But what are the intentions behind the mandates and guidelines?

ah, to make it look "timeless" - as if that comes from ornate and fake bricks. I see it as a transvestism, where developers sell an image of something the buyers can never be. It's not only the architects and developers fault anyway.

there was a trend a while back about new campus buildings somewhere in california that were made to look like princeton, why do you think that is? beyond the architectural "contextualism" as you call it, I believe it's psychological marketing, appealing to your most basic social-climbing instincts.

I think you're right. The concept of "timelessness"; the hope of being able to transcend time is major factor.

Princeton's collegiate gothic buildings were made to resemble the buildings of Oxford and Cambridge, so the Cali buildings were copies of a copy.

exactly, and that's how everything degenerates

Or, improves, as new elements of the order, in this case collegiate gothic, are developed .

never said degenerate was bad.

Nothing about New Urbanism mandates style, but unfortunately 90% of the examples of new urbanism appropriate this schlock, so people tend to mistake the style for the philosophy.

My guess is that when lower ranked schools copy old Ivy League buildings, the intention is to recreate the Ivy League look, even while actual Ivies are building mostly contemporary buildings. Therefore, the architecture has much more to do with brand association than it does with history or quality.

Yes, the principles of NU are laudable, however, when applied to capitalist development, they translate very poorly because of the nature of the business (scale economies, lower design fees, even lower construction costs) producing neighborhoods that have to have a style, otherwise the realtor can't say a word.

tduds, I didn't mention New Urbanism.

JLC did.

Fits the "character of the neighborhood" and is essential in easing the political friction when trying to build something in an existing urban neighborhood when NIMBYs might have the political or legal means to thwart a project.

read the design guidelines. that's how.

Well, that is a select view of Princeton. There are many buildings that do not look like that, including the building that contains the school of architecture.

can you shoot an arrow through all three thresholds? and who was the lord of the castle?, I see more than one blazon above the arch.

There are many building at Princeton that DO look like this and, in fact, it is the signature look of the campus.

I guess this is where I encounter "timelessness"... The buildings that are being built now do not look like this. These buildings were being built around the 1910s. I feel that this time-related bit of context matters quite a lot.

Actually the recently completed Whitman College at Princeton looks EXACTLY like this.

Ok. My question still stands. What were the intentions behind Whitman College's contextualism?

Well, Meg Whitman said that she was just tremendously impressed with the collegiate gothic atmosphere and beauty of the campus when she attended a generation earlier and she wanted to add to that texture. And she did.

The collegiate architecture is more about signaling a set of values and ideas about collage and what that means. The architecture associated with IVY League universities as compared to the brutalist and modernist architecture of community colleges is important to the institutions that shell out huge amounts of money to build and maintain these ornate buildings which are part of the package they sell to their potential students.

I don't think its all that dichotomous. Plenty of Ivies have modern and contemporary buildings. And plenty of smaller or public colleges have traditional bell towers covered in ivy.