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Dartmouth Building Proposal Raises Questions
By Abby Goldstein on Wednesday, July 23, 2008.
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It’s not all that uncommon for modern architectural design to clash with the local expectations of a community - especially what that community houses a college. A new building proposal at Dartmouth is straining town-gown relations between the school and some residents of Hanover. Dartmouth released plans for a new, $52 million visual arts center last week.
The design by a Boston architectural firm Machado and Silvetti Associates calls for more than 99 thousand square feet located downtown. The school says it would provide a “new gateway” for the college on the southern end of town.
But one member of the committee that acts as liason between the school and the town told the student newspaper The Dartmouth, "it’s creating an urban landscape in what used to be a traditional New England town. It’s gaudy and southwestern, and we’re not. It’s going to look funny with snow on it."
Word of Mouth’s architectural conitributor Don Kreis joins us to give us the details. His day job is with New Hampshire’s Public Utility Commission, where he’s general council.
The modern building proposal in Hanover seems downright tame, though, compared to what’s on top of a contemporary art museum in Paris right now. A pair of Swiss artists has created a single-room hotel and set it atop the Palais de Tokyo. The piece of interactive art allows one exclusive couple to spend the night in what may be the world’s first portable hotel. John Laurenson of Deutsche Welle Radio checked in to Hotel Everland to find out more.
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Your architectural commentator, Don Kreiss has a particular point of view, and it would have been more balanced if you had another person with a different perspective to counter his comments.
One would think that the "shower stall" building at Dartmouth would have been a lesson for all. This contemporary building was so ugly that everyone cheered when it was torn down for the new library. Notice that no beautiful old buildings are torn down, just those contemporary sixties-style monstrosities that never worked. Oh, and by the way, the Hood museum ran into its own troubles as you can see every winter when an ugly scaffold has to be put up to protect pedestrians from snow slides off the roof.
The artistic rendition of the building in question is distressing to many of us. It looks like every other contemporary-style building,all glass and right angles, and it produces feelings that are the opposite of what we want to feel....human feelings of warmth, welcome, belonging and hope. Instead, this building produces feelings of alienation. Rather than existing for the next 100 years as an example of wonderful architecture of 2008, it could well end up like the shower stall. Perhaps the emperor has no clothes.
Actually, I think the demolition of Gerry and Bradley halls (often referred to as the "Shower Towers" because they were clad in part with muticolored ceramic tiles) proves rather than undermines my point. The tiles inspired affection and admiration; the buildings became a campus icon of sorts. They were demolished not because they were modern and non-historicist -- but, rather, because Dartmouth tried to build them on the cheap. In any event, not every building is a success and, thus, not everything should be preserved for all eternity (e.g., Clement Hall, on the site of the new Machado and Silvetti building Virginia dislikes). The Visual Arts Center, meanwhile, will NOT be built on the cheap; at more than $500 a square foot, it will be downright opulent.
Virginia -- with all respect -- I think you're misleading yourself if you really believe that glass + right angles = alienation and not the warmth, welcoming, belonging and hope you seek. Glass admits light while creating warmth and is thus arguably the most life-affirming building materials (particularly because recent technological advances reduce heat loss). And right angles? I'll wager your house is full of them.
I suppose there were those who cheered when the wrecking ball brought down Gerry and Bradley. But not me. My valedictory tribute to them was published in the Valley News a few weeks earlier. The architects -- Edgar Hayes Hunter and Margaret King Hunter -- are among the most distinguished ever to practice in Hanover. Many of their distinctive, contemporary homes survive today and are worthy of preservation, even if Bradley and Gerry were flawed because of cost-cutting college officials who were spending most of their capital budget on the Wallace K. Harrison's Hopkins Center (which I mistakenly referred to as the Hood on the air) at the time.
Even if one dislikes those unfortunate parts of the Shower Towers that were built to the architects' specifications, such as their awkward massing, poor relation to the street, and use of an industrial tile that quickly became dated, one won't find those things in the arts center design. The building's massing and placement on the street with clearly legible entrances make it more like Hanover's historic downtown buildings than the Shower Towers or even the popular buildings on campus. The use of natural stone beats tile any day and will make the building warm and welcoming. The design does not look like every other contemporary building, it looks like a building by Machado & Silvetti that expresses its vertical division into studios, circulation space, and other functions, perhaps offices or printmaking studios. Assuming the roof is tight, this building will outlast almost every other building downtown, because people will consider it a work of art.
The time to save this part of Lebanon Street was when the Hop was built and this streetcorner site was damaged. The new arts center will repair some of that damage and will improve, not detract from, the downtown as a whole.
In regard to the comment that only Modernist buildings have been demolished. In fact there have been many changes to the campus over its history that have included removal of Federal, Greek Revival and probably most dramatically Romanesque buildings. Removal of Gerry only follows a recurring pattern followed by the powers that be to replace rather than restore or renovate.
The proposed Visual Arts Center on the Dartmouth campus looks like the type of building used to house municipal employees in cities like Topeka or Fargo. If a contemporary design is going to be chosen, at least make it an exciting one -- one that makes the viewer curious and interested, not go, "Bleecgh!"