Renovating a (Mostly) Unloved Art & Architecture Building at Yale

Buildings that some people don't like are in the news a lot, lately.

A $130M renovation and expansion of the Art & Architecture Building at Yale University has some people scratching their heads and talking about a building that "was not beloved by anyone who was not an architecture student or faculty member" and is only still standing "because it would be too expensive to tear down." The article is by Lawrence Biemiller and in in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The image at left is from a page of images of this building published by Mary Ann Sullivan.

When the time came to decide between renovation and demolition, though, the building's unpopularity was outweighed by concerns about sustainability — tearing down a usable building is a LEED no-no — and by preservation advocates' newfound interest in well-known Modern structures. The renovation of the Art & Architecture Building comes on the heels of the Kahn gallery's $44-million renovation by Polshek Partnership Architects. Plans are also in the works for renovations of Eero Saarinen's two Yale residential colleges, Morse and Ezra Stiles, as well as of the 1963 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

"Yale was a leader in the 1950s in building Modernist buildings," Mr. Stern said, "and now it's a leader in restoring them." But each, he said, "presents gargantuan problems to its owners."

So far, though, the problems almost all appear to have been resolvable. Mr. Stern pointed out with glee that the Art & Architecture Building's notorious orange carpet is being replaced with new carpet woven especially for the project. "It's coming back," he grinned, "in its full orangeneity."