Practice Facility

[jgalt]

Aug 19, 2010 23:08:51 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

FWIW, DeGioia has said that the plan for Reiss is to "lovingly gut it" once the Science Center is operational. Presumably, it would then house various administrative offices, maybe a couple of departments like math and psychology.

And this is the worst idea for that building at this time. With the new Science Center finishing in a few years the university has an opportunity to use Reiss as a temporary home for all the other crap that needs to be torn down. Reiss is, at its core, a basic building: levels that are all pretty much the same with few load bearing interior walls that can be easily moved.

What they SHOULD do (i recognize that should does necessarily mean could or would) is move much of the libraries collection to Reiss so that the library can then be renovated (its design, particularly the entrance, has grown on me, bu the inside is terrible and not functional, but i dont think it should be torn down completely) and expanded as planned (into the parking lot).

Next Reiss can be torn down and replaced with a new dorm. This would allow either New South or Harbin to be town down and replaced with buildings that better use the space they are in now. Harbin would be the best dorm to tear down because it is the worse use of space between the two and a very large dorm could be built in its place using the concrete area next to it. New south, even though it is boring out side, is nice and functional inside. (I would actually like to see village A redone before new south- more, attractive, apartments could be fit in that space)

In an ideal world, before Reiss is torn down, i would like to see it used to house all the offices that are in the ICC so that that joke of a building can be torn down and replaced. It is the worst use of space on campus and has one of the largest foot prints of all buildings.

Will any of this happen? No of course not, but i wish it would.

I also relish the day when the University presents a plan to the ANC that includes more on campus dorms. It would really force the ANC to show its true colors- that it just hates the school regardless of what it does.

[Nevada Hoya]

Egads, what am I hearing: Reiss and New South being torn down. I spend most of my time at Georgetown in those two buildings. Okay, a lot of time spent in McD also.

[kchoya]

Aug 21, 2010 16:55:51 GMT -5 jgalt said:

Aug 19, 2010 23:08:51 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

FWIW, DeGioia has said that the plan for Reiss is to "lovingly gut it" once the Science Center is operational. Presumably, it would then house various administrative offices, maybe a couple of departments like math and psychology.

And this is the worst idea for that building at this time. With the new Science Center finishing in a few years the university has an opportunity to use Reiss as a temporary home for all the other crap that needs to be torn down. Reiss is, at its core, a basic building: levels that are all pretty much the same with few load bearing interior walls that can be easily moved.

What they SHOULD do (i recognize that should does necessarily mean could or would) is move much of the libraries collection to Reiss so that the library can then be renovated (its design, particularly the entrance, has grown on me, bu the inside is terrible and not functional, but i dont think it should be torn down completely) and expanded as planned (into the parking lot).

Next Reiss can be torn down and replaced with a new dorm. This would allow either New South or Harbin to be town down and replaced with buildings that better use the space they are in now. Harbin would be the best dorm to tear down because it is the worse use of space between the two and a very large dorm could be built in its place using the concrete area next to it. New south, even though it is boring out side, is nice and functional inside. (I would actually like to see village A redone before new south- more, attractive, apartments could be fit in that space)

In an ideal world, before Reiss is torn down, i would like to see it used to house all the offices that are in the ICC so that that joke of a building can be torn down and replaced. It is the worst use of space on campus and has one of the largest foot prints of all buildings.

Will any of this happen? No of course not, but i wish it would.

I also relish the day when the University presents a plan to the ANC that includes more on campus dorms. It would really force the ANC to show its true colors- that it just hates the school regardless of what it does.

So you have all but one or two buildings on campus being torn down or gutted?

[staggerlee]

I am under the impression that Reiss will be renovated to house personal lab and office space, in an effort to attract more research scientists to the faculty and to the new science building.

[jgalt]

Aug 21, 2010 20:19:38 GMT -5 kchoya said:

So you have all but one or two buildings on campus being torn down or gutted?

Well of all those built between 1940 and 2000 ;D

[rosslynhoya]

Aug 21, 2010 20:19:38 GMT -5 kchoya said:

Aug 21, 2010 16:55:51 GMT -5 jgalt said:

So you have all but one or two buildings on campus being torn down or gutted?

You say that like it's a bad thing ;D

JGalt is right: Most of the buildings on campus have a terrible ratio of function to footprint and are aesthetically unappealing to boot.

Lauinger, Leavey, and the ICC are among the worst offenders. I don't get how so many different architects could have such a fetish for wasting interior and exterior space.

[DFW HOYA]

Aug 22, 2010 17:09:47 GMT -5 rosslynhoya said:

[quote author=kchoya board=general thread=22537 post=389046 time=1282439978
Lauinger, Leavey, and the ICC are among the worst offenders. I don't get how so many different architects could have such a fetish for wasting interior and exterior space.

Three very different projects.

Lauinger was a coup for the University to have John Carl Warnecke (the member of the U.S. Fine Arts Commission who designed the New Executive Office Building and supervised the JFK grave site design) to create the facility. While Brutalist wasn't his specialty, it is better than his designs of the Hawaii capitol or the Meyer Library at Stanford (see photos below)

tinyurl.com/nslbsw
tinyurl.com/332wuez

I think it's more urban legend than anything that once a structure is built it can never be torn down (much of industrial Georgetown below K Street was razed in the last 30 years) but the cost to rebuild a new library is prohibitive.

The ICC is a creature of federal funding, the same federal funding logic that built housing for wheelchair students on the top floor of Village A. The goal for the ICC was to create a sustainable energy source for the building and the University, but soon figured out that the best solar panels would be so reflective as to hinder planes flying in to National Airport. (Oops.) Design wise, it was fitting a square peg into a round hole of land, but it's not like you could put solar panels on a building that looked like White Gravenor, either.

Leavey? If you think of it as a parking garage with offices on top, it's a little more palatable architecturally speaking, but this was designed as the first of four giant concrete office-garage-bunker complexes stretching from the hosptial to the river. That would have been a colossal mess. (I'm no architect, but it would still have been a PERFECT location to build an arena on top of the esplanade, where you could literally park underneath and literally walk upstairs to eat and them one more level to the game.)

Remember too, that the original Leavey plans were scuttled in the mid-80's when the Med Center lobbied to have it located adjacent to their buildings (so doctors and staff would have places to eat) rather than its original location, the present site of the still-unnamed Village C and plans for addiitonal amenities (e.g., a student theater) were scuttled in the planning, much like the planned softball field adjacent to the SW Quad never saw the light of day.

This is why Alan Brangman's job is so difficult--between getting a good idea, a decent plan, securing funding, and enduring various administrative fiats and design changes (not to mention local ANC's), getting things built at Georgetown is like rolling a boulder up a hill and hoping you reach the top before it slides back down.

[skyhoya]

I don't see how you can have Love on the team over Jeff. Love is just over-hyped.

[kchoya]

Aug 23, 2010 7:05:06 GMT -5 skyhoya said:

I don't see how you can have Love on the team over Jeff. Love is just over-hyped.

I agree. We should gut him too.

[theexorcist]

Aug 22, 2010 17:09:47 GMT -5 rosslynhoya said:

Aug 21, 2010 20:19:38 GMT -5 kchoya said:

Aug 21, 2010 16:55:51 GMT -5 jgalt said:

So you have all but one or two buildings on campus being torn down or gutted?

You say that like it's a bad thing ;D

JGalt is right: Most of the buildings on campus have a terrible ratio of function to footprint and are aesthetically unappealing to boot.

Lauinger, Leavey, and the ICC are among the worst offenders. I don't get how so many different architects could have such a fetish for wasting interior and exterior space.

You don't call out Reiss? A combination of fascist and communist architecture if there ever was one? I'm positive that it was constructed to remind students of the dangers of what happened if the wrong ideologies ever ran the world.

[theexorcist]

Aug 21, 2010 16:55:51 GMT -5 jgalt said:

Aug 19, 2010 23:08:51 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

FWIW, DeGioia has said that the plan for Reiss is to "lovingly gut it" once the Science Center is operational. Presumably, it would then house various administrative offices, maybe a couple of departments like math and psychology.

And this is the worst idea for that building at this time. With the new Science Center finishing in a few years the university has an opportunity to use Reiss as a temporary home for all the other crap that needs to be torn down. Reiss is, at its core, a basic building: levels that are all pretty much the same with few load bearing interior walls that can be easily moved.

What they SHOULD do (i recognize that should does necessarily mean could or would) is move much of the libraries collection to Reiss so that the library can then be renovated (its design, particularly the entrance, has grown on me, bu the inside is terrible and not functional, but i dont think it should be torn down completely) and expanded as planned (into the parking lot).

Next Reiss can be torn down and replaced with a new dorm. This would allow either New South or Harbin to be town down and replaced with buildings that better use the space they are in now. Harbin would be the best dorm to tear down because it is the worse use of space between the two and a very large dorm could be built in its place using the concrete area next to it. New south, even though it is boring out side, is nice and functional inside. (I would actually like to see village A redone before new south- more, attractive, apartments could be fit in that space)

In an ideal world, before Reiss is torn down, i would like to see it used to house all the offices that are in the ICC so that that joke of a building can be torn down and replaced. It is the worst use of space on campus and has one of the largest foot prints of all buildings.

Will any of this happen? No of course not, but i wish it would.

I also relish the day when the University presents a plan to the ANC that includes more on campus dorms. It would really force the ANC to show its true colors- that it just hates the school regardless of what it does.

In the early 2000s, a strategy was proposed for the Middle East - Iran would become democratic, the Shiites in Iran would gain control of Iraq, the Baathists in Iraq would gain control of Syria, and the Syrians would control Jordan. It was popularly known as "everybody move left one".

In other words, you know you're a dork when you compare university policy to failed Middle East peace strategies.

[TrueHoyaBlue]

As far as I know, the new science building is going to be mainly focused in the life science areas (biology, biochemistry, chemistry). In one sense that's a limiting factor, because it won't have all of the undergrad science departments in it.

On the other hand, it's an actual strategic decision, which means GU shouldn't end up with another instance like all science depts being stuffed into Reiss with 80 year-old chemistry labs lingering in White-Gravenor.

Whether or not one likes the design of Reiss, it's a useful space in which to house the physics, math, and computer science departments. But doing that effectively requires updating the space in Reiss. The progressive gut-and-renovate plan for Reiss gives the possibility of having the two buildings serve as a unit to house a much-improved set of science facilities.

That's the plan, anyway.

(I have never heard the "administrative offices" in Reiss plan. If true, it's a recent development, but I would think we'd have heard a pretty significant outcry from the science faculty. Also, it doesn't really fit the DeGioia model of building, which has had a distinct focus on high-quality academic space vs. loading up a bunch of administrative space: see Hariri building, Davis Performing Arts Ctr).

[jgalt]

Aug 23, 2010 13:06:45 GMT -5 TrueHoyaBlue said:

Also, it doesn't really fit the DeGioia model of building, which has had a distinct focus on high-quality academic space vs. loading up a bunch of administrative space: see Hariri building, Davis Performing Arts Ctr).

While his office takes up an entire level of the most beautiful, but least used by students, building on campus

[jerseyhoya34]

Galt, I think there are many reasonable criticisms of DeGioia, but the idea that he has an office in Healy? Yikes.

[jgalt]

Aug 23, 2010 17:07:43 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

Galt, I think there are many reasonable criticisms of DeGioia, but the idea that he has an office in Healy? Yikes.

I was just trying to stir the pot ;D

[Bando]

I think Jgalt's targets for demolition are right on the money. Friends don't let friends build Brutalist.

I don't know how much the administration has really embraced the whole urban campus idea. There's no other place to go but up at this point, and I think we really have to start looking at places like the Harbin patio and surface parking lots as wasted space that need to be reutilized.

[SFHoya99]

Aug 23, 2010 19:26:13 GMT -5 Bando said:

I think Jgalt's targets for demolition are right on the money. Friends don't let friends build Brutalist.

I don't know how much the administration has really embraced the whole urban campus idea. There's no other place to go but up at this point, and I think we really have to start looking at places like the Harbin patio and surface parking lots as wasted space that need to be reutilized.

Surface parking lots, sure. Harbin patio?

You need open spaces. Even now, the campus is starting to get claustrophobic. I'm all for rebuilding inefficient buildings, but you need spaces in between buildings.

[seaweed]

Aug 23, 2010 19:41:26 GMT -5 SFHoya99 said:

Aug 23, 2010 19:26:13 GMT -5 Bando said:

I think Jgalt's targets for demolition are right on the money. Friends don't let friends build Brutalist.

I don't know how much the administration has really embraced the whole urban campus idea. There's no other place to go but up at this point, and I think we really have to start looking at places like the Harbin patio and surface parking lots as wasted space that need to be reutilized.

Surface parking lots, sure. Harbin patio?

You need open spaces. Even now, the campus is starting to get claustrophobic. I'm all for rebuilding inefficient buildings, but you need spaces in between buildings.

What he said

[jgalt]

Aug 23, 2010 19:41:26 GMT -5 SFHoya99 said:

Aug 23, 2010 19:26:13 GMT -5 Bando said:

I think Jgalt's targets for demolition are right on the money. Friends don't let friends build Brutalist.

I don't know how much the administration has really embraced the whole urban campus idea. There's no other place to go but up at this point, and I think we really have to start looking at places like the Harbin patio and surface parking lots as wasted space that need to be reutilized.

Surface parking lots, sure. Harbin patio?

You need open spaces. Even now, the campus is starting to get claustrophobic. I'm all for rebuilding inefficient buildings, but you need spaces in between buildings.

Yes you do need open space, but i dont think you have to have the open space like harbin patio gives. If you just try to build a second harbin on the patio then that would suck. You have to start that whole space over. Its not as big as the SQW obviously, but the SWQ has over 80% of that space used for building, but feels open.

I think a lot could be done to keep it open. Justin using more glass makes building feel lighter. Its the reason that the Hariri building feels so great to be in and so huge, when its really not. Village C is pretty dense but doesnt feel claustrophobic.

I would hate for the campus to just feel like buildings on top of other buildings, but eventually the university's hand will be forced and they will have to tear something down (or you know just renovate the perfectly good historic building that sits empty in the middle of campus.)

[RusskyHoya]

Aug 23, 2010 13:06:45 GMT -5 TrueHoyaBlue said:

As far as I know, the new science building is going to be mainly focused in the life science areas (biology, biochemistry, chemistry). In one sense that's a limiting factor, because it won't have all of the undergrad science departments in it.

On the other hand, it's an actual strategic decision, which means GU shouldn't end up with another instance like all science depts being stuffed into Reiss with 80 year-old chemistry labs lingering in White-Gravenor.

Whether or not one likes the design of Reiss, it's a useful space in which to house the physics, math, and computer science departments. But doing that effectively requires updating the space in Reiss. The progressive gut-and-renovate plan for Reiss gives the possibility of having the two buildings serve as a unit to house a much-improved set of science facilities.

That's the plan, anyway.

(I have never heard the "administrative offices" in Reiss plan. If true, it's a recent development, but I would think we'd have heard a pretty significant outcry from the science faculty. Also, it doesn't really fit the DeGioia model of building, which has had a distinct focus on high-quality academic space vs. loading up a bunch of administrative space: see Hariri building, Davis Performing Arts Ctr).

The "life science focus" bit is at least a little wrong. From the Science Center page: "The new Science Center at Georgetown University will be a state-of-the art research and teaching center for biology, chemistry, and physics."

Moreover, the new institute that got federal funding for the Science Center is phys/chem, rather than bio.

I should clarify that "administrative offices" most likely meant departmental offices for departments like math and comp sci, as opposed to something like Auxiliary Services or some other purely administrative component.