Word: mather
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...merge these two forces. Below is a look at four dining halls' attempts to do just that: Eliot House, where institution and residence meet, but don't interact; Currier, where something is lost in the institution's translation of "residence"; Quincy, where the two dance a strange tango; and Mather, where comfort and efficiency unite in Masonic lodge-like splendor...
...MATHER...
...architect of Mather House (Jean-Paul Carlhian, the man behind New Quincy and Leverett Towers) designed it as both a warmly embracing "community" building and a giant, empty gallery space meant to be filled with art from the University's museums--a perfectly rendered balance between private comfort and public display. For financial reasons, the Unversity's art was never showcased, turning much of the House into an impersonal blank canvas (artes interruptus). Nowhere did this seem more of a problem than the dining hall, which was to encapsulate the gallery feel of the House while functioning as the focal...
...Mather's dining hall is remarkable for the way in which it defrosts the cold impersonality of Mather the Gallery. Walking into the dining hall proper is like walking into a ski lodge, the warm room beckoning after a day out on the slopes. Sunlight-like light radiates from sunburst-shaped light fixtures. The vastness of empty walls is interrupted by stretches of brick (a comfy building material) and pictures of random groups of house residents (found on walls throughout Mather). These contribute to the friendly atmosphere of the house while covering its empty canvas...
...Where Eliot's vastness is oppressive, Mather's seems refreshing. The hall's horizontal expansiveness is divided into different sections, allowing a diner to digest (no pun intended) the immense space of the dining hall in manageable increments. As in Quincy, there is a rectangular central eating area that is flanked on both sides by more intimate commensal spaces. Rather than resolutely delineating spatial boundaries using flanks of columns as Quincy does, Mather separates the private side spaces from the main area with boundaries that are themselves dining spaces (alternating brick walls and tables), seamlessly moving from one dining space...