Montreal Convention Center Recognizes SCUP-43 Via Roland Proulx

At SCUP-43 in Montreal, long time SCUP leader Roland Prouxl was named the city's Ambassador to SCUP's conference. Now, there is a brick in the Montreal Conference Center's 'Walk of Fame" acknowledging SCUP's conference in 2008 and Proulx's role. (Proulx, emeritus professor from the University of Montreal, was also recently named 2009 Higher Education Professional of the Year by Strathmore's Who's Who.) Thanks for ensuring that Montreal will always remember SCUP-43, Roland!

Below, Roland Proulx at SCUP-43 with David and Cathy Hollowell, the "Walk," and a close-up of the engraving regarding SCUP and Proulx.

A Perfect Marriage of Old, New: Emerson's 'Replication' of the Paramount Theater (Boston)

Robert Campbell, the Boston Globe's architecture critic, apparently loves everything about Emerson College's restoration of the Paramount Center. What's not to like?

Note: Emerson was a recipient of a $200,000 Getty grant in 2006 and Emerson's full report back to the Getty is available on SCUP's Campus Heritage Preservation Network (CHPN) web site.

Some stories have a happy ending. The new Paramount Center on Washington Street is one of the triumphs of recent Boston architecture and urbanism.

The center, which was scheduled to host its first performance last night, is the perfect marriage of the right client and the right place. The client is Emerson College, which brings the kind of vital youthful activity that can regenerate a neighborhood. The place is the Paramount Theatre, a classic movie palace designed in 1932, at the height of the Art Deco period, but abandoned since 1976.
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This is also a marriage of old and new. The old is the Paramount Theatre, now lovingly restored to its original seductive glamour. The new is all the amazing and exciting modern stuff that’s been added to it. Some of that is in the Paramount Theatre itself, and some is next door in the center’s other building, known as the Arcade. There’s a black-box theater, a film screening room, rehearsal and practice rooms, a new backstage with a truck dock, lobbies, classrooms, offices, a student cafe, you name it. There’s even, up above everything where the views are, a top hat of dorm rooms for 262 future students.

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This is what makes good cities: the juxtaposition of new and old in one place, so you feel connected to history while you look forward to the future. Paramount Center embodies the wonderful urban paradox in which memory meets invention, the old and new converse with each other. The Paramount interior looks all the more 1930s because of its contrast with the neighboring architecture of 2010.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Getting Serious About Internationalizing SUNY

SUNY System Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher is convening a strategic planning session to "set priorities for internationalization systemwide, with a focus on how SUNY can help New York's economy." We can't find anything about this right now except for this brief Chronicle piece by Karen Fischer, but it sounds interesting. We hope someone inside the process will report out, both on the process and how integrated it will be. "The daylong session will yield two or three measurable outcomes for international success, Ms. Zimpher said, including targets for international-student recruitment, study abroad, or scholarly exchanges. Having clear gauges for success will hold SUNY officials accountable, she said."

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Yale School of Management Project Wends Its Way Through New Haven Governance

Last week New Haven's Board of Alderman's Legislation Committee approved the proposed plan for the new Yale School of Management building. The plan had been previously approved by the City Plan Commission. Its next step is the full Board of Alderman.
This article is illuminating about the procedural steps a private institution may need to take when looking for permission for large capital projects.

Dickson, who is a Yale School of Architecture graduate, voiced a common theme of opponents: That the 237,000 square-foot building is “one giant box” and “out of scale” with the neighborhood.

There were spirited calls for downsizing, for opening the courtyard to the public on the Whitney side, for shifting delivery and driveways to the north side; and queries as to whether Yale had truly considered adaptive reuse of the buildings at 155 and 175 Whitney, which it plans to demolish to build the new home.

Presenting a Power Point and bird’s eye views of the site showing a structure lording it over the area, Farwell also questioned the accuracy of Yale’s submitted drawings and whether Yale’s outreach to the community for its input was “limited to the abutting area [only], not the impact area.”

Yale’s chief planner for the project, Laura Cruickshank, said Farwell’s bird’s eye views were misleading. They were for birds, she said. There were no people in them. First and foremost, she said, a building must work, not only look elegant, and the SOM as presented does. SOM professors and a dean described a crying need for a single, consolidating structure for its far-flung educational units and expansion by 100 students.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA