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<p>Amen! I’ve heard it described as having been designed by the same firm that designed the cinder block restrooms that you see at the beach.</p>
<p>Another turn-off at another school: the campus seemed to have a ton of stray dogs. And dogs being dogs, this had the effect of turning walking across campus into walking across a mine field.</p>
<p>At an “artsy” ivy: the alum giving the info session told an interminable story about how the selection process is like Aladin’s cave – they (the Adcom) rush in and grab a handful of jewels (the admittees) then run out before the doors close leaving many more jewels un-grabbed (the denied). Then they brought out a current student who told another interminable angst ridden story about how she switched from physics to art history all the while chewing on her hair and readjusting her waistband. </p>
<p>At a Connecticut LAC: when asked what kids did on weekends the tourguide said “I dunno, I’ve been spending all my weekends at Williams visiting my girlfriend.”</p>
<p>Re Williams architecture and specifically Sawyer. I know I’m in the minority but I rather like Sawyer. My son, the architecture hopeful, thinks it far too early to be tearing down fifties and sixties buildings. Tastes change and sometimes it takes decades for the wheel to come full circle. I’m abivalent about the new student center, but I LOVE the performing arts center.</p>
<p>Having lived in Asian cities where in the last fifty years everything old was demo-ed for anonymus highrises and where now the few remaining historical buildings are treated like Aladin’s jewels, I would tend to agree that trends in architecture are subjective and variable.</p>
<p>OT: Campus architecture. My college was only 10 years old when I started there. In the early years, before the trees grew, it was frequently used as a futuristic location for movies, including a couple of Gene Roddenberry pilots. The modernist architecture looks better now that it did in 1975. However, I just went to the campus Website to find some pictures of the original buildings and they are hard to find. They do have lots of pics of newer buildings, though. There’s marketing for you. Here’s a shot of the Social Science Tower, looking much like it did in 1975: <a href=“http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/galleryViewer.php?photo=7[/url]”>http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/galleryViewer.php?photo=7</a></p>
<p>Gee, it’s a lot of fun to see which schools people thought I was referring to with my “country club” comment - and it’s neither Stanford nor Colgate, whiche I’ve never seen. Anyone want me to tell?</p>
<p>Maybe it’s more fun if we guess: Williams? Amherst? Vanderbilt? (I mean, the name alone…)</p>
<p>We toured Columbia in the rain, so it seemed gray and gloomy. Then at the info session, the speaker (who seemed very full of himself) said they want the type of students who discuss the New York Times over breakfast. I looked at my D and she rolled her eyes. Definitely not us.</p>
<p>Then there was the Pomona tour in a dense white skied heat. It’s a beautiful school but the info session almost put me to sleep. And as we wandered the quiet summer deserted campus, memories of my college misery all came flooding back to me. Completely irrational, I know. I did not share my opinion with my son who actually really liked the school a lot.</p>
<p>WashDad: My colege was new, too. And it was all mud. It made the twenty “smallest or most insightly” lists every year. New pres. turned that around and it’s actually (gasp)! pretty. I’m nostalgic for the mud though.</p>
<p>Sarah Lawrence: Were completely disorganized. Kept confusing list of interviewees with people who signed up to tour and calling wrong names. Doora of bathrrom stalls in cafeteria building wouldn’t close without second person holding them closed. Notices for “Friday night movie” on bulletin board a boring, middle-of-the-road comedy we had watched on video several times.</p>
<p>I shared the country club reaction to Stanford. I’ve always said that if I had visited first I never would have gone to grad school there. It’s a golf-course aesthetic: everything consistent, buildings isolated with long, groomed “fairways” leading up to them. (Not the old Quad, of course, but that’s only a tiny part of the campus.) I, too, much prefer the look and feel of Berkeley, with the city right there and one building’s basement looking into its neighbor’s third-story windows. However, the comment about being boring for runners is completely wrong. Runners loooove Stanford – they go back into the foothills, where it’s both beautiful and interesting.</p>
<p>We ought to start another thread about things that made us irrationally fall in love with a college. I can relate to that much more.</p>
<p>When we toured Stanford I didn’t liken to a country club. I likened it to Disneyland: immaculately groomed with not a cigarette butt or piece of litter anywhere in sight. </p>
<p>But despite its sterile appearance, I still came away impressed with Stanford’s unique funkiness though. Because on the day we were touring there was a student driving a rented steamroller around campus calling to other students to bring out things to put in front of it to be squashed. (I’m not making this up). Stuff we saw get flattened: a computer printer, a folding chair, a bicycle, and all manner of dorm room belongings. I don’t think I will ever see that scene ever again on any other campus.</p>
<p>I hadn’t heard of a steam roller on campus before. Actually sounds like something you would see at Caltech, MIT or Harvey Mudd…</p>
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I agree, IRL it’s MUCH uglier. Got a better picture? ;)</p>
<p>Leonine: I really love your trope: “dense white skied heat.”</p>
<p>Forget Hampshire where D kept saying, barns, noooooooooo! (and cows!) which we saw on route to school.</p>
<p>“Mini–that building looked more like a prison, not a college!”</p>
<p>Beautiful mountain vistas on all sides, and none to be seen. Trust me - it’s worse on the inside. Glad they’ve decided to nuke it.</p>
<p>This was irrational: I got nervous walking the campus at Wesleyan in Connecticut b/c there was an organized ball-sport game going on at every green between every building.</p>
<p>All I could think of was the closing episode of the Newhart show, when he got killed by a random golf ball. I wanted to cradle my D’s head under my wing. It was riDICulous of me.</p>
<p>But you asked for irrational.</p>
<p>A quick note about picturesque campus buildings:</p>
<p>My son was housed at his first college in what was may have been the most beautiful building on campus – at least it was prominently featured in all the brochures. Unfortunately, it was OLD, shabby, and poorly ventilated on the inside.</p>
<p>When I went to visit my daughter at college, I attended a class with her, in a venerable building that also looked quite charming on the outside. After I hiked up the 3 flights of stairs to her classroom and managed to squeeze into a chair toward the back of a stuffy and overcrowded classroom, I was less impressed with the charm of the place.</p>
<p>I agree that big, boxy high rises are ugly as sin… but sometimes they are air conditioned. Dorm rooms of newer construction often come with nice extra features such as closets. Architects who build high rise buildings for classrooms and dorms tend to include enough elevators to meet the needs of everyone. </p>
<p>So the point is simply, don’t be overly swayed by charm over function when touring a campus, because the charm works off rather quickly when the heat doesn’t work and the plumbing is unreliable. Of course it would be nice if a college has features of both – nothing to stop them from refurbishing the innards of a stately old building. But as far as I can tell, colleges do tend to put more money into new construction than on renovations in older buildings</p>
<p>^^Oh, I’m a big believer in modern functionality. It’s just that when building a <em>new</em> building on campus I’d like to see old colleges take some pains to have the architect create something that is compatible with the existing buildings. Putting something out The Jetsons in the middle of Hogwarts is a travesty. Instead they should put in something that looks like, or at least blends with, Hogwarts but still comes with the modern robot maid.</p>
<p>Here’s what I’m talking about:</p>
<p><a href=“http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Harvard_college_-_science_center.jpg[/url]”>http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Harvard_college_-_science_center.jpg</a></p>
<p>The Harvard Science Center is a nice enough modern building, but it simply does not fit in the middle of a campus that is otherwise predominantly in the red brick New England Colonial style,</p>
<p>At least the Harvard Science Center is not within the gated part of the campus which is predominantly red brick. Even there the oldest building is grey granite. Outside of Harvard there are or were quite a few (mostly new) buildings that aren’t red brick. The Carpenter Center. The Architecture School. Gund Hall. (gone but it was yellow brick) and some of the law school buildings are brownstone.</p>
<p>^^You’re right that the Science Center is located just outside the Yard, but it’s still in the middle of campus and it’s still an eyesore.</p>
<p>I’m no architect, but I think Grinnell has done a nice job of harmonizing old and new buildings on campus. They, in fact, do have an old dining hall that resembles the great hall at Hogwarts, some Bauhaus structures and new athletic buildings, students center and science center. I feel like they all belong together and create a sense of the history of the place as well as its currency.</p>
![http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Harvard_college_-_science_center.jpg[/url]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Harvard_college_-_science_center.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
