Fall 2005

Departments

Exchange

Prerequisite

Extended Family

Foundation News

Alumni Connections

Class Notes

Zip 01003

Books Received

Alumni Photos

Features

Raising His Game

Never Mind the Weather?

If You Can Make it There

Peg Riley Wants a New Drug

A Capitol Guy

What They've Learned

Zip 01003

In Praise of Concrete

—Kirin Makker ’08

Opened in 1975, the Fine Arts Center made an architectural statement. I NEVER THOUGHT THE UMASS Amherst campus was pretty. A New England college campus should have ivy-covered brick structures. Most of our buildings are huge concrete structures with flat roofs. Concrete will never hold the charm colonial brick does, but when they were built, these massive concrete structures embraced cutting-edge construction. The UMass Amherst campus is something of a museum of architecture from the days of 1960s modernism, a style that Americans seem to want to erase. Modern structures are now regularly featured on the National Trust’s list of the country’s Most Endangered Historic Places. This campus is a stylistic marvel; many of its buildings were designed by famous architects who embraced the modern spirit of the 1960s. We’ve got a campus center and hotel designed by Marcel Breuer, designer of the sleek chrome-and-leather Wassily Chair. The stadium, an upturned shell delicately balanced on concrete piers, was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). Bunshaft won the Pritzker Prize in 1988, the most prestigious international award for architecture. (SOM is still around: They’re designing the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site in Manhattan.) The Fine Arts Center, a building composed of spirited, funky shapes, was designed by architect Kevin Roche, another Pritzker Prize winner, who studied under one of the original modernists, Le Corbusier. How did UMass Amherst get to be a site of major modern construction? In 1961, the University hired a world-renowned landscape architect Hideo Sasaki of Sasaki, Walker and Associates, Inc., to develop a master plan for the campus. In order to accommodate growing enrollment as postwar baby-boomers came of college age, Sasaki reworked paths and proposed locations for new academic and residential buildings. Sasaki’s firm is responsible for some of the earliest modern campus planning, designs that helped reshape the profession of such planning in coming decades as he worked on university campuses across the country. Together, the modern buildings and Sasaki’s plan for UMass Amherst created a cohesive set of structures embracing the aesthetics, technology, and creative spirit of 1960s modern design and planning. During this period, several design publications applauded the University’s progressiveness with respect to its campus plan and chosen architects. Situated near several small elite private colleges, UMass Amherst embraced its difference as an expanding public university of the 20th century. The architecture of that era is something to be appreciated for its innovation. Where I originally saw concrete monstrosities, I now see a rich story about embracing change. What could be a better image for a research university? But after 1975, the University abandoned this trend. Recent work to Haigis Mall—the removal of reflecting pools in favor of more parking—has compromised the cohesion of Kevin Roche’s design. Recent additions are aesthetically conservative—hardly 21st-century architectural statements that Marcel Breuer’s Campus Center was in 1965. I would argue that with its recent construction projects, the University has lost its confident reach toward the future. What is inspiring about UMass Amherst’s 1960s modern architecture is not necessarily the style, the concrete, or even the forms. What is stirring is the confident embrace of current technologies, the heroic building practice, and a desire to question the traditional look of New England campuses dressed in brick, ivy, and cottage-style windows. UMass Amherst’s new architecture should be cutting edge for 2005. It should be technologically advanced in sustainable design practice. It should take risks, formally and aesthetically. We’re never going to be Harvard. If we’re not funky and on the edge of what’s possible, then what are we?

[top of page]

In Praise of Concrete

In Praise of Concrete: larger image