 | The Cavalier daily. Monday, February 10, 1969 |  |
JAMES WILSON HALL - 1769 OR 1969?
'A Rude, Misshapen Pile' *
Mr. Jefferson
'...a procession
of used A&P's, galumphing
circus-elephant fashion
down JPA...'
By Chris Baer
Mr. Baer is a fourth-year man in the School
of Architecture.
To those of you who daily walk the Sacred Way
from the Rotunda to Cabell Hall, I can only say -
Rejoice!, a new dimension has been added. Almost
nowhere else can one see, at no additional cost:
the birth, flowering and gradual death of the
American architectural tradition so well illustrated.
The tradition of which I speak is of the
American Classic, imported from Europe and duly
sanctified by our own Mr. Jefferson, brought to its
peak by such firms as McKim, Mead and White,
and now dying slowly at the hands of J. George
Stewart and his imitators. Certainly, the University
can take great pride in itself for their great public
service, namely, providing a means whereby the
public can observe this process free of charge and
by walking a mere 1000 feet.
Now, where the first 600 feet of visual
stimulation fits into the story should be obvious.
The rest, though far from their best, is good
McKim, Mead and White - well done and in
keeping with the rest of the scheme. Behind that
lies New Cabell which serves to show how far
downhill an idea can go in 50 years. The Classic
forms of the Greek and Roman Revivals have been
diluted with large doses of Williamsburg Colonial
and neo-nondescript. The result, an amorphous
pile with punch-out windows, no life, no interest,
just rows and rows of rooms. But the early fifties
were pretty bland anyway, so let's not hold that
against them. Besides, a lot has happened in
twenty years, hasn't it? Well, with that in mind,
you have but to turn to the East, whence like the
the sunrise cometh the answer, and behold the
latest and the greatest of them all.
Its name is the James Southall Wilson Memorial
Hall, the latest in a long if not quite noble line of
crackerbox classroom buildings, designed to
provide more lecture halls for the College of Arts
and Sciences. The driving force of this design
seems to have been the concept of "the best of
both worlds" a philosophy best illustrated in some
of our more mediocre subdivisions. But in attempting
this it winds, up in limbo. It is neither
good past nor good present, nor is it consistent
within itself. All that is left is a perplexing mass of
contradiction that even Robert Venturi would find
On the Governor's Mansion in Williamsburg.
between the north and south facades, or more
strikingly between the "colonial" wings and the
"modernized" central block. Which are we to
believe, or have we finally progressed to the stage
of anemic architecture? Do people believe that
architecture can be created like Frankenstein's
monster, by sewing together disparate bits and
pieces?
The contradictions themselves are more
far-reaching than the interrelationships of the
building's parts, though, and reach down to the
conceptual level, basically in the very selection of
the style. The whole question of time is the biggest
contradiction of all. Is it 1769 or 1969, and for
which part of the building? Can it be that nothing
has happened in those 200 years to influence
architecture, or that what has happened has been
so evil that we must flee headlong into the
simplicities of another age? This seems the equivalent
of those politicians who would have us
believe that if we only return to the old ways, all
will be right, yet we see this sort of behavior in a
thousand Georgetown Greens and Old Salem
Villages.
This romantic yearning for the simple days of
yore produces still further contradictions. The
greatest object of this romanticism is the period of
the country's foundation, that of the Declaration
of Independence, the patriots and of course,
Thomas Jefferson - amateur architect. By some
mysterious process, history is simplified and
thanks to the help of Williamsburg and other
tourist meccas which offer up a sterilized and
sanitized version, the popular image is produced of
"Colonial" or "Georgian" architecture as being the
style of the entire period. Williamsburg is of course
Georgian, but the University was most definitely
not. Jefferson loved the Georgian style as much as
he loved George III and equated the two. Thus he
hated Williamsburg, tried to alter it, and wound up
building a Capitol to send his philosophy at
Richmond. But since both Williamsburg and the
Lawn are brick and white trim, the differences are
glossed over, and now Wilson Hall, like its ancestor
Newcomb Hall, is more Williamsburg than anything
else. Why then have the absurdity of
preserving the Jeffersonian traditions by building
in a manner which was outdated long before the
University opened and was the very style whose
influence the Lawn was intended to overthrow.
In the context of personal preference or of a
small building, this kind of mis-applied historicism
can be understood if not condoned, but its
application today at a major university which
makes numerous pronouncements about the
pursuit of excellence is quite another matter.
Which brings us not to another contradiction,
that between form and function. Happily, most
people realize that there is some connection
between the two. Why then force classrooms into
some semblance of a mid-Eighteenth Century
Virginia courthouse? The results are equally confusing.
The confusion begins with the seating. Like the
infamous Annex of 1853 it appears as an addition
and not a totally separate building. The clearance
between it and Cabell Hall is not in itself objectionable
except to those whose offices look into it,
but this is out of character with its historical
prototype which was to be considered a totally
free-standing building.
Worst of all is the placement in relationship to
the surroundings. Exterior spaces are nonexistent
and the vista from the Lawn to the mountains is
destroyed forever. Even this is done in a half-hearted
manner. From the Lawn approach one gets the
feeling that the building should be higher and do
the job completely or be one floor lower and serve
as a roof terrace. Also the resulting escarpment
along Jefferson Park Avenue by Wilson and Cabell
Halls is oppressing and downright inhuman in
nature. One is presented with the impression of a
Nineteenth Century factory which perhaps is not
totally incorrect. A building freed from the imposition
of the Classical box could step down the
hill, thus avoiding this effect while leaving the vista
to Carter's Mountain undisturbed and remaining
invisible to strollers on the Lawn. Instead, we are
faced with the prospect of a procession of used
A&P's, galumphing circus-elephant fashion down
JPA, linked trunk-to-tail by glass bridges (to offer
"dry communication between the rooms" of
course).
Consider now the grand entrance, an amorphous
space, or rather non-space, which leads to
what appears the main entrance and serves to
channel medical students from the East Range and
people coming from the corner to the building.
Even then you are faced with a climb up some
typical Buildings and Grounds terracing, whereupon
you discover the first floor fire exit and
decide to forego the climb to the summit. If brave
enough you risk the climb and are duly rewarded
by entering the main lobby in imperial triumph.
In doing so you pause to note that the rooms
flanking the entrance are the third floor toilets.
Note also that they are equipped with large
windows and that the fixtures are arranged in a
line along the opposite wall. Alderman Library was
bad enough, but this goes one step further, and the
results of this situation, especially at night, are
obvious. A person emerging from behind one of
those "flame red" stall doors, is in effect making
an entrance onto a stage, and so the windows
placed there out of adherence to the styles of the
past will out of necessity be covered up.
Once in the lobby itself one experiences the
Festival of Materials, a sort of architectural menagerie.
Here you will find greenstone, brick,
several types of terrazzo, wood, plastic, aluminum,
plaster, glass and various other species brought
from their natural habitats in various exotic parts
of the world and assembled for the amusement of
the populace.
From here stairs lead to the upper floor
stairs are invisible to anyone standing in the lobby
itself makes them a bit difficult to locate but this
adds to the adventure. Actually, the lobby itself is
superfluous since most people will enter via the
two level bridge from Cabell Hall in preference to
negotiating the obstacle course just described.
Coming from the Lawn, you cross the upper
level of the bridge to an entry court where you are
given the element of choice. You are invited to
choose between two doors, one leading to the
corridor, the other to a bench and balcony
overlooking the stair well, shades of Frank Stockton.
Since the doors are glass you invariably make
the right choice and so are allowed to proceed
across the interior "bridge" which is cleverly
separated from the wall by a foot wide slot, and
whose railings hang out beyond the edge of the
slab so as to increase the chances of your stepping
over the edge.
On the other side, a similar set of double doors
leads to the Roof Garden, a space whose sole
purpose is to balance the entry court and insure
the external symmetry of the building. Characteristically
the walls are tall enough to block out
the view yet not tall enough to successfully
enclose the space.
A similar concession to preconceived exterior
form occurs in the stairwells where the landings
fall across windows. I am prone to question the
validity of having windows at floor to knee-level,
despite the fact that they can be found in
Monticello. We can also question the merits of the
circulation system which changes from floor to
floor and presents a baffling maze of loops and
dead ends, and the fact that the third floor lecture
halls are surrounded on three sides by throbbing
mechanical equipment.
If old forms are irrelevant, and I think this
question of what is worth preserving. That the
Lawn is an architectural masterpiece is not being
questioned, but it cannot be exactly duplicated
today. Education has changed and will continue to
do so. Likewise architecture is no longer piling up
bricks and copying Paladin details. We can
however follow Jefferson's intention by constructing
buildings as he did, as expressing the best
the times could produce, in all aspects, as integrated
compositions of interior and exterior space,
and most of all people, as suitable containers for
man in all his aspects and as a means of shaping
public taste. Can Wilson Hall measure up to these
standards? I think not.
These then are the criteria by which we must
judge Wilson Hall, and here we find it wanting. It
is not that it is eclectic, but that it is a debased
eclecticism of the Rayburn Building variety. It is
not the best we can produce. It does not recognize
our technology both in architecture and education.
There are only lecture rooms at a time
when the lecture is being challenged as a means of
teaching. There is no long-term potential for
flexibility, growth and obsolescence, the prime
requirement of any new educational plant, and
there are no provisions for electronic communications
and other such media. As our technological
organizations change it becomes increasingly
more impossible to build eclectic buildings
of high quality, both because the form is
totally irrelevant to function and construction
becomes unduly expensive. This is the age of
prefabrication and mass production not of skilled
artisans. This does not mean that the spatial
effects and scale cannot be duplicated with new
elements. Rather this means a greater richness and
variety than is now possible. Nor do I advocate
turning the Grounds into a stylistic museum. We
must have continuity, but this implies moving
forward. We need continuity; we have been offered
stagnation. The results will be much more
satisfactory, I think, when design decisions are
made by evaluation all relevant data and considering
the widest range of possible solutions.
Excellence rarely begins in preconception. I object
to the fact that the events of the last 200 years
have been arbitrarily excluded from consideration
and design placed in a straitjacket and blinders,
solely to pay homage to a degenerate and perverse
romanticism.
Wilson Hall then fails on three counts. It is to
the eclectic a bastard in the wrong style, to the
functionalist inadequate if not ridiculous and to
the futurist antique and irrelevant. It is, at least in
the context of Mr. Jefferson's University, an
architectural disgrace.
It is for this reason that several members of the
School of Architecture have petitioned to picket
the building. It is to a degree absurd and trivial,
but then two absurdities are funnier than one. To
us, this building is a joke and we will treat it in like
manner. Yet we are serious as well. We do this to
show our disapproval and to emphasize a concern
on our part with producing a physical environment.
commensurate with our much neglected
heritage. There is much talk of making people
aware of their surroundings, so why not start here.
A master plan called "controversial" a few years
ago (it was really less than ordinary) has died with
a whimper. The Hubbard-Winthrop proposal has
yet to elicit any response. So far the only
comments on Wilson Hall have come from the
A-school. Won't someone defend it? Won't
someone else voice an opinion? Does anyone care?
There are other questions we must raise,
particularly who controls design at the University?
Are such decisions being made by people whose
only knowledge of architecture comes from "The
Fountainhead" or "House Beautiful"? Why design
from limited knowledge? Would anyone have much
faith in a doctor who uses leeches or a lawyer who
advocates trial by ordeal? The University School
of Architecture has a high reputation. How often
is the advice of its faculty members requested and
how often is it heeded? In the early fifties the
Board of Visitors approved the design of the
Physics building over the objections of most local
architects. The faculty said design quality didn't
matter. Has anything changed in fifteen years, I
wonder? We have an emasculated modernity outside
the central grounds. Why must time stop at
Emmet Street, JPA and University Avenue? It is
the University's choice, but either way, where do
we go from here?
| The Cavalier daily. Monday, February 10, 1969 | |