Whose Footprints are These?

This spring I have had the pleasure of reading works written by two professionals I respect. Both pieces explore the theme of built spaces. Both authors address public open spaces as the formation of perceptual wholes, or I suggest, gestalts. Architecture in the context of urban planning has been described before as the art composing public or social spaces. The architectural writer for The Boston Globe, Robert Campbell, published an insightful article about public spaces being formed by the architecture surrounding them (Boston Sunday Magazine, 21 April). I infer from his writing that open spaces, city social spaces are in final analysis more than the sum of their meager architectural parts. Richard Dober, my friend and colleague, has written similarly in his new book, Campus Architecture, that in order to be considered campus architecture, site and buildings, landscape and architecture must be integrated as a unitary composition. But, how can one tell? Is there a way to know whether the persons who have created a place, a campus, have drawn all elements together successfully?

One must, I propose, reasonably rely on one's own good sense and senses, in the experience of a place, not a photograph, as Campbell cautions in his article. His article illuminates a 20th century bias toward two-dimensional experience and uni-sensational assessment of a multi-dimensional world. In walking a site one gathers an assemblage of experiences often difficult to parse. Visual impressions tend to override many other sensations. My inclination is to suggest that experience of place is more complicated, involving an array of visual, aural, olfactory, and haptic stimuli. Depending on the direction of the wind, one can tell without looking, often simply by breathing in, whether one is on the way into town from the airport in Boston or Philadelphia. My days in social research purgatory lead me to believe that there might be some unobtrusive measures to look for, tracks in the sand so to speak, to analyze integration of campus and architecture beyond a subjective impression of walking about the place. I will explore one, and surmise there are surely others.

My bias, ironically as a typical 20th centurion, is to begin to understand a place through a two-dimensional representation of it — a map. The accompanying illustrations show a campus map for a professional school of a university initially laid out a bit over seventy years ago. The ensemble has been supplemented by new constructions in the intervening years as programmatic needs arose and were expeditiously addressed.

The first map shows the campus as a figure-ground study to highlight the building forms in their relationship to each other and to the intervening landscapes they form. The second map shows the footprint of each building color-coded by age. The original structures built in the 1920's are shown in the darkest red or maroon color. Successive constructions during the 1940's and 1950's, are shown in successively lighter reds to oranges; and constructions completed during the 1960's and 1970's in lightest orange and yellow. Post-1980 buildings are shown in pale green.

There is evidence in the plan, as the reader sees in the maps here, that the metaphor of successive generations weaving a single tapestry together comes unraveled. It is the buildings of the late 1960's and 1970's that are the focus of this analysis. These buildings' footprints are tell-tale, two-dimensional evidence that somehow the thread of the social exchange was lost, at least for a time. Note please, in particular, the light orange and yellow-colored footprint plans shown in the picture plan below the dark, central figure identified as the library. See how these tracks are irregular and asymmetric; they are not sited at a similar distance from previous constructions as their predecessor buildings were from each other. If the plans I have examined are accurate, the structures built during this 20-year interval are also askew of the radiating grid, slightly, but annoyingly askew.

Social historians can reconstruct the reasons why these decisions were made and their ultimate significance. My hypothesis is that a combination of urgent need and external constraints might be the cause. Quite possibly there was a failure of long-range vision. Were these perceived to be the last buildings needed on the campus rather than part of a continuous and evolving fabric? I can only speculate. However, we do know that a campus plan was commissioned by this school in the early 1980's. The campus plan was used to guide the development of those building footprints shown in the pale green color. These newer buildings happen to be arrayed on the radiant grid or take advantage of views through open spaces created sixty-some years before. The threads, it seems, have been picked up again.

Anecdotally, the same buildings (the yellowish ones) I have called out as evidence of design disunity are not well-regarded by many of their everyday users as has been reported to me: "Tear 'em down!" "They don't fit in." Indeed, it seems by my analysis, they don't.

I conclude then, and proffer that even in two-dimensional analysis one can begin to assess how successful planners and architects are at creating coherent campus designs or urban spaces. One only need study the tracks carefully.

Charles A. Craig

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