Campus construction and other topics

Posted on 12.08.2013 by Regisseur

The Dartmouth has an article on campus construction projects.
Nice photos of the Visual Arts Center are to be found in ArchDaily (via Dartmouth College Planning).
The Grad Studies Office is moving from Wentworth to a renovated space at 37 Dewey Field Road (Home 37).
Bruce Wood at the Big Green Alert Blog has this tidbit regarding Memorial Field: “Keep your eyes peeled for a significant improvement to the facility at some point this fall.”
Architect Michael McKee was a principal with Moshe Safdie and Associates when he served as a “Special Consultant” with KSWA to handle the design development for the North Campus Academic Center (Somerville, Ma. PowderHouse Arts Center submittal pdf).
The school has obtained permission from the state to extend the existing floating wharf at the boathouse from 170 ft. to 218 ft. The project will involve dredging (download state letter, wetlands permit, etc.).
Did you know that there’s a short line called the Claremont Concord Railroad with a transfer facility in West Lebanon near the dilapidated old B&M roundhouse? In this aerial, the red Four Aces Diner is visible in its new location and the Railroad’s classic early-1950s Alco (?) is the yellow engine on the left.
DartmouthSports.com has announced that NeuLion will stream home games in several sports (via the Big Green Alert Blog). NeuLion is the leader in the field, and it seems to be moving away from a dependence on Flash. (Flash has a bad reputation on the desktop, see Steve Jobs’s letter of April 2010, and does not work on many mobile devices: Adobe announced in November 2011 that it had halted the development of Flash for mobile browsers according to Wikipedia.)

The new OPDPM website has projects

Posted on 21.07.2013 by Regisseur

The Offices of Planning & Design and Project Management (ex-OPDC, ex-FPO) have a new site with an extensive list of projects. Among the new revelations are:

An image of what looks like a sensitive renovation by Smith & Vansant of the Whitaker Apartments at 4 North Park. The building is now called Triangle House (not to be confused with Triangle Fraternity (Wikipedia)), and some details are given at the OPaL website.
Information on the new Kappa Delta sorority house by Truex Cullins. Although the house will have the address of 1 Occom Ridge, its main entrance will occupy the west or rear facade, which faces the parking lot and the campus (image). Not sure about those boxed eaves and shed-roofed dormers; it is a big house.
Information on the Dartmouth Row modernization plan. This project was mentioned during May of 2012 along with the NCAC.
News of a renovation of Fairchild Hall by Wilson Architects.

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[Update 04.23.2013: Vansant spelling corrected.]

DADA exhibit, other news

Posted on 05.06.2013 by Regisseur

DADA (Dartmouth Alumni in Design and Architecture) is having its third alumni architecture exhibit June 6 through 16 in the Nearburg Arts Forum in the Black Family Visual Arts Center (via Sue).
The Big Green Alert Blog reports that the Town has approved the zoning amendments that will allow a new video scoreboard at Memorial Field (a topic about which alumni are fairly passionate, judging from the comments on a post at this blog). The Zoning Board was to have considered a request for a Special Exception to replace the existing scoreboard at Scully-Fahey Field in its hearing on May 30 (ZBA Agenda).
The Rauner Library Blog has a post about old postcards depicting the campus.
The Dartmouth published a series of three articles on architecture last month. First, “Despite lack of major, architecture offerings abound” suggests again how interesting a history of the somewhat hidden world of design education at Dartmouth would be; second, “Recent campus buildings depart from New England tradition” focuses on post-1984 work; and third, “College’s early buildings share traditional aesthetic” covers prewar buildings (thanks to Amanda for the quotes).
Dartmouth Now article (and Flickr set) on the Life Sciences Greenhouse atop the Life Sciences Center.
The Planner has photos of the new offices of Dartmouth Computing in Baker, the new deans’ offices (Student Academic Support Services) in Carson, in a space formerly occupied by the Computer Store (Planner’s Blog post), and the new location of the Computer Store in McNutt. This confusing shuffle was mentioned on this blog during April. Any word on the fate of the old Kiewit space outside the Tower Room?
The Planner also has photos of 113 Wilder, the Physics Department’s office and lounge suite.

Whitaker Apartments becoming an affinity house

Posted on 03.06.2013 by Regisseur

Dartmouth is planning to convert Larson’s little faculty apartment complex at 4 North Park Street, the Whitaker Apartments, into “a 25-bed student residence affinity house with a 2-bedroom advisor apartment” (Planning Board meeting agenda). This is probably the planned LGBT affinity house (see (The Dartmouth).

Academic Center flux

Posted on 24.04.2013 by Regisseur

An article in The Dartmouth states not only that the North Campus Academic Center is delayed and that its projected inhabitants are changing, with DCHCDS and DICHCP moving to the Williamson, but also that past problems have included “the Board of Trustees’ disapproval of the building’s design.” Is that why it seems to have gone from partial brick to all-white?

One wonders whether a new president might bring in his own favored designers.

ADD, Inc. designed the renovation of a part of the Nurses’ School dormitory Home 37 (a.k.a. 37 Dewey Field Road) to house Dana library until the Academic Center is built. The Planner has photos of the colorful work.

An article in the Valley News includes a perspective rendering of the Williamson Translational Research Building at DHMC (small version in DICHCP press release).

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[Update 04.25.2013: Alex Atwood has a photo of a nice model and some sectional renderings of the NCAC.]

Advanced Surgery Center addition to open in summer

Posted on 09.04.2013 by Regisseur

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

Posted on 07.04.2013 by Regisseur

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).

A new house on Occom Ridge

Posted on 26.03.2013 by Regisseur

The Dartmouth reports that the college is planning to build a new sorority house on Occom Ridge in the gap between Epsilon Kappa Theta and Delta Delta Delta (Ridge House).

The house will be built for the Kappa Delta sorority during the fall of 2014.

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[Update 06.10.2013: The announcement of the Trustees’ approval (Dartmouth Now) clearly puts the house at 1 Occom Ridge. That suggests that the house will face the street. The two halves of the Tri-Delt duplex, originally numbered 1 and 3 Occom Ridge, apparently will be known collectively as no. 3.]

[Update 06.09.2013: The March 12 Planning Board minutes (pdf) state that the house, with 23 single rooms, will be built “immediately south of the Roth Center.” Does that mean it will be in the interior of the block rather than facing the street? Ugh.

This aerial shows how much space is available southwest of Tri-Delt and how suburban a house would be if it were marooned in that clump of trees.]

Organic Farm master planning, other topics

Posted on 23.03.2013 by Regisseur

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).

Kendal is buying the Chieftain

Posted on 10.03.2013 by Regisseur

The Valley News reports that Kendal at Hanover will purchase the Chieftain Motor Inn (see also The Dartmouth. As the News reports, the fondly-recalled 23-room motel was built during the early 1950s on a 10.7-acre parcel along the River just beyond what is now the Kendal continuing-care retirement community:

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[Update 11.11.2013: Broken link to the Chieftain removed.]
[Update 04.07.2013: Link to The Dartmouth added.]

A minor NCAC update and other information

Posted on 30.01.2013 by Regisseur

Baker is displaying an exhibit titled Innovation on the Slopes: The Early Years of Skiing at Dartmouth, and the Rauner blog has a post on the historic 1935 J-bar lift at Oak Hill.
Dartmouth Now has an article on the Skiway.
The Green Building Information Gateway has some information (pdf) on the North Campus Academic Center: The senior associate with architects KSWA is Lena Kozloski and the landscape architect is Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., the same firm that is involved in the campus plan. The building will stand seven stories above grade (presumably on the northwestern facade, with fewer stories visible to the south).
The Master of Health Care Delivery Science degree seems to be taking on a Tuck-y flavor with its first investiture (Tuck Today). It is notable that this is the first class to finish the MHCDS program; that the program is not “online” or “mostly online” but “low-residency” (see the chart); that the ceremony took place in January, but that graduates can still participate in Commencement in June; and that the ceremony was held at the Inn. (This photo of the class from Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream seems to be the first photo anywhere to show the new eastern addition to the Inn.)
The Valley News reports (limited access) that the Friends of Hanover Crew will have to wait another year for a new dock.
The Dartmouth reports that a student-driven coffee stand is opening in Stell Hall.
Universitization: Back in 2011 the college lamented the fact that it was ranked “99th by the QS World University Rankings and 90th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings” (The Dartmouth). The QS rankings for 2012 list a non-“University” at number one and list two “Colleges” among the top six schools. Indeed, four of the top ten schools are named something other than “University.” The current Times rankings place a different school without the word “University” in its name at number one. Three of the top eight are not “Universities.”
The Valley News has an article (limited access) on ski jumping in high schools in the Upper Valley.
The Concord Monitor and Dartmouth Now report that the Ice Chimes sculpture has been installed by the LSC.
The Dartmouth reports on the beginnings of the Boora project to renovate and expand the Hop.
The Planner has more information on the Collis renovation.
An interesting early Machado & Silvetti design for the VAC and a Hop addition shows up in the portfolio of Seth Clarke Design on pages 42 and 43. That image of the Hop footprint is actually taken from Hopland on this website.

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[Update 03.31.2013: Broken link to Skiway article repaired.]
[Update 03.03.2013: Some typos and grammar corrected.]

Moskow Linn’s Ice Chimes

Posted on 22.10.2012 by Regisseur

Dartmouth Now writes:

This winter, Dartmouth plans to install the Ice Chimes, a weather-responsive sculpture that unites science, art, architecture, and music, by Dartmouth alumnus Keith Moskow ’83 and Robert Linn of Moskow Linn Architects. The sculpture amplifies both the beauty and the sound of icicles over the course of their existence, as they sway in the wind, clinking and chiming until they grow heavy with their own weight and fall into the collection bucket below.

The sculpture has an electrical heating element at the top that melts snowfall. The resulting water alters or produces sound by coating the hanging copper chimes with ice that later falls into the sheet-metal bucket. The sculpture will be on display this winter near the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center (Dartbeat).

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[Update 11.04.2012: Location info and Dartbeat citation added.]

The Visual Arts Center and the Maffei Arts Plaza

Posted on 02.10.2012 by Regisseur

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 faÃ§ade 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).

A Passion for Snow and other notes

Posted on 26.09.2012 by Regisseur

Here in Hanover ran a profile of architect Randall Mudge in its Spring 2011 issue (pdf).
David’s House at CHaD is adding a wing (Valley News).
This unusual stucco house at 28 East Wheelock has a whiff of Larson about it; it is owned by the college (see Dartmouth Real Estate):
A trailer for the upcoming Dartmouth ski documentary A Passion for Snow is available.
A map art company is selling a print of a stylized map of the campus.
Something big has happened to 8 Occom Ridge:

The later aerial views from Google and Bing (below) appear to show a replacement:
A Dartmouth shirt sold on eBay says “Go Green and White.” Hmmm.
The Development Office has its own in-house PR firm, the Office of Development Communications.
An article on archeology in Columbia, Connecticut explains that the first building of Moor’s Indian Charity School still stands, on a later foundation.
Both the renovated Hanover High and the new Richmond Middle School have biomass plants. It is hard to imagine that any future Dartmouth heating plant would not rely at least in part on burning wood chips.
The Dartmouth Planner reports that the Town of Hanover is beginning to rewrite its zoning ordinances.
Last spring, van Zelm Heywood & Shadford helped renovate Burke Chemistry Laboratory (The Dartmouth).
A recent photo of the roof of the expanded Hayward Room at the Inn, taken with the Class of 1966 Webcam:

The new Alpha Phi house

Posted on 22.09.2012 by Regisseur

From some angles, Haynes & Garthwaite‘s new Alpha Phi sorority house on North Park Street recalls the old Sigma Phi Epsilon house on Webster Avenue:

Meacham photo of Sigma Phi Epsilon and The Dartmouth photo of Alpha Phi

Top: Sigma Phi Epsilon (1896 and 1963, demolished 2010). Bottom: Alpha Phi (2012), photo by Tracy Wang courtesy of The Dartmouth. More photos are available at Trumbull-Nelson.

In other North Park news, The Dartmouth reports that the school is planning to create an LGBT house on the street. The Valley News writes:

Hanover — Dartmouth College will move forward with plans to open a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student residence in 2014, a project that has been the longtime goal of a college advisor who has been working on the plan for more than a dozen years.

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[Update 11.04.2012: T-N photos link and VN quote added.]

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

Posted on 21.08.2012 by Regisseur

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:

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.]

A timber-framed building at the Organic Farm

Posted on 19.08.2012 by Regisseur

The Dartmouth Organic Farm on Lyme Road is planning to demolish a 50-year-old barn on the property and replace it with a timber-framed building to serve as a Sustainability Center, according to The Dartmouth. The builder of the new building will be TimberHomes LLC of Vershire, Vermont, a firm established by DOC historian David Hooke.

Google Street View: the old barn is presumably the one on the left.

Bing aerial.

Dartmo.

The Buildings of Dartmouth College

Category Archives: other projects