award-winning author Tom Wolfe shared his less than favorable thoughts about modern architecture in From Bauhaus to Our Haus.
In this examination of the strange saga of twentieth century architecture, Wolfe takes such European architects as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Bauhaus art school founder Walter Gropius to task for their glass and steel box designed buildings that have influenced―and infected―America’s cities."
Highly recommended...available via the Althouse Amazon portal.
"the glass box boys" - heh - who said that? Was it Frank?
I'm not a fan of the glass box boys.
Good lord. I leave this morning and there are 10 comments and come back now and there are nearly 50. I'll review them later, but first my story.
When our local normal school grew up to be a U, 3 and 4 story redbrick buildings of generic modern design sprouted all over. Eventually, when the old library building, the core of which was built in 1914, had to be replaced, the prez told the design committee he wanted a vertical statement.
He got it in the form of a twelve-story tower with lower wings on either side. As you might imagine, tall buildings don't make ideal libraries, and in this case the structural requirements meant that the book stack floors were cramped and full of blind spots.
After only a few years it was obvious the place sucked (leave aside the low-bid construction). Users couldn't find books; wienie-wavers thrived; women were assaulted and many refused to go up into the tower alone.
Gates were put up to access the elevators, manned by staff who had to take pictures with a special camera rig of the people going into the tower and their IDs.
By 1994, when the much more suitable new library was complete and we moved, the old tower was a white elephant. Eventually it and the wings were renovated and upgraded as a single location for student services and a few other odd little shops.
But in order to make the floors usable as office space they had to have windows. The solution was to cut the brick curtain walls--all twelve stories worth--out from the center section of each of the four tower faces and install big windows.
People who should have known better apparently didn't think that the remaining slender tall curtain wall segments--barely braced, if at all--might be a problem. Within a few years big chunks of brick began raining down. Segments the size of suitcases would come down every few weeks. The U had to build wooden protective porches over the entrances, and keep people at least 50 feet way from the walls.
To my knowledge, no one--not the renovating architects, not our physical plant honchoes, not anybody--ever suffered the slightest consequence for their shortsightedness and derelictions.
Now back to the show.
"To my knowledge, no one--not the renovating architects, not our physical plant honchoes, not anybody--ever suffered the slightest consequence for their shortsightedness and derelictions."
I spent last Sunday watching several hours of video of an engineer analyzing the Champlain Towers collapse. Heads are going to roll over that one, IMO.
Roger Sweeny said...
"Here's an idea. Don't design a building to be a work of art, especially one that requires an explanation of the art ("subvert the apparently logical way to do something ..."). Instead, design it so that the people who use it find it comfortable and useful. An idea so crazy it just might work."
Yale took that strategy with its two new residential college buildings. They are very traditional in style, they take cues from the rest of the campus, and so far, they seem to be very livable and functional.
They may be a bit mainstream, perhaps even boring, as examples of modern university gothic construction, but they are, well, lovely. (See construction video.)
Predictably, academic architects hate them.
let Biden have a go at it when he retires after serving 2 terms with the needed practice and experience
[T]he Champlain Towers collapse. Heads are going to roll over that one, IMO.
Always good to start a Friday morning with a hearty, albeit cynical, bout of laughter.
My newly-hired foundation guys insisted they didn't need a surveyor to mark the corners of my to-be-built foundation frame; they could place their wooden frames by measuring from the property corners. They failed pre-pour inspection 4 times over the next week (at their expense) because (1) the foundation was too close to one property line (2) the foundation was still too close to that property line (3) the foundation was now too close to another building and (4) the foundation was neither square at the corners nor as wide as on the plans.
My surveyor - paid by the foundation guys - arrived after another week's delay and told me he's made thousands following this company around from work site to work site, marking the ground for them to put the foundations in the correct location - on an urgent, more highly paid basis. So much for their expertise with measuring tapes. I went back to my bid list and determined my second choice foundation subcontractor was available, and fired these bums. If their proficiency in concrete pouring was anything like their proficiency in locating points on the ground, I wanted nothing more to do with them.
Not enough pictures to form a definitive judgement but I was inclined to view the building positively based on knowledge of earlier works by Weese. I don't like it. Too weak to be brutalist. Lacking in any elegance or refinement. It seems more like a caricature of modern architecture without any attempt to engage the user. Closeups of architectural details seem interesting but the whole comes off as banal.
I.M. Pei designed our student center and dormitories, really gorgeous brutalist buildings. But he insisted the school build them floating on platforms in Sarasota Bay, and in a fit of pique, when John D. MacDonald and other sane trustees couldn’t talk him out of it, he had his name removed from the buildings.
The mold was bad enough on solid ground.
Here’s some sad structural planning. This may be apocryphal, but I had a friend who knew his trainer Lynn quite well. Remember Chantek, the Orangutan who learned sign language at the University of Tennessee?
He also liked the vibration that the orchestra made on the glass wall between his speech lab and the music rehearsal stage. Liked it a lot, one might say.
And he liked gum. Gum still in people’s pockets and orchestral instrument vibrations created some unfortunate misunderstandings. He happily ended his days at the lovely primate area of the Atlanta Zoo, where he used sign language with his handlers and befriended other Orangutans. So there’s a story with a happy ending.
The academic buildings that students and faculty actually enjoy working in tend to be old, ugly wood-frame structures or, sometimes, buildings with a structural masonry exterior with wood framing within.
These buildings are seldom much to look at. What they are is, adaptable: the interior of these can almost always be modified quickly and at low cost to suit whatever use the current inhabitants have for it.
Whereas fixing transient architectural enthusiasms in concrete inevitably results in buildings that can only be modified at huge expense (if modification is even possible). Why is anyone surprised that a huge concrete dogpile built to the enthusiasms of 1959 might become obsolete when, a decade or so later, these enthusiasms wane (as all enthusiasms must)?
And, yes, architects deserve harsh criticism for buildings that fail to meet basic physical requirements for shelter. Perhaps the fine arts can afford to value transgression above all (until it comes to value nothing else), but architecture will remain a practical, applied art so long as people must live and work within it.
Perhaps architects who wish to build fanciful, transgressive buildings should be encouraged to build them within 3-D computer simulations? That way we can all look at the work without having to actually use it.
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