Yeah, as soon as it was pointed out those are limestone block walls, it clicked with me–that is a very abstracted, modernized take on neoclassical.
Same basic thing people are saying with the cemetery references, and the Beaux-Arts reference. Beaux-Arts is also neoclassical taken in what was then a modern direction, but with lots of ornamentation that is not itself classical. This is taking neoclassical in the exact opposite direction, stripping out all the ornamentation to achieve a minimalist/modernist effect.
Given all that, I will say–not Brutalist. Not the right materials, and not the sort of more comprehensive opposition to classical architecture principals that Brutalism (at least usually) represented.
The “underground” section of the building, including the performance hall, certainly gives brutalist vibes, more so than the above ground portions (to me, anyway), though it technically is not, I suppose:
That’s very observant of you. Though they look like eleven separate buildings above ground, the Wesleyan Center for the Arts is connected by an almost internecine tunnel system which doubles as a foundation and literally “roots” them into the ground. The brainchild of design genius and Saarinen protege, the late Kevin Roche, one observer described the CFA as “the world’s biggest mushroom patch”.
There are several performance venues within the CFA. Here’s a photo of the main recital hall where you can more clearly see that the foundation walls are made of poured concrete:
This “internecine tunnel system” sounds brutal indeed, @circuitrider . One hopes that the students who brave its perils restrict themselves to paintguns and paperwads. (Apologies for being a wiseacre.)
You know, below those open-eave-thingies, I think that is not too bad. That sloped entrance-base-whatever is kinda cool, reminds me of like an Egyptian tomb.
But that overhanging top level just seems so wrong to me. Heavy overhanging high floors is a common Brutalist thing (many examples above), so I can usually live with it. But if you are going to do it, for me that is not enough–not dramatic enough of an overhang, and those spindly little eave-thingies lack the drama and strength I would want.
Like, contrast that with the Geisel Library–that is doing overhanging upper floors right. This is just so tepid in comparison.
Edit: Ha, I just realized that looks like a person with a big head who has pulled on a wool beanie. I guess maybe that could be seen as an ode to Wisconsin . . . .
Apparently this hulking beast was built to withstand bomb blasts. If memory serves, it was built either during or soon after the Vietnam conflict and the related bomb threats and protests on campus.
It always seemed funny to me that the musicians, writers, and poets of UW would be forced to spend so much time in such a monstrous edifice. Shouldn’t the home of Humanities be a pretty building?
All the references to construction of the building and the “attached” parking garage have it as a Marcel Breuer design completed in 1970. Nothing found indicate additions post original construction. The upper floors that house the hotel were renovated in 2009 but seems that was just interior updates.
The Trinity Life Sciences Center was a brave effort to lay down the entire side of a second quadrangle within the campus’ wider English Gothic framework which many people had felt lacked a sense of completion by the 1970s. You can see the desire to emulate the towers of the Great Walk within the sculpted patterns of the poured concrete:
Alas, this may be another example of the original concept not being followed through to its logical end as subsequent buildings departed from the materials used, reaching for a kind of post-modernist fuzziness that has left the LSC orphaned within the very quadrangle that bears its name.
