I can't believe ex2x4 hasn't chimed in about the red tiles yet...
Does your ba apartment have red tiles?
I would have bet money you were going to try to change the topic to that. The only problem is, your issue with the red tiles is completely relevant to this discussion, whereas my apartment is not.
So what do you think about this expansion, really?
I haven't really been involved with it enough to come to a definitive conclusion, but what I've seen is about what I'd expect. We could have some REALLY nice buildings that would still fall in line with the conservative style of campus for a lot less money. It's not about money, nor design (as long as it follows what the administration expects). It's about politics (like most state architecture is). The biggest problem I have is the money we're spending far exceeds what we're getting. Those renders are garbage and you honestly do not want to know what we paid for them (I'll just say, most likely 5 figures). With the money we're spending, we could easily afford to bring in one or two big name architects ("big name architects" probably mean different things to you and I) that will make a really fitting and attractive building that could potentially be a center selling point for campus. A lot of universities have done this, so there are many precedents.
In the university spectrum, there are campuses like ours that all follows a style and the powers that be want it to be as plain Jane as possible. They honestly picked the Beech Museum winner because it looked like a "Mausoleum." That's a direct quote from the selection committee. Then there are campuses like Cincinnati. Every building is designed by a high paid hero architect that usually churns out interesting to look at, horrible to live in designs. There needs to be a middle ground made. We have a beautiful campus. It's organized well, plenty of open space, more than enough vegetation, etc. It's unfortunate we are not able to create buildings that fully compliment that. The Alumni Center's relationship with the stadium is the closest thing I have seen to any sort of relationship with things outside of the building (minus the Beech archway). Wouldn't it be great if the plaza was more successful? There's a lot of traffic, but very little of the traffic actually use the space. With how beautiful campus is, there needs to be a better connection between it and the buildings.
While most of this is a large rant about things not related to the rec expansion, it has everything to do with the rec expansion. Our campus is so close to being really really good. It's lacking that center of attraction and we always will. Anderson Hall is the closest thing to iconic we have, but not many people can connect to a really old building they never go into. I think we missed a huge opportunity with the Beech Museum. We could have had one of the best university museums in the nation that would have brought tons of positive recognition to campus. Instead, we got something that... well... nobody
hates it. The same thing goes for the rec. Anyone can design boxes and make the functions work nicely inside. It's taking it to the next step that counts (taking advantage of daylighting, interesting structure, materials, etc.). Ebert will continuously just make buildings that work and that nobody hates. They (and other firms we pick) will never take it to the next step and really give us what we're paying so much money for.
