Category Archives: master planning

About current and past master plans for Dartmouth College.

The new campus map

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The new campus map is available to mobile devices from the Dartmouth Mobile website (Dartmouth Planning announcement). The new map is better-looking than the current map, a pdf released in August of 2010 (Flash version). The society names are spelled out in Roman type, eliminating the orthographic creativity that rendered “ΦΔΑ” as “FDA” on the current map.

Because it’s electronic, this new map has a fantastic scope. Zooming out will display everything from the hospital to the Organic Farm, and the map’s coverage includes nodes for the airport and the Skiway. The Morton Farm equestrian center is included within the known world as well.

Advanced Surgery Center addition to open in summer

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  • The Advanced Surgery Center addition to the north end of the DHMC complex will open this summer (Thayer School News). A presentation about the ASC reveals that it will have a distinct circulation route for animals.
  • Thayer School’s $300 House Project from a while back has been written up in The Guardian:

    After the contest, a workshop was held at Dartmouth University where selected designers and architects further sharpened their ideas. Jack Wilson, team leader at Dartmouth, is now preparing to build two pilot projects in Haiti, one rural and the second urban.

  • Not related to anything on campus, but an interesting idea encountered while perusing aerial views of Berlin, Germany: K.F. Schinkel’s pioneering 1830s Bauakademie building (Wikipedia), demolished by the East Germans, was recreated as a cloth-covered scaffolding in 2005. It appears in current Bing low-angle aerial views.
  • Charlottesville architect William McDonough ’73 (Wikipedia) shares an anecdote about attending a Dartmouth talk by Buckminster Fuller in a blog post at the Times.
  • Phase I of the Collis renovation, focused on the café, is finished (The Dartmouth).
  • The Dartmouth Club of New York (at the 1915 J.G. Rogers clubhouse of the Yale Club) had a pong tournament last month (more).
  • New information about the 2005 SBRA master plan for DHMC is coming to light:

    An analysis revealed that the original DHMC organizational structure is reached its limits, necessitating a new way of organizing the campus. To provide an effective way to unify a larger assemblage of buildings, the master plan proposes a new circulation paradigm, employing a perimeter loop road that provides a sense of orientation and hierarchy to the dispersed building sites on land owned by DHMC and Dartmouth College.

Site updates:

  • The fifteen-year backlog of linkrot has been tackled. All 270 or so broken links have been fixed or eliminated since November. Mobile formatting has been added and the old “Links” page was removed 11.17.2012. The html version of the “Notes toward a Catalog…” was deleted today.
  • Sorry about the login screen popping up for comments. It is not supposed to appear.
  • If this site proves too exciting, head over to the Lamb & Rich, Architects site. Small improvements and sometimes a few discoveries have been creeping into each iteration of the catalog of the firm’s buildings.
  • Please do click on the new advertisements on the right-hand side of this page.
  • Thanks to Bruce at Big Green Alert for linking to the book at Google Books and this site in a post last month about “Dartmouth University.”

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[Update 06.09.2013: Broken link to presentation removed.]

Who dares wins: graduate studies proposals

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One of the Strategic Planning reports suggests that Graduate Studies be given a lounge:

The lack of any identifiable social space on the Dartmouth campus is quite striking, in comparison to all our peer institutions who have endowed graduate student centers. The ideal location for this space would be near the center of campus so that it would be easily accessible and also a visible reminder of the presence on graduate students and research on the campus.

(Graduate Education for the Future Working Group Final Report (June 2012), 13.) This desire has surfaced previously in the inclusion of a graduate suite in the original proposal for a ’53 Commons north of Maynard Street (pdf).

Compare this idea proposed by a different working group (WG) focused on research, scholarship, and creativity (RSC):

To meet all these goals, our WG recommends that Dartmouth consider the formation of a new school, the first in over 100 years. The School of Advanced Studies (SAS) would be the first-in-the-nation school focused broadly on advancing RSC for faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and undergraduates. Led by a new Dean reporting directly to the Provost, SAS’s remit would be to advance RSC at Dartmouth across all disciplines and all schools. It would invigorate the research environment at Dartmouth, spearhead better organized decisionmaking on RSC, help attract top talent to Dartmouth from all over the world, create more inclusive and enriching environment for graduate students and post-docs, and foster crossdisciplinary collaboration among faculty as well as undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students. We envision a new facility on central campus that would house SAS and its associated programs, as well as housing for visiting scholars and conference attendees, conference space, and common spaces.

(Research, Creativity and Scholarship Working Group Final Report (June 2012), 5.)

This sounds a bit like the famous Institute for Advanced Study, which occupies a Jens Larson building near Princeton University, but that organization is independent of its local university (see also Wikipedia).

Organic Farm master planning, other topics

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  • The Planner’s Blog announced that Maclay Architects of Vermont is working on a master plan for the Organic Farm north of campus. One proposed land-use diagram mentions a possible site for a child-care center.
  • Dartmouth Now has an article on the new restaurant in the Inn, located right at the southeast corner of the intersection of Main and Wheelock.
  • Wikimedia Commons has a nice reproduction of the unbuilt 1923 addition designed by Larson & Wells. Surely the firm’s only design in the Egyptian mode, the rear range placed perpendicular to the original building is difficult to read as anything but living quarters; the firm did a similarly large and even more domestic proposal for a newbuild Dragon around the same time.
  • The Rauner Blog has a post on George Stibitz and his remote operation of a digital computer in 1940. The terminal in Hanover was located in McNutt.
  • Vermont Public Radio has a story on the Ice Chimes sculpture. See also the unrelated Alumni Relations post on Carnival snow sculptures.
  • The Victor C. Mahler 1954 Visiting Architects Lecture is now bringing one architect to campus each year for a lecture, starting with J. Meejin Yoon (Dartmouth Now).
  • The Williamson is moving ahead at the DHMC complex (The Dartmouth, Green Building Council profile).

Boora Architects to design Hop expansion

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Obscured by the news of Phil Hanlon’s appointment as the college’s next president (Dartmouth, Valley News, The Dartmouth) is the announcement by the Hop that Boora Architects of Portland, Oregon will design the long-awaited Hopkins Center expansion (Dartmouth Now). Boora has done several projects at Stanford and appears to have a lot of experience in expanding existing arts centers. The University of Oregon’s School of Music + Dance is an appealing project, and the Hop-like opening up of the Bass Concert Hall at UT Austin is remarkable.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Hop announcement removed.]

The Riverfront Master Plan

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The College Planner has made available long-term proposals of the Riverfront Master Plan (pdf) by Milone & MacBroom of Waterbury Vt.

The plan contains several intriguing ideas:

  • New buildings behind and next to (north of) the Friends Boathouse.
  • The expansion of the Fuller Boathouse and the rebuilding or removal of the singles shed next to Fuller.
  • An addition to Ledyard Canoe Club (one hopes it is an addition: it could be a replacement) and the removal of the three boat sheds behind Ledyard.
  • On Tuck Drive, a Sewer Pump House.
  • The transformation of much of the current large parking lot into parkland.

An aerial view of the Academic Center’s site

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Bill Hemmel has a nice collection of recent aerial photos of the campus, including this one:

Lakes Region/Aerial Photo NH: Hanover/Dartmouth &emdash; Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH

Dartmouth will demolish Gilman (at right, with white window frames) and Dana (the square building above it) to provide a site for the North Campus Academic Center.

At this stage in the design process, the siting of the Academic Center is the best and most interesting attribute of the building. Disobeying the grid that orients the rest of the medical school complex, the Academic Center will approximate the curve of College Street. Here is a very rough guess at the building’s footprint:

Guess at footprint of NCAC

This would seem to rule out a New Maynard Street (not a serious idea):

New Maynard Street proposal

The new building will wall off the medical quad from the street at least as much as Dana does now, and it will finally liberate the quad’s southwestern corner. In place of the frustrating and obstructive hyphen that new joins Gilman to Remsen, the new building will erect a broad ramp to give pedestrians free access to the quad and the Life Sciences Center beyond.

In the context of Vail and its older neighbors, the potentially dull, planar surfaces and ominous cantilevering of the new building might be hard to criticize. This is Dana’s entrance, for example:

Dana entrance

But the obvious difference is that the med school’s Modernist buildings, all by SBRA, are built of red brick. While their scale and style set them apart, their material ties them to the campus. The Academic Center, which initially was shown as having one portion clad in brick, appears to be destined to wear a museumlike white material, possibly stone or metal paneling, all the way around.

The building guidelines in the 2002 Campus Master Plan propose that new buildings maintain at least some connection to the old:

There is a predominance of red brick buildings in Flemish bond, vertical, white, multi-paned windows, entry pediments, and pitched copper roofs. While we do not believe it desirable to limit the design of new buildings to a particular style, the use of some of these existing elements can go a long way in linking the new with the old.

Since it seems to be important to use color to set the Academic Center apart, one wonders whether the building could be built of white-painted brick. The oldest buildings of the campus, those of Dartmouth Row, have been painted white for decades, and yet they have been so little imitated that they remain strikingly different.

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[Update 11.17.2012: Broken link to Dana image fixed.]

Master planning observations

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From the planning site:

Master plan neighborhoods include:
Core Campus
North End
West End
Arts & Athletics

Campus-wide themes to be addressed include:
Campus Identity and Architecture
Development Capacity, Building Reuse, and Building Expansions
Housing & Campus Life
Landscape and Stormwater
Circulation, Transportation, and Parking

The process page says that the participants will start developing the framework plan during the fall of 2013.

Beyer Blinder Belle’s 2008 plan for Princeton is worth looking at. (Incidentally, what looks like Princeton’s prior plan of 1993-1996 was produced by Machado & Silvetti.) General observations on Princeton made after skimming the plan:

  • Princeton and Dartmouth are surprisingly similar in size. Princeton has 5,100 undergrads and 2,500 professional and graduate students in four schools: engineering, architecture, public affairs, and a graduate college. Dartmouth has 4,100 undergraduates and 1,900 professional and graduate students in four schools: engineering, medicine, business, and group of graduate programs.
  • Princeton’s compact, uniform block of a site emphasizes how much of Dartmouth is made up of reserved landscapes, whether green, park, cemetery, or slope. Princeton also has a vast unused land bank on the other side of the narrow lake that forms its south edge.
  • Princeton’s ten-minute walking radius is centered on the student center, not the main library, central quad, or old main building.

Parking will be big

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Parking has been a problem for years, and the goal of adding parking spaces to the campus is one of the aims of the 2002 master plan. This goal seems to have been satisfied less than most of the others.

The plan to expand the DHMC Lot near Jesse’s was put on hold and presumably will start up again. A much bigger project is the Cummings Garage (“A major parking garage at Cummings”) to replace the Thayer School parking lot by the cemetery (2002 Master Plan pdf). The garage was proposed to hold 833 cars, for a gain of 602 spots. While it would be extremely convenient to the professional schools, the garage would prevent Thayer School from placing an academic building on that site or from creating a solid connection to any future buildings on the slope down to West Wheelock Street.

The school’s master planning site is up

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The blog that will be the focus of the outreach effort is up, and it links to the actual master planning website.

One of the initial posts at the blog has a link to the 2003 video When Dartmouth Builds (cf. “When Smokey Sings“).

Another post links to the large online collection of maps of Hanover maintained by the Evans Map Room. One item is a group of 43 topographic maps from stadia surveys of Hanover made by the Thayer School classes of 1903 to 1920, and the maps are amazing. The Larson-era plans for the development of the campus are both thrilling and frightening (ca. 1923?, 1928).

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[Update 11.04.2012: Link to planning website added.]

Repurposing Rollins

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The seeming underuse of Rollins Chapel prompts one to ask whether it is finally time to devote the building to a more productive function; whether Dartmouth, without damaging the building or making a change that cannot be undone, should use Rollins for some purpose that serves the academic mission of the school.

Rollins would make a fantastic library reading room or simply a study space, for example. Students would actually have a reason to experience the building on a regular basis and appreciate its recent restoration.

Churches have been turned into libraries at Haverford College in Pennsylvania (below); at St. Edmund’s Hall in Oxford (St. Peter in the East, see interior photo provided by the college); and at Lincoln College in Oxford (All Saints Church, see interior photo by Martin Beek). And from the photos (more), the Modernist bookstore inserted by Merkx + Girod into a 13th century church in Maastricht is simply astounding.

Haverford College library interior
Haverford College library interior.

Dartmouth would continue to provide worship space, especially for student religious groups that do not have independent student centers and denominational chapels somewhere in town. There is little reason, however, for this generic worship space to occupy a prime site at the heart of a secular institution. To use its resources efficiently and help keep its most-used buildings within ten minutes of the Green, Dartmouth could easily justify the removal of its official worship space to a site that is relatively cheap and distant.

Dartmouth might consider building a noble and uplifting timber-framed building, simple and undecorated — perhaps in the form of an octagonal or round barn (Wikipedia), a vast English aisled barn (like Harmondsworth Great Barn, in Wikipedia), or a discount version of Thorncrown Chapel. The building might stand between EKT and Tri-Delt, or it could occupy one of the vacant sites west of the President’s House. It would be the sort of place where alums could hold weddings and the college could hold memorials.

Once the new hall opens, the college could sensitively furnish Rollins as a study space, like the ’02 Room, or as a new home for one of the smaller libraries.

Rollins Chapel
Rollins Chapel. See also the excellent interior photo by Stephanie Wales.

Removing the recent interior lights from the roof trusses would take Rollins closer to its original appearance, and replacing the existing movable chairs with high-quality lighted study tables or carrels would make Rollins into a highly useful building.

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[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to Merkx-Girod replaced, additional Maastricht photo link added.]

[Update 11.04.2012: Jacobs Consultancy, a firm working with the college on the new master plan, provides

detailed analysis and feasibility testing of the activities and occupants of a facility or complex, coupled with the analysis of existing buildings, their current, plus potential capabilities and capacities. This process identifies shortfalls and excesses in spaces controlled by various occupant groups, and suggests “highest and best use” scenarios with matches and mismatches by current occupants.

It will be interesting to see what they say about Rollins Chapel.]

The Visual Arts Center and the Maffei Arts Plaza

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The Board has opened a new front in the struggle to give the Black Family Visual Arts Center an informal name:

Two weekends ago, we celebrated the opening of the Black Family Visual Arts Center (BVAC). Not only is it a spectacular building, but its presence has also transformed the plaza between the BVAC and the Hop into one of the most beautiful and inviting spots on campus, enhanced by Ellsworth Kelly’s “Dartmouth Panels” on the brick façade of the Hop. The arts district formed by the Hop, the Hood and the BVAC creates a distinctive magnet for our campus and provides a splendid backdrop for the Year of the Arts at Dartmouth.1Board Chairman Stephen F. Mandel, letter to alumni (26 September 2012).

Whether called the Black Arts Center or the BVAC, the building is remarkable. The dedication was noted in the Buildings & Grounds blog of the Chronicle, and the first review of the building has appeared, in Hyperallergic. Unique photos of architectural models for the building are posted at Dartbeat. Donald Kreis has a perceptive review on Vermont Public Radio.

The accompanying plaza, built by specialized contractor Landshapes, is visible in a number of photos from the school’s Flickr photostream. There are also photos of the installation of Louise Joséphine Bourgeois’ giant metal spider sculpture in the plaza.

It is difficult to believe that Dartmouth was content to maintain a parking lot on this site for the last several decades:

Brewster Hall and parking lot, site of Maffei Arts Plaza

The new arts plaza is one of those places that changes its site radically and yet seems inevitable.

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[Update 11.04.2012: Kreis review link added.]
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References
↑1 Board Chairman Stephen F. Mandel, letter to alumni (26 September 2012).

New training space for sports medicine — where to put it?

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The Dartmouth has an interesting report on sports medicine at the college. First, it is intriguing that the sports medicine staffers fall under the direction of Health Services rather than the Athletic Department. Second, the Athletic Department is looking to have a training building built:

The Athletic Department and Health Services are currently considering the possibility of creating larger training rooms where the sports medicine staff can work together, which may be realized within the next two years, Galbraith said. This would ideally involve not just an expansion of the current training rooms inside Davis Varsity House, but the construction of an entirely new facility near Scully-Fahey Field — creating two “hubs” for the sports medicine program, Turco said.

Wouldn’t this be a natural function to combine with the indoor practice facility? Is that why the Scully-Fahey area is proposed? If not, one good place to put the training rooms would be the site next to Davis Varsity House:

two sites for training space building

Potential sites for a training building: west of Davis Varsity House, and near Scully-Fahey (based on a Bing aerial).

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[Update 09.08.2012: Even though the western (tennis court) site is right next to the gym, it is reserved by the 2002 master plan for academic uses because it is so close to the center of campus. That makes sense.]

Dartmouth Row as a “living-learning center”

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Dartmouth is fortunate that its “old main” and the buildings surrounding it in the original core of the campus have not been turned into a purely administrative headquarters. The four buildings of Dartmouth Row are the home to frequently-used classrooms and offices, including those of the departments of Classics and languages.

But could Dartmouth Row be used for something else? Could it be put to a more exciting purpose? Could the upper levels of Dartmouth Hall, or of all of the buildings in Dartmouth Row, be reconfigured as traditional dormitory space?

After decades of neglecting the original student rooms that line its Jefferson-designed Lawn, the University of Virginia created a competitive application process during the 1950s. The move invigorated the Lawn, and now living on the Lawn creates a membership in a sort of honor society. Some of the rooms are reserved for residents chosen by particular organizations.

Reed Hall before 1870, author's collection

Reed Hall before 1870

Students have never lived in the current Dartmouth Hall, but they roomed in its predecessor from 1784 to 1904. The building also held classrooms the whole time, and after 1895 student rooms were limited to the top floor. Students also lived in Wentworth and Thornton Halls beginning in 1829. Although Wentworth became all-academic in 1871, Thornton became all-residential in 1898 before switching to classrooms in 1912.

Finally, Reed Hall housed students in its third level from its opening (1840) and later installed students in its second level (1885) and first level (1904). Subsequent remodelings turned Reed into an all-academic building.

The college could convert the top two levels of Dartmouth Hall into a dormitory. The ground-level and basement-level classrooms, including 105 Dartmouth, would stay; the department offices would move, perhaps into an expanded Bartlett Hall or to a building projected for the west side of Berry Row.

Why do this? The change would return some life to the Green, and it would open up new housing right at the center of campus. Putting the school’s iconic building to a traditional use would provide a model for mixing academic and residential life on other parts of campus. The group of students allowed to live in Dartmouth Hall would be an exclusive crowd; if it seemed too much like a clique, then the entire row could be made into a dormitory cluster, with classrooms on the ground level.

The Academic Center is by Kyu Sung Woo Architects

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The designers behind the planned North Campus Academic Center are the Cambridge, Mass. firm of KSWA. Firm founder Kyu Sung Woo (Wikipedia) designed the Olympic Village for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul (firm page).

The firm’s campus work includes a pair of dorms on Coffin Street at Bowdoin (firm page) and the Nerman Museum in Kansas (Architectural Record, Biemiller post at the Buildings & Grounds blog of The Chronicle).

The project page for the North Campus Academic Center at Dartmouth provides a slightly modified version of the May view of the building’s rear or quad facade as well as a view to the southwest showing the “front” facade on College Street.

What’s most notable is the siting: this building has some major planning implications. The building is not an east-west bar as its predecessor Gilman was. Instead, it appears to follow a northeast-southwest orientation, forming an angled tee shape (a favored form — see the Nerman plan). The dominant main block will follow the angle of College Street as it heads off toward Lyme. The southern end of the building, the stem of the tee, appears to adopt the orientation of the McLaughlin Cluster.

Thus, instead of forming a rectilinear wall along the bottom of the medical quad as Gilman did, the building opens like a trap door, allowing the quad to spill out to the McLaughlin Cluster.

Some new details about the building’s contents and surroundings:

Classrooms, meeting rooms, a graduate student lounge and social space, a cafe, and a large scale forum will be available to the Dartmouth community. The building will be set in a landscape featuring outdoor performances, art events, and a gathering space for major events such as the Medical School commencement.

The Life Sciences Center also was described as framing a space for commencements. Thus the commencement space mentioned above seems likely to be the existing medical quad rather than the sunken lawn visible in the first illustration.

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[Update 08.11.2012: KSWA’s authorship of the Academic Center was mentioned as early as March 9 on a Korea.net article titled “Design by Korean architect dazzles in Boston.”]

Jens Larson’s own house, etc.

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  • Jens Larson’s house and studio on East Wheelock Street are for sale.
  • The Dartmouth has an article on Shattuck Observatory.
  • The Valley News reports that the New London, N.H. realtor Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty has opened an office in Hanover. It is on Lebanon Street, east of C&A’s Pizza.
  • A traffic study (pdf) raised the possibility of erecting a 663-car parking deck atop the Ledyard lot at the bottom of Tuck Drive. A shuttle bus would ferry employees from the lot up to campus. While a pine-screened parking garage alongside the river could be an interesting thing, Dartmouth seems wise to have avoided this scheme, and the consultants declined to recommend it.
  • Too bad there’s no tram to the Hospital. The idea of a little train through woods is neat, but it wouldn’t save much time compared to the road, which is relatively direct; it is probably not worth the hassle. And on the other hand it could not run through the woods the whole way: it would have to go down Park Street and then along Lebanon Street.
  • The great Reggie Watts (video) was photographed eating a sandwich at Amarna on East Wheelock.
  • The computer store is moving to McNutt (The Dartmouth).
  • The LSC got LEED’s platinum certification. See also sustainability in The Dartmouth.
  • The Radcliffe Observatory Quarter of Oxford occasionally receives coverage here. The old hospital north of the university is still visible in this excellent and somewhat outdated oblique aerial from Bing, with the eighteenth-century observatory owned by the newly-formed Green Templeton College prominent. Most of those buildings have been demolished, as this Google aerial shows:


And now some construction has begun, as this Bing aerial shows:



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[Update 08.19.2012: Tram comment reworded.]

The need for a new Alumni Hall

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The Hop expansion is going to take over the existing Alumni Hall as a performing-arts space. This makes sense: the big room is right there in the heart of things and seems to be underused.

Although Dartmouth has had an “alumni hall” only since 1962, the idea is worth continuing. In the Hop, the hall is a big multipurpose space that, although not as practical as Spaulding for alumni meetings, is distinguished from all other spaces by its decoration: it attempts to serve as a chamber of memory and sentiment. The Dartmouth Green walls display wooden recognition plaques and banners with the college seal and arms of the second earl of Dartmouth.

A new alumni hall should be a freestanding building; where should it be erected? The most prominent site is the vacant lot in front of Sherman, but that site should be reserved for a future library. What about the vacant lot north of Parkhurst, as an addition to Blunt Alumni Center? A major wing there could create a new and compatible façade in the rhythm of Administration Row.