University of Virginia Library

Compartments In Buildings
And Minds

(52) Most of us probably view traditional master-planning
as an attempt to find out what everybody wants and what
they think they'll want ten years from now, and then match
up these wants against the financial constraints and come up
with a compromise that pleases nobody. Thus we get
"compromise buildings," because our desires are always too
great and the money is always too little. At the same time
these compromise buildings get us in dutch with the
Commonwealth authorities because we use them only a few
hours a day. A Classroom can never be a Lounge or a Tutorial
Center or a Snack Bar or an Editorial Room or a Child Care
Center or a Broadcasting Studio or a Film Theater. We operate
on an either-or mentality; we are fleshy binary computers. One
consequence of this mind-set is that we enter a Theater
thinking only "Entertain me," an Art Gallery thinking only
"Culture me," A Faculty Office thinking "Fake him out," and a
Classroom saying in muttered panic, "Omygod Mymind
hasgonenumb." We do not live life; we play roles and move in
diagrams.

(53) The point of this tirade is to re-introduce an earlier
topic but by a different name. I have mentioned
"multi-purpose" facilities as desirable; let me here subsume
them under the more general heading of "contingency
planning" and relate the notion specifically to the matter of
whether 3000 in one "town" is best or 500 in six colleges. I
am not yet convinced, that is, that one or the other is
absolutely preferable, now or in the future. Is it possible to
allow for both—to allow for both, as opposed to planning
inflexibly for one or the other?

Photo By Lovelace Cook