So what does the taste for Hogwarts-style dormitories say about the Yale or the USC of 2017? It says that the primary job of residential architecture on campus is to provide a sense of consistency and familiarity for donors and incoming students alike — to soften the edges of the college experience. — Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne looks back at 2017's resurgence of Neo Gothic and Neo-Gothic-ish college architecture and compares the newly completed USC Village and Yale residential complexes with architectural references of the manifestation of nostalgic Anglophilia, the wizard school Hogwarts, as found in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
"High school graduates on their way to college are hardly responsible for the architecture they find there, of course," Hawthorne writes. "Yale, USC and other wealthy and ambitious schools seem to be counting on a kind of double nostalgia, on the hope that this revival of the Gothic Revival will appeal both to incoming students and to wealthier alumni, who after all are the ones paying for and often helping dictate the architectural sensibility of new campus buildings."
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"Incurious and infantilizing nostalgia"?
I've never heard anyone use those words to describe the neo-Gothic campus of Yale or Duke or wherever. What I hear most is how beautiful or charming. Was the Renaissance revival of Roman Classicism an exercise in nostalgia? And what would he call the mid-century mod?
"the primary job of residential architecture on campus is to provide a sense of consistency and familiarity for donors and incoming students alike — to soften the edges of the college experience."
If that's what he thinks goes on in an architect's brain when they design a campus like Yale, you should read what the architects where actually thinking when this " first became popular a full century ago." This first became popular when modern man evolved. I look forward to seeing this kind of infantilizing criticism evolves into something more serious.
Im sure you work for Bob Stern or Harvey Devewhateverthefuck. This collection of buildings sucks and does not deserve any more serious criticism.
Yes, this is really sloppy journalism on the part of Hawthorne. I've heard this "Hogwarts" stuff thrown around as an epithet before, but Hawthorne takes it to a new level, actually saying that this is a real (pseudo)psychological phenomena. All without any supporting evidence whatsoever.
Heaven forbid people would want to create dormitories that don't make people uncomfortable.
re: "I've never heard anyone use those words to describe the neo-Gothic campus of Yale or Duke or wherever."
Back in October, Places Journal published Belmont Freeman’s case against the architecture of higher education, which uses very similar language re: the nostalgic "idealized version of the Ivy League". Specifically, with regard to the most recent architectural production of Yale (and others more generally).
I think the term is 'collegiate gothic' and it is far from dead or static. Yale, however, is making a serious error. In the UK the term 'red brick college' is sneeringly used to describe schools that are not Oxford or Cambridge. If you are going to pour in the big bucks might as well go the whole route and use stone. Perhaps Yale should study the collegiate gothic buildings at Princeton? The above buildings look like they have been temporarily repaired after a WW II style bombing raid.
Hi Nam,
I was describing the everyday people who actually use the buildings. This is lost on most architects, that what actually matters is how people perceive buildings, not what place a building takes in the history of architecture. The most consistent factor in architecture is how human nature interacts with its environment. From Belmont Freeman:
"This massive undertaking was justified as a forward-looking imperative to prepare Yale for the globalized future. But why then would the university choose to revert to an archaic, centuries-old visual language? Clearly Yale’s resolve to address the challenges of modern times no longer extends to its architectural patronage."
Imagine applying this thinking to any other period in history. It's not about the centuries-old visual language, it's about the beauty. People love and crave it, even if they don't know it consciously, and that includes every aesthetic. A well composed building doesn't rely on a specific language to "communicate", it does so regardless through its patterning of light and shadow, a common visual language. Materials and detailing go only so far.
Whether Mr. Stern succeeded in designing beautiful and appropriate buildings is up for debate, but not whether the style of buildings "address the challenges of modern times". For architectural criticism and architecture to become more relevant to a broader audience it wouldn't hurt to start looking at buildings from the perspective of the people who experience them.
What style communicates the visual language of collegiate life at Yale?
At a centuries old institution like Yale they must maintain an image of traditions and collective history while at the same time add new residential colleges. These new colleges must mimic or establish new traditions in-order to imbue the new residence halls with a sense of history, place and the hallmarks of collegiate life at Yale. One of those hallmarks being a neo-Gothic building (not a 300+ year old tradition but one invented in the 1930s along with lore whimsy and a place specific culture) is what is expected of Yale's built environment. Anything less or different is going to create a cast system based on your residential college and where you live at Yale suddenly becomes a social status and a cause of friction and difference I would imagine Yale would prefer to avoid or mitigate as much as possible. A contemporary style building would not achieve the desire effect the client, Yale, is after. An Architect's job is to meet the needs of the client not the needs of what a handful of critics think is best for the advancement of architectural design. Buildings are designed for people, the majority of whom are not architects.
Also a handful of buildings on two campuses does not a resurgence make.
Over and OUT
Peter N
It feels like a resurgence if you have a siege mentality. It's become more acceptable to design contextually, especially if that context is traditional. This is worrying to those who abhore or have declared traditional styles as pastiche and obsolete or worse yet, invested in political meaning that no passerby could decipher. These buildings are essentially humane in that they consider the perspective of the layperson first.
I think the issue with the new building at Yale isn't the adoption of Collegiate Gothic style, but its execution - some of it, like the tower, are a good example of the style, where there's a balance between red brick and masonry detailing, and the use of masonry serves to highlights the ornament through contrast - however, other parts just seem pastiche because of the material handling and the massing. Patches of masonry, probably echoing Storybook style, are too whimsical and playful for the rest of the building, so end up looking out-of place, and seem more like a failed attempt to emulate the 'organic' pattern of repairs and alterations in a genuine historical building, even if that wasn't the intention. Some parts of the complex seem to have the Gothic details, but the underlying proportions and forms just seem 'off'.
But that is a criticism of the building, not of the adoption of Collegiate Gothic for a modern building. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong in looking to traditions for inspiration; after all the historical American university buildings that adopted Gothic Revival or Neo-Classical styles did so taking inspiration from the old European universities - Cambridge and Oxford especially - themselves built in the original Gothic, Gothic Survival and slew of variations on the Neo-Classical, and the buildings built then are still loved and appreciated (even if there's always issues in modernising old buildings when it comes to services, thermal performance and maintenance).
There's plenty of Gothic Revival architecture (note 'Revival'; it was a resurgent movement /then/) at Yale, including plenty of old examples - but also noteably the 1931 Stirling Memorial Library, which was criticised similarly in its day for looking to the past and being anti-modern, but which has become iconic, and which was built less than 100 years ago. Revivalist architecture is something of a tradition of Yale itself, and building another Collegiate Gothic building is also building in harmony with the architectural context and existing built environment. A lot of non-architectural (and architectural!) people happen to like traditional styles - and not on the basis that they stand for some 'former golden age' that never war, but on an appreciation for the forms, ornament, details, etc. - and hence why my critique is based mostly on aesthetic grounds, not on historical authenticity, nor am I praising it for being a lovely building just because it's Collegiate Gothic.
In the end, however, isn't the important thing that incoming students are adequately housed? and a debate over stylistic choice doesn't really discuss functionality.
Collegiate Gothic and Classical elements on campus. The horror.
i mean, god forbid buildings on a campus fit with the existing aesthetic, or worse yet, adopt a design ethos that puts the comfort of students first.
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