GoodOwl, read my post again. Sigh.

(12-15-2014 11:06 AM)Barrett Wrote:  I'm not an immediate fan of this Moody building, based on the renderings. However, that said, I am a fan of Rice deviating from its historical, relentless adherence to the Taco Bell look (that sounds snarkier than I mean it; I like the general Rice look, with the St. Joe brick; I just say "Taco Bell" as shorthand for that kind of Mediterranean style at Rice).

Anyway, my point is, for awhile it seemed like *every* building on campus was going to look basically the same. I'm glad, with Brochstein, that there was some deviation. I like that Moody will also deviate, especially for an arts building, though I do think Moody looks pretty ugly. Brochstein, even when I saw it purely in rendering, looked great to me.

Another quibble with Rice buildings/landscaping. I really wish we'd stop using palm trees. Palm trees look stupid and déclassé, in my opinion. You see them around the pool and around Reckling. I'd rather they use those Cypress trees that are also used in the Academic Quad.

Agree with everything you said except I don't think the Moody renderings look ugly. I hope I'm not unpleasantly surprised.

(12-15-2014 12:42 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  Agree with everything you said except I don't think the Moody renderings look ugly. I hope I'm not unpleasantly surprised.

My main problem with Moody (from the renderings) is the color, actually. But perhaps, when built and placed in real-world context, it will look better.

(12-15-2014 11:06 AM)Barrett Wrote:  I just say "Taco Bell" as shorthand for that kind of Mediterranean style at Rice.

That's kinda funny, because Taco Bell isn't Mediterranean (or even faux-Mediterranean).

More specifically, the Byzantine style one sees at Rice is not the same as the Spanish Mission style one associates with Mexican haciendas. They have some things in common, and many buildings in Houston show some degree of blending of the two -- but not the buildings at Rice.

Facetiousness.

(12-14-2014 02:16 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 09:12 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 08:06 PM)tramile12 Wrote:  That is a monstrosity. Really awful, it looks like Lovett on drugs.

I think it looks pretty great and I was impressed by the other work found on their website. To each his/her own, I guess. I think the contrast may work well.

Well, it certainly doesn't match, or even blend with, the quad, or the old chem bldg., etc

Given its location, does it need to?

(12-15-2014 04:14 PM)Barrett Wrote:  Facetiousness.

Okay, but Barrett- it's just ridiculous that you say our campus looks like a Taco Bell!

(12-15-2014 07:21 PM)Middle Ages Wrote:  Okay, but Barrett- it's just ridiculous that you say our campus looks like a Taco Bell!

I know, right?

(12-14-2014 10:50 AM)greyowl72 Wrote:  

(12-14-2014 08:20 AM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(12-14-2014 02:16 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 09:12 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 08:06 PM)tramile12 Wrote:  That is a monstrosity. Really awful, it looks like Lovett on drugs.

I think it looks pretty great and I was impressed by the other work found on their website. To each his/her own, I guess. I think the contrast may work well.

Well, it certainly doesn't match, or even blend with, the quad, or the old chem bldg., etc

What are your thoughts on the Brochstein Pavilion?

I'm definitely ok with it. But I just saw it this fall. And briefly. It seems to me that it's definitely designed to be more of an ornament. A contemplative piece. That and it's well landscaped and seems to be delineated to set it apart from the surroundings. I view it like I would an Egyptian obelisk in a Parisian square. Or a Ming vase on the mantle of and Edwardian living room.

Geez. The Archies on this board are probably cringing at these off based remarks... just my own thoughts.

I really like the look of this new building, but fear it will clash with rest of campus. I feel the same about Brochstein... I like the look but don't like how it integrates. But of course, my feelings might be driven more by the change than anything "real". I wonder how it's perceived by someone new to the campus.

(12-14-2014 06:49 PM)Leoguy Wrote:  Fascinating comments in general. Just fascinating.

I'm really intrigued by this comment. What's your professional opinion of the new building? And what do the other folks' opinions tell you that's fascinating?

<and on the chance I'm not conveying tone properly: both questions are in utmost sincerity, figuring I'll learn something enlightening from the response>

(12-13-2014 09:16 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  That really is one ugly building.

Yes.

and to stir the pot, I notice that in looking back at the renderings, ALL of the students in them are doing their best to ignore the structure or are looking away.

too painful on the eyes I guess.

Ok I am late to this thread. But anyone who wants an interesting read on modern architecture will enjoy Tom Wolf's From Bauhaus to Our House. This architect looks like she walked out of the pages of the book, able to use only a straight edge and the template for circles. Compare the design of the original building on campus:

https://ricehistorycorner.files.wordpres...nd-dog.jpg

I shake my head. I hope it is at least more functional than it is decorative.

Here is a bit of Wolf:

O BEAUTIFUL, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today?

I doubt it seriously. Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse. Not even the school commissioners, who commissioned it and approved the plans, can figure out how it happened. The main thing is to try to avoid having to explain it to the parents.

Every new $900,000 summer house in the north woods of Michigan or on the shore of Long Island has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery. I once saw the owners of such a place driven to the edge of sensory deprivation by the whiteness & lightness & leanness & cleanness & bareness & spareness of it all. They became desperate for an antidote, such as coziness & color. They tried to bury the obligatory white sofas under Thai-silk throw pillows of every rebellious, iridescent shade of magenta, pink, and tropical green imaginable. But the architect returned, as he always does, like the conscience of a Calvinist, and he lectured them and hectored them and chucked the shimmering little sweet things out.

(12-20-2014 10:29 AM)JOwl Wrote:  

(12-14-2014 06:49 PM)Leoguy Wrote:  Fascinating comments in general. Just fascinating.

I'm really intrigued by this comment. What's your professional opinion of the new building? And what do the other folks' opinions tell you that's fascinating?

<and on the chance I'm not conveying tone properly: both questions are in utmost sincerity, figuring I'll learn something enlightening from the response>

I haven't looked at this thread in a while, so I am just now reading your comments/questions. I will reserve judgement on the new arts building until it's constructed and can be "seen" in person. The design has been subject to the usual Rice process for approving new buildings. Not that the process is perfect, but it is what it is.
My personal opinion is that the new arts building is, to some degree, a long delayed reaction to the last arts building, Sewall Hall, built on campus when I was a student. As you know, Sewall Hall was "required" by its donor to be a virtual copy of the historic Physics Building. However, its success as a mirror image of the Physics Building didn't necessarily translate into a successful "arts" building, at least at the level of "image" and, from what I've been told, as a functioning arts building. So, perhaps the new arts building is a reaction to that now long ago decision to drape Rice's art program in the historic trappings of the original Rice style.
The new building certainly doesn't appear to be anything like Sewall Hall. Duh. I say, let's give it a chance. It's far enough removed from the inner sanctum of Rice architecture to be allowed a good deal of, shall we say, liberty, in expressing the Rice look. Much like the wonderful Brochstein Pavilion, the new arts building may be more of a "folly" on the campus; a delightful exception to the rule, rather than a background building that just fits in.
Oh yes, I am in favor of palm trees on campus, too. You know, in keeping with the Taco Bell look.

(12-13-2014 09:53 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 09:16 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  That really is one ugly building.

Anything that contrasts with Alice Pratt Brown Hall is a good thing. Whoever was involved in the commissioning of that monstrosity should be ashamed.

Beyond the exterior view, APB Hall has always seemed to me to be one of the most functionally useless buildings I've encountered in my capacity as an occasional visitor. It may, of course, be great if you're a music major, but it lacks significant necessary facilities for a performance venue such as a proper box office, crowd management plan, or sufficient lobby, and its restroom facilities are hard to find and either poorly designed or poorly maintained (I've encountered better smelling bathrooms on the east side of the stadium -- not the kind of bathroom odors that result from recent visits, but from years of accumulated visits).

As far as the contrast of the new building, I actually wish it were closer to, but obviously not on, the main quad from a contrast point of view (not suggesting a location as all the locations it could go there are pretty well taken). It's an impressive facade, and I fear it will lose something from its context (has no one here mentioned the eyesore that is the back end of Tudor)

(12-13-2014 03:59 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  And, by the way, check out these architect's renderings from Michael Maltzan Architects (Los Angeles), featured in the job posting for the Moody Center's director...

I prefer this to the cruise ship acid trip that is Duncan Hall.

(12-31-2014 07:33 AM)texd Wrote:  Beyond the exterior view, APB Hall has always seemed to me to be one of the most functionally useless buildings I've encountered in my capacity as an occasional visitor. It may, of course, be great if you're a music major, but it lacks significant necessary facilities for a performance venue such as a proper box office, crowd management plan, or sufficient lobby, and its restroom facilities are hard to find and either poorly designed or poorly maintained

A lot of Rice buildings seem to be really bad about that -- the bathrooms are ridiculously hard to find.

Bathrooms -- like stairwells and elevator banks -- are not things one should have to search for; they should be located where one would naturally expect to find them, which should be intuitive from the moment you walk into the building.

To cite a familiar example: at Reckling, from the moment you walk in, it is intuitive that the bathrooms will be either to the right or to the left. Some signage is needed to point to the men's versus the women's, but in a general sense the bathrooms are exactly where you would expect them to be. That is not at all true in APB, or Duncan, or Fondren, or Abercrombie; in those buildings, a visitor isn't even sure where to START looking. That is bad architecture -- no two ways about it.

(12-31-2014 03:21 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(12-31-2014 07:33 AM)texd Wrote:  Beyond the exterior view, APB Hall has always seemed to me to be one of the most functionally useless buildings I've encountered in my capacity as an occasional visitor. It may, of course, be great if you're a music major, but it lacks significant necessary facilities for a performance venue such as a proper box office, crowd management plan, or sufficient lobby, and its restroom facilities are hard to find and either poorly designed or poorly maintained

A lot of Rice buildings seem to be really bad about that -- the bathrooms are ridiculously hard to find.

Bathrooms -- like stairwells and elevator banks -- are not things one should have to search for; they should be located where one would naturally expect to find them, which should be intuitive from the moment you walk into the building.

To cite a familiar example: at Reckling, from the moment you walk in, it is intuitive that the bathrooms will be either to the right or to the left. Some signage is needed to point to the men's versus the women's, but in a general sense the bathrooms are exactly where you would expect them to be. That is not at all true in APB, or Duncan, or Fondren, or Abercrombie; in those buildings, a visitor isn't even sure where to START looking. That is bad architecture -- no two ways about it.

You are correct, George.