Why Does Rutgers Not Adhere to a Cohesive Architectural Style?

[zazoo2002]

I'm sure the question in the title has been discussed before, possibly ad nauseum...but I didn't see anything in more recent posts.

I was looking at facade renderings and aerial photos of some of the newly built facilities on Livingston Campus, and beyond my reaction of BLECH - Rutgers Athletic Performance Center, Rodkin Academic Success Center, Rutgers Business School - I'm trying to figure out why there isn't a cohesive architectural style? Each building seems to be on a distinct (hyper)modern voyage. Personally, I wish that these projects adhered to a more traditional 'classic' style, with contemporary elements, like the River Road entrance to HighPoint Solutions Stadium.

 

[RUSK97]

We’re poor. Someone mentioned this a few years back...a poster who is a mason or owns a masonry company. A mason who can properly lay a brick facade on a building in NJ gets paid something like $100...every 10 seconds.

 

[RUnTeX]

Money. Things have typically been done on the cheap.

Rodkin Academic Success Center

Just to clarify that the above facility will be on Busch, not Livingston. But your point still stands.

 

[Tararua]

There's been a reasonable attempt on CA to keep to the old Georgian Collegiate style with the Honors College and the new academic building. The plan for the new quad facing the CA gym also keeps to that. But I guess for Busch and Livingston, there never was any established style besides cheap functional modernism. In this sense, they're a legacy of their architectural genesis. It's a shame, because Rutgers is spread out, and needs a sense of unity to tie together 5 New Brunswick campuses. If you look at the buildings built on Busch/Livingston/Douglas over the past decade, I think the best ones are the more conservative collegiate style: the BEST dorms, the Proteomics building, the Global Village dorm. Having a settled style need not preclude having attractively different buildings. I think the Food, Nutrition, and Health building on Cook is awesome, and I've come to like the Weeks Hall engineering building. But there's just been too little cohesiveness. The B-School, the Livingston Apartments, the Barnabas Practice center: they all look like they've been randomly selected from various other urban fabrics, cut out, and dropped into place. The B-School was a result of a hugely irresponsible contract with 10 Arquitectos, and they're stuck with that. But going forward, I don't see any evidence that the RU's planners are thinking in terms of cohesion, identity, continuity, or history. At least we're getting good, functional, state-of-the-art new buildings. The interiors of the Chem and Engineering buildings are outstanding. Same with the Pharma extension. But they lack a stylistic identity, and that does matter. You want the campus of a 250 year old university to reflect that heritage, to communicate the uniqueness of Rutgers, and the university has failed dismally to do this.

 

[RUnTeX]

But I guess for Busch and Livingston, there never was any established style besides cheap functional modernism.

Livingston's core was basically built up in the early 70s and it's not particularly attractive. Between the original residential (Towers and Quads) and the early academic buildings it's mostly a jumbled mess.

Busch appears to have had some early promise with Waksman flanking the western edge of campus and Wright-Reiman anchoring a central quad. But then the hodge podge started thereafter with the abomination that is the engineering building at the east end of the quad and things continuing downhill through the 60s and 70s. I think Busch's problem begins with a failure in planning and layout of the campus from a landscape design perspective even morseo than the building architecture within it.

 

[zazoo2002]

There's been a reasonable attempt on CA to keep to the old Georgian Collegiate style with the Honors College and the new academic building. The plan for the new quad facing the CA gym also keeps to that. But I guess for Busch and Livingston, there never was any established style besides cheap functional modernism. In this sense, they're a legacy of their architectural genesis. It's a shame, because Rutgers is spread out, and needs a sense of unity to tie together 5 New Brunswick campuses. If you look at the buildings built on Busch/Livingston/Douglas over the past decade, I think the best ones are the more conservative collegiate style: the BEST dorms, the Proteomics building, the Global Village dorm. Having a settled style need not preclude having attractively different buildings. I think the Food, Nutrition, and Health building on Cook is awesome, and I've come to like the Weeks Hall engineering building. But there's just been too little cohesiveness. The B-School, the Livingston Apartments, the Barnabas Practice center: they all look like they've been randomly selected from various other urban fabrics, cut out, and dropped into place. The B-School was a result of a hugely irresponsible contract with 10 Arquitectos, and they're stuck with that. But going forward, I don't see any evidence that the RU's planners are thinking in terms of cohesion, identity, continuity, or history. At least we're getting good, functional, state-of-the-art new buildings. The interiors of the Chem and Engineering buildings are outstanding. Same with the Pharma extension. But they lack a stylistic identity, and that does matter. You want the campus of a 250 year old university to reflect that heritage, to communicate the uniqueness of Rutgers, and the university has failed dismally to do this.

Wow...very informative response! Thank you for punctuating the OP. It really is a shame.

 

[retired711]

Most schools don' t have that much commonality of design. The buildings that are common tend to date from a common era. (Princeton is an example, as is, of all places, Rutgers-Camden) That's because traditional styles often aren't as functional for, say, a new science building, as newer designs.

I think about Cal and UCLA, two campuses I know pretty well, and I'd say that both campuses are very attractive (good landscaping can do wonders, something that Rutgers doesn't always understandl) but I wouldn't say they are uniform in any way. Remember, uniformity of style can be quite boring as well as dysfunctional. I've been on the Duke campus and I think the campus gets boring after a few looka round.

Tararua makes an excellent point, though, in talking about Rutgers-NB's unique position as a "multi-campus campus." I think it's right to say that there ought to be at least some buildings at Busch and Livingston that have a common theme with the traditional College Avenue look. But I don't think we need everything to look like the College Avenue buildings/

 

[RUnTeX]

Speaking of multi-campus campuses, Michigan-Ann Arbor's North campus, where the engineering school and some related programs are housed, has some random architecture that appears to be rather boring modern era construction from the 60s-70s-80s. So not so dissimilar to Livingston and Busch campuses at Rutgers-NB.

Duke has a multi-campus campus as well as three boring names (East, West, Central) to go with it. The common architectural theme of collegiate gothic is found in many, but not all, of its buildings. Speaking to @camdenlawprof's point of having more functional design rather than keeping with traditional architecture for the sake of it, the campus that houses Duke's medical school/health programs and some of those newer research facilities are somewhat of a departure from Duke's older buildings but they don't really stick out like sore thumbs either.

One necessary evil both schools share with Rutgers-NB....campus buses!

 

[Upstream]

Most schools don' t have that much commonality of design. The buildings that are common tend to date from a common era. (Princeton is an example, as is, of all places, Rutgers-Camden) That's because traditional styles often aren't as functional for, say, a new science building, as newer designs.

I think about Cal and UCLA, two campuses I know pretty well, and I'd say that both campuses are very attractive (good landscaping can do wonders, something that Rutgers doesn't always understandl) but I wouldn't say they are uniform in any way. Remember, uniformity of style can be quite boring as well as dysfunctional. I've been on the Duke campus and I think the campus gets boring after a few looka round.

Tararua makes an excellent point, though, in talking about Rutgers-NB's unique position as a "multi-campus campus." I think it's right to say that there ought to be at least some buildings at Busch and Livingston that have a common theme with the traditional College Avenue look. But I don't think we need everything to look like the College Avenue buildings/

Agree that everything in the same style gets pretty boring fairly quickly. A mix of architectural styles is far more interesting and vibrant.

If you look at Voorhees Mall on College Ave, the buildings that work, like Voorhees Hall or New Jersey Hall, have different architectural styles, but they work because they have interesting architecture. The buildings that fail, like Scott Hall, don't fail because they are different. They fail because they are poor architectural styles.

The real desire is interesting and aesthetically pleasing, not sameness.

 

[zazoo2002]

I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but recent projects have perplexed me a bit - not understanding budget constraints, footprint, etc - as the interiors look awesome, but the exteriors are less than inspiring. And, I'm not suggesting a 'single' style across all campuses, but when intuitive, some cohesion.

 

[RUSK97]

Most schools don' t have that much commonality of design. The buildings that are common tend to date from a common era. (Princeton is an example, as is, of all places, Rutgers-Camden) That's because traditional styles often aren't as functional for, say, a new science building, as newer designs.

I think about Cal and UCLA, two campuses I know pretty well, and I'd say that both campuses are very attractive (good landscaping can do wonders, something that Rutgers doesn't always understandl) but I wouldn't say they are uniform in any way. Remember, uniformity of style can be quite boring as well as dysfunctional. I've been on the Duke campus and I think the campus gets boring after a few looka round.

Tararua makes an excellent point, though, in talking about Rutgers-NB's unique position as a "multi-campus campus." I think it's right to say that there ought to be at least some buildings at Busch and Livingston that have a common theme with the traditional College Avenue look. But I don't think we need everything to look like the College Avenue buildings/

My goodness...thank you for this post. Yes, spot on. I’m all for building a common architectural theme on CAC, but it is completely impractical to do so on a campus like Busch. I knew the Princeton campus well up until ~12 years ago as my wife was on the science faculty there. Those old collegiate gothic buildings work well for instructional classrooms for french literature, early american history and creative writing. They are an absolute nightmare and occupational hazard for science lab space. If you get past the old quads on the Princeton campus and wander towards the science and engineering quads on the south and east sides of campus, you’ll notice they are distinctly different in terms of architectural style. And this is the same for any large research university.

 

[retired711]

I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but recent projects have perplexed me a bit - not understanding budget constraints, footprint, etc - as the interiors look awesome, but the exteriors are less than inspiring. And, I'm not suggesting a 'single' style across all campuses, but when intuitive, some cohesion.

Rutgers is strapped for money, even with the bond issue of several years ago. So it's quite natural that Rutgers would want to give higher priority to what's inside than what's outside. It's unfortunate, because I think beautiful buildings make students feel better about the institution, but it's inevitable for an institution focused on improving its facilities.

 

[sct1111]

What do u think the ugliest building is at Rutgers? My vote goes to Hickman Hall.

 

[sct1111]

Rutgers is strapped for money, even with the bond issue of several years ago. So it's quite natural that Rutgers would want to give higher priority to what's inside than what's outside. It's unfortunate, because I think beautiful buildings make students feel better about the institution, but it's inevitable for an institution focused on improving its facilities.

It's quite strange when you go to Newark and see the adjacent campuses of RU-Newark and NJIT and realize how much nicer of a campus NJIT is now.