Archinect - Features

As Incoming Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning of Cornell University, Meejin Yoon Shares Her Insights From Her Own Experience as an Architecture Student

2018-09-11T10:00:00-04:00

At the beginning of the upcoming Spring semester, Meejin Yoon is the newly minted dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning of Cornell University. According to the Cornell Chronicle, Yoon is the first woman named to the position since the college was formed in 1896.

Digital Library, Analog Building: The Story of Rand Hall (Chapter 4)

2018-04-13T09:00:00-04:00

Chapter 4: Second Action Second Renovation

Rooms for data processor and faculty offices were installed on the first floor of Rand Hall for the Cornell Computer Center in 1959. Additional interior walls were erected to expand the office spaces on the west end of the second floor of Rand Hall. Today, the digitized collection of the entire library can be contained within the memory of a hard drive smaller than the size of a single book. But in 1959, the physical space required by a digitized library would have occupied more area than a traditional library of book stacks containing the same amount of information.

Digital Library, Analog Building: The Story of Rand Hall (Chapter 3)

2018-03-06T08:00:00-05:00

Chapter 3: First Action First Renovation

Non load-bearing partitions were added between the columns to create spaces for offices and seminar rooms on the east side of the second floor of Rand Hall in 1952. Earlier that year, Buckminster Fuller built a twenty foot diameter geodesic dome with students on the roof of Rand Hall that acted as an inverted planetarium. But what had been intended as a permanent fixture on top of the building was destroyed by vandals on Halloween night. Although the structure no longer exists on top of Rand Hall, it is well documented in the extensive Fuller Archives.

Digital Library, Analog Building: The Story of Rand Hall (Chapter 2)

2018-01-16T09:00:00-05:00

Chapter 2: Inciting Incident, Inciting Building

Before the construction of Rand Hall, Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, gifted his architectural library to establish the Department of Architecture in 1876. That same year the American Library Association was formed. It marked a turning point in the way university libraries managed their collections and controlled access of their materials to faculty, students, and the public.