Word: sites
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...established spatial relationships of the Yard are to be maintained--as the planning insisted--only two possibilities exist for the siting of new buildings. One can either demolish an existing structure and rebuild on that site, or one can build underground. The new freshman housing and the new library employ both alternatives, and the brief analysis which follows will attempt to evaluate their exterior influences rather than their interior qualities...
Canaday Hall is being built on the former site of Hunt Hall, missed by many of us who enjoyed its semi-successful neoclassical style and struggled through inaudible lectures in its domed auditorium. (The acoustical problem was finally corrected in 1972, the last year of Hunt's existence.) But Hunt was not a masterpiece on the order of, for instance, Sever Hall, and it had outlived its usefulness in the judgment of university planners. Its loss should not be too bitterly mourned...
...This site will now become an extension of the dormitory/court system which rings the southern and western sides of the Yard. The planners claim that extreme care has been taken in planning the new complex to match the scale of buildings and court with those of the existing freshman housing system. The problem here was to build a compatible building in a contemporary way. The brick will match exactly that of other Yard buildings; each of the three sections of the complex maintains the volumetric scale of the old dorms and has an eave line matched to that...
...glance at a site plan will convince even the most skeptical that the court, or mini-yard, formed by Canaday's volumes is virtually identical in size and configuration to the other freshman courts (like the one between Matthews and Strauss). But when the view is focused to the personal scale, the finer level of physical treatment and sensory perception, there are some surprises. Because the buildings will have many entries, circulation lines are ambiguous. To "solve" the problem, the designers have chosen to pave most of the court. The only such precedent within the Yard is the area...
...second questionable ingredient of the new court is the planting. Most of the existing deciduous trees on the site have been saved, and one has been moved and transplanted nearby. What will be added, however, are three large evergreens and numerous shrubs. If they continue to proliferate in the Yard, these may prove to be a quietly revolutionary element which could, in time, completely undermine the present landscape of the Yard and ultimately create a resemblance to the Maine woods. By blocking views of the Yard's buildings from a very low height, these trees would become more significant than...