How Green Are Your Gardens?

Shop Talk: New Lawn for Jefferson, New Boathouse by Wright, and More

Season of Building Dedications Continues

Back From the Ashes

Shop Talk: Philip Johnson, Raphael Viñoly, Fire Safety

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)

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.

An arts center at the College of Saint Benedict gets an addition sympathetic to the original building -- and at a bargain price.

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.

The U. of Nevada at Las Vegas cultivates low-water "xeriscape" gardens to highlight local flora.

A group of architects and campus-sustainability directors talk with The Chronicle about the role of colleges in energy use and environmental health.

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.

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.

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.

Commentary

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)

Our collective inability to see buildings of the recent past as historic or of value is not a new phenomenon, writes Meredith Arms Bzdak.

An excerpt from Nathan Glazer's new book, "From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City."

Omar Blaik makes a case for why an urban campus must integrate physically with the city in order to stay relevant.

Andrew Holleran recalls how even a beautifully constructed library, like Widener at Harvard, is a gilded cage for undergraduates forced to spend time there.

In the right proportions, density supports, rather than fights, our ideal of a campus, Ricardo Dumont argues.

A $48-million complex at Swarthmore College brings together biologists, chemists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and physicists in an engaging -- and green -- environment.

• Swarthmore College: A Boldly Designed Dormitory
• Dillard U.: Renovation and Repair in New Orleans
• U. of California at Berkeley: Elegant Digs for the Preservationist Brothers of Sigma Phi
• Rhodes College: Gothic for Now and Tomorrow
• Boathouses: New Buildings for an Increasingly Popular Sport

Commentary

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.

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.

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.

Urban campus expansions require finesse far beyond blueprints, writes Frances Halsband, a former dean of Pratt Institute's architecture school.

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.

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.

• Ontario College of Art and Design: A Building on Stilts Transforms a College
• U. of California at Berkeley: A Controversial Library Amid Architectural Hodgepodge
• Boston U.: Run. Lift. Climb. Swim.
• Bronx Community College: A Plan to Restore a Gem by Stanford White
• U. of California at Santa Cruz: An Engineering Building as 'Green' as Possible
• Peabody Institute: A Conservatory Gets an Operatic Gesture
• U. of Notre Dame: A Performing-Arts Center With Everything
• Valparaiso U.: A Library That's About More Than Books

Commentary

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.

Once you've been inside them, some campus buildings stay inside you. Fourteen people reflect on their favorites.

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.

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.

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.

Landscape architects know better than anyone that no building is an island, writes Michael Van Valkenburgh, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University.

Walkways should be central to campus planning, writes Phillip B. Sparling, a professor of applied physiology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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.

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.

Carnegie Mellon U.: The First Certified 'Green' Dormitory Pomona College: Rethinking a Center That Students Don't Like Maryland Institute College of Art: A 'Signature Building' on a Cramped Site U. of California at Irvine: Utilitarian but Fun to Look At

Utah State U.: An Engineering Building That Teaches Marymount Manhattan College: Everybody Into the Pool Smith College: Spectacular Results on a Difficult Site

Commentary

New dorms cater to students' every need -- except, perhaps, friendship, writes Witold Rybczynski.

Private colleges embrace intimacy, but they still need public spaces for free expression and discord, says Carol T. Christ.

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.

To solve the campus parking problem, the answer isn't always more parking, Daniel R. Kenney says.