Tradition for Sale: On University Architecture

Also, those buildings will age gracefully and never look stupid. We know this because there are thousands of similar buildings, from the middle ages to the revivals in the 1800s and 1900s that still don't look stupid after multiple centuries.

> …in a modern attempt to capture the spirit of Gothic architecture, Saarinen eliminated all right angles from the living areas. […] This resulted, notoriously, in two rooms which had eleven walls, none of which was long enough to put the bed against and still be able to open the door.

Is the mark of “good” architecture the degree to which it is hostile or inscrutable to its inhabitants? Even this author admits that the new colleges are an excellent execution of the Collegiate Gothic style; not only are they _livable_ spaces, they are _beautiful_ ones!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_College

Is there no middle ground between uncompromisingly hostile modernism and ass-backwards retro-fakery?

[1] http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-usc-villa...

The problem with Gothic architecture in America is not so much that it looks back, but where its gaze points. It points at Earls and Dukes and the entrenchment of an entitled class.

> To my earlier question as to why the university would pursue this course, the easy and obvious response is that the traditionalist architecture of the old colleges has become essential to Yale’s identity...

> When the decision was made [in 1958] to add two colleges ...Yale chose to go modern and to hire Eero Saarinen... he rose to the challenge magnificently.

> Admittedly, acceptance of Morse and Stiles Colleges was fitful. I’ll confess that when I entered Yale as a freshman in 1969 I was pleased to be assigned to ... [a] Gothic quadrangles — and not to one of the “new” residences. After taking Vincent Scully’s course in modern architecture and learning of Saarinen’s importance...

OK, so the traditional aping of Oxbridge is an important part of Yale's branding and he himself is a testament to that. Yet he thinks they should do something essentially inauthentic? As he says elsewhere himself in this essay, dorms are different from academic buildings, and are a crucial part of branding.

MIT also built some Saarinen dorms and I remember people living in them being unhappy with them just on a functional basis.

This would be just as good as a parody of the out-of-touch humanist, except I know it's authentic.

This is a pernicious problem facing Ivy League institutions. Some administrator might complain bitterly that the entire process had been widely publicized and that anyway qualified architects would have known to call, but further review will discover that all publicity took place on a physical bulletin board and several private mailing lists. The faculty have not held the administration to account on numerous questionable decisions small and large, and now the bureaucrats feel they're accountable to no one.

Meh. I'd rather have this than more unlivable architectural ego-trips.

It's sad that top private universities today are so revenue-focused that they're okay with dropping any semblance of innovation when it comes to architecture and design. But these universities don't care about their architecture schools - those schools don't put out enough rich alumni to bring in the cash.

At USC a few years ago, the architecture school was stuck with old (and few) 3d printers - I don't remember the model, but students complained and got nowhere with the faculty as far as better equipment. Next door, the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy of Arts, Technology, and Business of Innovation (read: try to make startups) opened their first class with a whole lab of 3d printers and laser cutters, including a Form 1 (which was quite nice at the time for the price). The school doesn't take architecture seriously. And I don't see how that would change anytime soon.

In contrast, Purdue University (where I am doing grad school) has done a great job of keeping most of the buildings as a coherent whole. There are design variations from the older Purdue Student Union [1] to the more experimental Armstrong Engineering Building [2], but the general theme of brickwork makes things generally fit together and connects the whole campus to its "1800s Midwestern college" roots. It's a pleasant place to be and I think the architecture contributes to a sense of community.

The author of the article is I think extremely misguided in his arguments. He seems to imply that older architecture forms and traditions have no place in a "forward-looking" "globalized future", as if the local traditions and practices of a space have to all be eroded away into a future of glass/steel boxes in the style of international airports -- as if novelty for its own sake should be the main guiding practice.

>It is worth pointing out that in those same years the university was not only choosing to abandon its historicist architecture; it was also working actively, if belatedly, to renounce the quotas that had long limited the enrollment of diverse groups — Jews, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos — and beginning the deliberations that would lead to coeducation.

This line of argument is uncharitable at best; it implies that historical architecture is somehow permanently stained by bad practices done during that time period. It's the same sort of hand-wringing arguments you see about how games like "Cuphead" that use an old-timey animation style are "unsettling" because some actual old-timey animations would be considered racist in our time [3]. I'd much rather live in a world where we can take the good from the past and carry it forward, rather than seek to reinvent ourselves entirely from the last generation.

Traditional architecture is a bit of a pet issue of mine, mostly because of its public nature. I'm all for experimentation and breaking the mold in most art forms, but architecture is inherently public -- you can't easily look away from a building that's an eyesore than you could a painting. For that reason I tend to think that architecture should favor more traditional/conservative forms.

There's an interesting irony about the article, in complaining that this push for traditional architecture in colleges is being pushed by a wealthy plutocratic elite. These old styles are being pushed for because the donors like them, because they contribute to a general sense of charm and nostalgia that keeps a community cohesive. People in general have a positive attitude toward more traditional forms. If anything, it's a different sort of elite -- modern architects -- who are attempting to impose something on these campuses for the sake of their own experimentation.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Behs_uni... http://protophoto.com/images/modelun/DSC_5605.JPG

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Purdue_S...

[2] https://abm-website-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/labdesignnews.co...

[3] https://unwinnable.com/2017/11/10/cuphead-and-the-racist-spe...