Demetri Porphyrios’s Whitman College was designed to match older dorms at Princeton U.
Princeton, N.J. — Five hundred Princeton University undergraduates moved into a much-heralded Collegiate Gothic residential college this month, filling its quadrangles with music, its passageways with echoing conversations, and its limestone doorways with fliers. It still feels new now, and of course that’s not the point of designing in a 600-year-old architectural style. But after its woodwork accumulates a few dings and nicks, and after a few seasons’ worth of rains have weathered its walls, it will fit in nicely with the university’s older Gothic dormitory buildings, perhaps the best-known in all of American higher education.
Called Whitman College — after Meg Whitman, president of eBay, whose family gave $30-million of the $136-million project cost — the complex was designed by Demetri Porphyrios, of the London architecture firm Porphyrios Associates. Both Ms. Whitman and Mr. Porphyrios are Princeton alumni.
The buildings are faced in random blocks of bluestone with limestone trim, and the college is arranged like a giant E, forming two quadrangles that are open to the east. One quad is surrounded by three-story buildings, while the buildings of the other — because of the slope of the site — reach four stories. The southernmost wall of the college is five stories high.
Towers, bay windows, and dormers — some of the latter half-timbered — make the facades and rooflines lively and help disguise how big the buildings are. But they are quite large, and the two quadrangles are just this side of vast — if Whitman falls short in comparison with the university’s older buildings, it’s because the new college seems to lack some of the intimacy, the human scale, of the older dorms.
That said, Whitman has many pleasures. From the west side of the campus, one enters the lower quadrangle by crossing a bridge — over what seems almost like a moat — and then walking through an arched passage. To the left is a long limestone arcade; straight ahead is the limestone-clad commons, with its high-ceilinged dining hall and huge fireplace. On the far side of the commons is lovely octagonal structure that turns out to hold one of two small private dining rooms.
The college’s details are entertaining as well — growling tigers set in the stonework, W’s on metal downspouts, an empty niche high up in a tower wall, an elaborately carved doorway leading into the commons. John Hlafter, the university architect, explains that the “Yes!” carved in a paving stone echoes the acceptance letters once sent by Fred Hargadon, a retired dean of admissions, after whom the building behind the paving stone is named.
Mr. Hlafter says the college was built with load-bearing masonry walls — a rarity — and that most of its residents live in suites. Bathrooms are shared by several suites. The building was constructed so that students’ rooms can be air-conditioned at some point in the future. The college also has a library, a theater, offices for a college master, and other facilities. —Lawrence Biemiller
An arcade lines one side of the lower quadrangle.
Elaborate ornament surrounds the main entrance to the commons.
An octagonal dining room juts out from the east wall of the commons.
A student walks by the passage through one of the college’s towers. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)
Campus Architecture Supplement
SPACESHIP OHIO
Kenyon College's new athletics center looks like it's from outer space, but it is welcoming a growing number of students and faculty members to sports activities.
Graham Gund, a Kenyon College alumnus, designed its vast new athletics facility. (Photograph from David Lamb Photography)
A NEW ERA FOR DORMS
The University of Oregon and Princeton University are designing new dormitories aimed at improving student life. Plus, architects have seen the dorm room of the future, and it's modular, modular, modular.
UPDATED MODERNISM
An arts center at the College of Saint Benedict gets an addition sympathetic to the original building -- and at a bargain price.
HIGH-PROFILE PRESENCE
Make it big, make it work, and make it attractive, a U. of Pennsylvania official told architects planning a new lab building. They followed his instructions, with impressive results.
DESERT BLOOMS
The U. of Nevada at Las Vegas cultivates low-water "xeriscape" gardens to highlight local flora.
SUSTAINABLE ROUNDTABLE
A group of architects and campus-sustainability directors talk with The Chronicle about the role of colleges in energy use and environmental health.
MODERNIST MASTERPIECE
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Louis I. Kahn's first major building was an art gallery for Yale University. A three-year renovation has cleared away interior clutter and fixed Kahn's troublesome windows.
PLAIN AND FANCY
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Arizona State University has two new interdisciplinary science buildings. One is spectacular outside and plain within. The other has a low-key exterior and an interior worthy of M.C. Escher.
REINVENTING THE BOX
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: A new chemistry building at the University of Arizona conquers a tight budget and a tighter location. A new optical-sciences building has three zany skylights. Both buildings turn heads.
Order Reprints
Click here to order current or past print copies of this special supplement online.
Commentary
POSTWAR FAILURES
Since 1950, argues Allan Greenberg, most colleges seem to have given up on the challenge of designing campuses that are intellectually and architecturally coherent.
(Illustration by Tomasz Walenta)
POSTWAR APPRECIATION
Our collective inability to see buildings of the recent past as historic or of value is not a new phenomenon, writes Meredith Arms Bzdak.
MODERNISM'S UNKEPT PROMISES
An excerpt from Nathan Glazer's new book, "From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City."
URBAN AND URBANE
Omar Blaik makes a case for why an urban campus must integrate physically with the city in order to stay relevant.
REMEMBRANCE OF LIBRARIES PAST
Andrew Holleran recalls how even a beautifully constructed library, like Widener at Harvard, is a gilded cage for undergraduates forced to spend time there.
THE VIRTUES OF DENSITY
In the right proportions, density supports, rather than fights, our ideal of a campus, Ricardo Dumont argues.
A BILLBOARD FOR SCIENCE
A $48-million complex at Swarthmore College brings together biologists, chemists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and physicists in an engaging -- and green -- environment.
Commentary
AGING STARS
Campuses seeking the "Bilbao effect" sometimes find that celebrity buildings' function suffers for their form, writes M. David Samson, an associate professor of art history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
CHAT ROOM
Campuses need public spaces, but those public spaces don't need to be grand or formal, says Carla Yanni, an associate professor of art history at Rutgers University at New Brunswick.
THE ART OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Michael J. Lewis, a professor of art history at Williams College, marvels at the grandeur of college museums, but worries that they might be slighting undergraduates.
BOUNDARY ISSUES
Urban campus expansions require finesse far beyond blueprints, writes Frances Halsband, a former dean of Pratt Institute's architecture school.
OOPS!
Fail to plan and you plan to fail, the saying goes. But in design, if you study those failures, you just might succeed, says Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University.
FORUM: Four experts discuss the state of college architecture.
CONSTRUCTION BOOM
In reports from Berkeley to the Bronx, The Chronicle looks at new and renovated campus buildings that were completed during 2004 and considers how colleges are dealing with the need for increasingly large buildings.
Commentary
DIVAS OF DESIGN
Working with a strong architect requires an equally strong client. Most colleges and universities are simply not up to the task, says Arthur J. Lidsky, president of Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates, a campus- and facility-planning firm in Belmont, Mass.
PLACES IN THE HEART
Once you've been inside them, some campus buildings stay inside you. Fourteen people reflect on their favorites.
A BRILLIANT, INVISIBLE HAND
Charles Z. Klauder's understated, thoughtful designs define some of America's most memorable campuses, writes Frances Halsband, a partner in the New York firm R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects.
YOU ARE WHERE YOU EAT
Food services have dispersed all over the campus, reflecting the networks of academic life, says Jamie Horwitz, an associate professor of architecture at Iowa State University.
ARMCHAIR TRAVELERS
Colleges go to great pains to offer students flexibility in their workspaces. So why do many faculty members balk at the same opportunities? Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, ponders the question.
SITE AND VISION
Landscape architects know better than anyone that no building is an island, writes Michael Van Valkenburgh, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University.
PATHS TO ACTIVE LIVING
Walkways should be central to campus planning, writes Phillip B. Sparling, a professor of applied physiology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
USE YOUR FACULTIES
If professors can navigate intricate research projects, surely they can understand and contribute to their campuses' building plans, says Mary Burgan, a former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors.
GROWING BY DESIGN
In a series of articles, The Chronicle looks at new and renovated campus buildings that were completed for the 2003-4 academic year -- and at some of the challenges of building in academe.
Commentary
BOXED IN
New dorms cater to students' every need -- except, perhaps, friendship, writes Witold Rybczynski.
ELBOW ROOM
Private colleges embrace intimacy, but they still need public spaces for free expression and discord, says Carol T. Christ.
CHANGING PRIORITIES
Too much campus planning can be inhibiting. Too little can be chaotic. The balance lies in wedding the needs for today with the wishes for tomorrow, writes Roger K. Lewis.
HELL ON WHEELS
To solve the campus parking problem, the answer isn't always more parking, Daniel R. Kenney says.
|