SCUPer Projects in New England Featured in Monthly High-Profile

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

The April 2010 issue of Monthly High-Profile features SCUP and projects planned and designed by many SCUPers. You can either view an online version or download a PDF here. High-Profile Monthly is a facility development trade publication, featuring construction activities in New England. The SCUP section runs from page 20 through page 25. Projects noted include the Meckert-Tracy Science Building at Stonehill College; renovations at Marblehead's Village School; a green student housing project, Mara Village, at Fitchburg State College; the American University for Medical Studies in Kuwait; and science and engineering facilities at Trinity University.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

What's the Protocol for Abandoning an Architectural Competitioin Once It's Underway?

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

What if you (the University of South Carolina) have an architectural competition for a $60M campus building, several firms go all out in preparing bids, and then you decide to let your major donor pick the architect—and they pick one of the firms that allegedly would not have ended up winning the bid?

Here's an Insider Higher Ed summary and here's a link to an article in The Los Angeles Times.

In a move called "unprecedented" in its state, the University of South Carolina held a competition to design a major new business school building -- and let the donor select the winner, without telling the other firms spending considerable time and money on their proposals that they wouldn't have a shot at winning, The State reported.

The article focused on the ways that the process violated procedures in South Carolina, but the incident may also raise issues about the nature of philanthropy and the decisions that should or should not be made by donors. South Carolina's actions appear to violate standards for gifts by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Buildings & Grounds Blog Update

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Lawrence Biemiller and Scott Carlson at The Chronicle of Higher Education continue to author the most frequently updated information source about facilities planning in higher education, the Buildings & Grounds Blog. We expect that Carlson will be covering a number of sessions at SCUP–45 in July.

Recent posts include:

• Florida Southern Plans to Add a Usonian House to Its Wright Collection
• Book Highlights Modern Architecture at Princeton
• Webster U. Plans New Academic, Science Buildings
• Pasadena City College Arts Center Is Delayed by State Architect
• U. of Wisconsin at Oshkosh to Turn Food and Yard Waste Into Energy
• Dickinson College Will Turn Unused Cupola Into a Birdhouse
• In New York, Sullivan County Community College Plans New Dorms
• Master Plan Would Make Appalachian State U. Campus Pedestrian-Friendly
• Presidents' Climate Commitment Report Released
• Virginia Tech Unveils Plans for $89-Million Arts Center
• In Arid Palm Springs, the College of the Desert Plans a Green Expansion
• Missouri State U. Students Protest Cost of Planned Recreation Center

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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:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Fancy Building, Fancy Science?

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Not strictly higher education, but the blogger at Corante has some interesting perspectives on the design of science facilities, as do his commenters.

[I] kept wondering, where have I heard descriptions like this before? Oh yeah, the last time I moved into a new building. Actually, every single time I’ve moved into one, come to think of it. I was part of a gigantic corporate move in 1992 into what was billed as a “high-interaction facility”, which was nothing of the sort. And then at the Wonder Drug Factory, one of the new lab buildings had the whole research area behind a large glass wall; it was the first thing you saw when you came into the place. Unfortunately, since it was full of snazzy equipment, it became part of the standard tour for visitors (the combichem labs were largely abandoned by then), and the people working there sometimes felt like zoo animals. And my current building has the labs all around the outside walls, and a huge atrium in the middle of the building (to what purpose, no one is sure; it’s completely empty).

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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:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Soon You Can "Print" a Building?

This article is long on personality but has good looks at this evolving technology. "In a small shed on an industrial park near Pisa is a machine that can print buildings. The machine itself looks like a prototype for the automotive industry. Four columns independently support a frame with a single armature on it. Driven by CAD software installed on a dust-covered computer terminal, the armature moves just millimetres above a pile of sand, expressing a magnesium-based solution from hundreds of nozzles on its lower side. It makes four passes. The layer dries and Enrico Dini recalibrates the armature frame. The system deposits the sand and then inorganic binding ink. The exercise is repeated. The millennia-long process of laying down sedimentary rock is accelerated into a day. A building emerges. This machine could be used to construct anything. Dini wants to build a cathedral with it. Or houses on the moon."

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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 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Not a Library: Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center at University of Nevada, Reno

The new 295ksf building was conceived as a knowledge facility for the 21st century and is seen as "the beginning manifestation to substantial curricular change on campus, and a likely sea change in learning, I believe, in general." The former library had more than 1M books. The new facility has room for 3M, but is never expected to use the space for that purpose. UNR has several SCUP members, including director of facilities planning and analysis, Gary Bishop, facilities analyst Jed Hammer, executive vice provost Marc Johnson, interim associate vice president Stephen Mischissin, assistant vice president for planning, budget and analysis Bruce Shively, and vice president for administration and finance Ronald Zurek. We have several useful links for you:

• This article by Denise Harrison is in Campus Technology magazine.
• This link will take you to the MIKC's own, under construction, home page.
• From this link you can access a case statement for the MIKC, time-lapse photography of the project, and construction milestones and facts.
• The Facilities Services Department at UNR shows three large projects currently under construction and has links to several sets of guidelines: project development process, sustainability, and design and construction standards.

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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

New Columbia College Media Production Center, Chicago

This new media center represents a break in tradition for Columbia College. This post from Lee Bey's Chicago has several nice images.

"Columbia College is an historically non-traditional arts college housed in series of traditional looking converted late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings in the South Loop.

But suppose–just suppose–the 120-year-old college, whose graduates are an eclectic mix of artists, actors, journalists, dancers, filmmakers, music and television professionals, constructed a building of its own? What would that look like?

Many will find out today as the school and dignitaries cut the ribbon on the $21 million, Columbia College Media Production Center at 16th and State Street. It's first building the college has constructed.The 35,500 sq ft building combines the departments of Film & Video, Interactive Arts & Media and Television into state-of-the art shared and separate spaces that allow students across the disciplines to learn and interact. Students are taught everything from set design and construction to elaborate computer-animated motion capture. Classes officially began late last month."

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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

Ambitious Design FAIL

We know that SCUPers will like this, although there may be nothing new for those who are experienced in the history of architecture. When something like it is presented at the annual conference, it's always a huge success. Of course, this is just one person's view but, through Slate, Witold Rybczynski shares what he calls some "ambitious architectural failures," including the East Building of the National Gallery (DC), Hancock Place (Boston), Falling Water, the Stata Center (MIT), and more.

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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

Update from the Buildings & Grounds Blog

Time for another roundup of recent stories from the Buildings & Grounds Blog at The Chronicle of Higher Education. As of February 4, 2010, some of the more recent posts include information about, or links to:

• Adding stories on top of a building at Tufts
• $32M academic building at W. Wisconsin at Superior
• U. Arizona gets $15M stimulus funds for underground animal research facility
• Barnard opens new student center
• Southern Florida celebrates its Frank Lloyd Wright campus heritage
• Aiken Hall at Champlain College
• Sherrod Hall at Princeton
• Opening up a 60s concrete box at U Wisconsin at Superior
• Breaking ground for new campus of Lone Star College in Conroe
• Berkeley Art Museum to move to former printing plant
• and more!

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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

Buildings & Grounds Roundup

You might not regularly take the time to visit The Chronicle of Higher Education's Buildings & Grounds blog, but you probably should. It's the best place to get a continuous stream of news about capital projects on campuses, and related topics.

As of January 22 (the last Palindrome Day of 2010), some of the most recent items included:

• Wiser Education Center and Greenhouse at Swarthmore College;
• University of Pennsylvania's Skirkanich Hall gets an AIA honor award;
• Lassiter Rotunda at Palm Beach Atlantic University;
• Western University opens 180,000 sf Health Education Center;
• $3M gift will fund track and field complex at St. John Fisher College;
• $27.2M addition to college of Charleston Building is a 'work of art'; and
• A professor at Clarkson University has developed a durable concrete block from recycled local industrial projects, which is being used in Clarkson's new student center.

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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

An Arts Program's Move to Troubled Vancouver Neighborhood

Architects get LUs for the AIA at SCUP–45.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) is moving its School for Contemporary Arts into Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, which is apparently not considered a particularly good or safe neighborhood. Here's a link to a Globe and Mail article by Marsha Lederman.

And here is SFU's information page on the project, which includes a visual tour.

From Lederman:

SFU Woodward's is part of a revolutionary mixed-use experiment on the site of a once-iconic department store in the Downtown Eastside. The new Woodward's encompasses luxury condominiums, social housing, retail and office space (among the future tenants: the National Film Board and the city's cultural-affairs offices) as well as Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts and the exhibition and creation spaces that will be part of that.

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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's Green Ark

SCUP–45 offers LUs for AIA.

Kroon Hall is the new home of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES). As you might expect, there is an excellent Yale website about Kroon Hall, with plenty of information about the concept and design. Michael J. Crosbie reviews the new building for Architecture Week:

Every so often, an exceptional work of architecture emerges from an opportune convergence of just the right client working with just the right team of architects, engineers, and consultants on a building that is just right for the times.

and:

Yale estimates that the green premium on the $33.5 million construction cost was about five percent.

It is hard to imagine a work of architecture better wedded to a client. And one can't help but wonder if the arklike shape of Kroon Hall isn't some unintentional but highly appropriate metaphor for a rescue ship and the salvation it offers as the polar ice caps continue to melt.

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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

What's Next? Next Year? 5 Years? Ten Years?

SCUP–45 offers LUs for AIA.

Metropolis magazine's current issue has a feature, What's Next: The 1–5–10 Issue, which is describes as "Predications for the future in the form of predictions—from the wildly speculative to the intensely pragmatic. Some snapshots from among the 15 topical categories:

• Preservation: 1, GPS for disaster recovery; 5, losing old trades skills; 10, laser-scan imaging
• Green Building: 1, On-site energy; 5, prism windows; 10, aerogel insulation
• Landscape Architecture: 1, New levees in New Orleans; 5, "City Sink," embedding carbon storage in existing infrastructure; 10, Soft coastal engineering
• Health Care: 1, Urban Zen; 5, Pleasant smells; 10, Nursebots

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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

MIT's New Media Lab - Where Clutter Is About to Meet Transparency

Sometimes it's lonely on campus, being a planner. Start planning now to attend higher education's premier planning conference for 2010, SCUP–45, July 10–14 in Minneapolis, where you can network and converse with more than 1,000 of your peers and colleagues.

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And don't overlook a closer, more intimate opportunity: SCUP's North Atlantic Region's 25th annual conference, at MIT March 24–26.

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What happens when "creative clutter" meets transparency in a new, elegant building? Robert Campbell reviews the new MIT Media Lab building at MIT.

Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s director, puts it this way: “It will take time to regain the sense of mess and to repopulate with junk.’’

It’s the classic marriage of form and content. The new building is Snow White and the Media Lab is Mad Max. Time will reveal how well the marriage works.

That said, viewed simply and purely as a work of architecture, this is a wonderful building. You can think of it as an exercise in transparency. The Media Lab has long been famous for hiding itself in a building by I.M. Pei that was a nearly windowless box. The new building, which joins the Pei at one edge, is exactly the opposite. From outside, you can look all the way through it from one end to the other. It’s sheathed in shimmering glass and metal screens that allow about half the sunlight through to the interior. You feel that the building is temptingly veiled, not blanketed.

Scott Carlson writes, in the Chronicle's Buildings & Grounds Blog, about the Guardian's reporting of controversies about adding modern amenities to "grand old college buildings."

At the University of Cambridge's Old Schools, people noticed a hole in the floor of the Regent House Combination Room and wondered if maintenance people were fixing the pipes or somesuch. When they found out the university was putting in an elevator, they were appalled. "It is historically the most important room in the universities of the English-speaking world. It is the cradle of Cambridge's democracy, our Westminster Hall

The article in the Guardian can be read here.

Science & Engineering Precinct at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

This campus project received a SCUP 2009 Merit Award for Planning for a District of Campus Component. The jury said “ . . . they are very clear in articulating their goals . . . stands above others . . . pretty clever phasing . . . very well thought out . . .” "Many project requirements were considered and five options were prepared. The boldest and most transformative one was chosen to integrate classrooms and labs, promote interdisciplinary thought, and encourage a collaborative, engaging culture . . . The plan transforms the area from a suburban, car-oriented environment to a pedestrian and transit-oriented area by incorporating passive open spaces into a cohesive new landscape and pathway system." Project Team: University of Alabama, and HOK, with Earl Walls Associates now Xnth. The University of Alabama Campus Master Plan is available on line here.

Another New Building by a Dead Architect?

Lawrence Biemiller of The Chronicle of Higher Education is a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College and he's not happy that there's another new building on that campus designed by an architect who's ben dead since 1938. (Sort of.) His post has stimulated a nice discussion on the Chronicle's Buildings & Grounds Blog:

There's no question that Franklin & Marshall has an attractive campus. Many of the buildings are appealing, and the ones that aren't—mostly on the residential quadrangle—are at least well landscaped. Klauder and his imitators get a fair portion of the credit for everything I like about the place. What nags at me, though, is the sense that the college is entrenching itself in the architectural past. The only truly modern building on the campus—the College Center, by Minoru Yamasaki—was completed just before my freshman year, and that was 1976. No academic department at a college of Franklin & Marshall's calibre would think of cutting itself off from advances in its field the way the college has cut itself off from advances in architecture.

Frank Lloyd Wright School Is Going Back to Nature, by Design

An interesting side story bringing together architectural design and sustainability in an unexpected way:

Farming is a little-known part of Wright's life . . . 'Organic architecture and its context in the environment and Wright's personal roots in Wisconsin is a story that's not been documented yet,' said Daniel Marquardt, chairman of the board of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation . . . Wright founded the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture 20 years after he built Taliesin to teach his theories and organic practices.

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Wright believed his sustainably designed buildings should be in harmony with their surroundings. His practical ideas about self-sufficiency, rooted in lean times on the farm, are gaining more attention now that sustainable agriculture is in vogue, said Victor Sidy, dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture on the Taliesin estate.

Today, architecture students volunteer to tend the original apple orchard and grapevines placed there by Wright. Students also continue Wright's traditions by growing vegetables in a garden near the school for use in their daily meals. The 33 students are required to help in the school kitchen as part of a collegial tradition.

At Carnegie Mellon U., a Gleaming Computer-Science Complex Worthy of M.C. Escher

A few years ago Carnegie Mellon University showed Mack Scogin a 75-foot-deep chasm cluttered with old buildings and parking lots and asked him to put a new computer-science complex there instead. The university wanted 310 offices (all with windows, please), plus classrooms, computer labs, formal and informal meeting space, lounges, a workshop for things like planetary rovers, and underground parking. Complete item from the Buildings & Grounds Blog, is here.