Now if they can just control the dust produced.
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As in GNAB Dang It!?
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Yes, I share that concern. I don’t understand why they don’t gut and renovate buildings like this. I assume it’s because institutions want the prestige of the latest fancy hip architecture, but vanity like that will doom us all. Knocking down all our buildings and starting over every few decades is definitely not sustainable.
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You’ll love the one going on at Johns Hopkins. There they are going to knock down a recently built and beautiful arts center by a prestigious architecture firm oft described as “like an Italian hill town”, to build another arts center by a different prestigious architect on the same site. The reason? The rich donors on the schools board of directors didn’t like the first one. Thats it.
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The University of Wisconsin did that recently with 4 residential towers. AFAIK it was a win: https://www.housing.wisc.edu/about/construction/witte/
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I’m not sure in this case, but one argument these days is that traditional dorm rooms aren’t “competitive” compared to off-campus alternatives and what “students want” are basically real apartments with multiple rooms and their own bathrooms. Which is true to an extent, but obviously will cost the students (or their parents) considerably more.
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Which is only possible because of how many students’ families CAN afford the upgrade.
Going to the higher-end colleges is out of reach to a lot of good students because of the price tag.
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I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist:
but it did look like a controlled demolition.
@WoolyBugger Follow the breadcrumbs!
My old halls of residence were almost demolished by an explosion recently, but that was down to an unexploded WW2 bomb (that must have been right there the entire time I went to uni I suppose):
Yeah, my room in those halls had a single plug socket, which probably wasn’t enough back in the 70’s when it was built, and certainly wasn’t when I needed to plug in a computer, monitor, phone charger, printer, and a desk lamp. Still, loads of students daisy chaining extension cords round their room, what could possibly go wrong?
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Not exactly. My firm bid to participate in the new project (engineers, not architects - we’re not driving this bus) and got some more of the fine print background on this. Yes, it’s replacing a relatively new student union and arts center but, no, it’s not just about vanity. The current building had issues from day one and was almost instantly too small for the actual usage/demand (yeah, maybe poor planning). It may have been possible to remediate and expand but there were compelling reasons not to.
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Their official reasons:
Hopkins officials said that …the project represents an effort to give Hopkins a new kind of “non-academic gathering spot” that the campus doesn’t currently have.
So, they’re replacing this:
With this:
And the crowning humiliation: this is the second Williams & Tsien 2001 commission to be demolished recently: NYC’s Museum of Modern Art razed the American Folk Art Museum in 2014 to make way for its most recent expansion.
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No –– exactly. Campus architect, my college roommate, had frequent interaction with said school officials and reasons for dooming the existing building. But you would never read that account anywhere official. You are greatly underestimating the willfulness of money.
Poor planning –– by who? I’ve been to the facility many times, and my daughter worked a campus job in the building. It was NEVER crowded. But pile in programmatic needs and anybody can make a case that any existing building is undersized. Its all a manipulation for stylistic bias by the money that gets what it wants, which in this case is this building gone.
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I read a few years back that b/c universities are generally non-profits, but usually bring in far more money than they spend out (esp in the research sector), they have to put the money somewhere - anywhere - as long as it’s not hanging around on the books. So, it most often goes toward infrastructure and building, and hence the endless new buildings at most larger institutions. Eventually, however, the problem becomes one of land: nowhere left to build. So…destroy the “old” and put up new. Same idea goes for hospitals.
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Exactly! It is a little too perfect though for a controlled demolition. It must be a cover-up for some innocuous natural cause with dark implications
There is always ongoing maintenance costs to eat up extra funding.
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The new building is faux-collegiate-Gothic
Yep. I’m pretty sure a lot of universities have gotten themselves into budgetary trouble for under-predicting maintenance and upkeep costs whilst over-committing construction contracts.
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So… no dust control? Not needed?
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“It’s also satisfying to see the good and bad spirits of a dorm get released to the ages and make room for sweet new revelry and debauchery…oh, and academia.”
A gentle shower of yellowed joint roaches, condom wrappers and dog-eared notecards descended upon those watching the implosion. Good feelings all around until someone took an empty MD 20/20 Orange Jubilee bottle to the skull.
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