oh god, i just had the funniest hour. i was researching the kaisersaal ruins that are part of the sony center in berlin now, because i want to use a similar process in my marshall field design. so i was kind of wikipedia surfing around, and i went to the article about sarah lawrence's campus. now, our campus is this sort of cliche of a cliche, quaint tudor wood adorableness. EXCEPT for
the new dorms . the new dorms are a horror to most people on this campus, a concrete and glass box that houses tiny triple rooms for freshman. they stick out like a sore, grey, half-machine thumb, and so of course there are tons of legends about them (see: freshman painting a bullseye on the basement level and jumping from the top of the atrium). many people wonder: how did this shit get built? on every other side of the quad there's a neo-tudor house, except for this box of concrete. so of course there is also a legend to satisfy this bizarre incongruity. so the story goes, the college hired an architect to build a new building for administrative offices. but, they didn't tell him that they'd be used as dorms, so he designed a simple office block. when the buildings were built, and the architect realized what they were using his design for, he refused to be credited with the project because he objected to housing students in such tiny and poorly ventilated rooms. this story conveniently explains the insanity of the design, as well as the lack of any information about HOW this thing was put up. but today, on wikipedia, i saw the words:
Designed by world-renowned architect Phillip Johnson in the sparse modernist style of the time, the "New Dorms" were actually completed in 1960. The architectural style of the buildings is meant to be a modernist reflection of the three older dorms (Gilbert, Titsworth, and Dudley Lawrence) that stand on the opposite side of the North Lawn. The three buildings that comprise the New Dorms are connected by two glass atria in which the buildings' primary stairwells are found. With the exception of the large apartments in Rothschild, these dorms typically house first-year students.
wait, wtf?? philip johnson??? a quick call to justin confirmed my suspicion that this must be a wikipedia mistake. however, philip johnson's washington post obituary writes: "johnson designed buildings on the campuses of harvard, yale, brown, and sarah lawrence." holy shit. could this be true?
i ran upstairs to joe's office and interrupting a conference with one of his donnees, asked "philip johnson designed THE NEW DORMS??" he told me that he had designed them, of course, on a cocktail napkin, and sarah lawrence had accepted the design after it had been rejected by VASSAR. ahhaha, oh, sarah lawrence. joe also told me that when he first came to teach at sarah lawrence someone had SHOWN him the napkin, and that it might still be in the archives. so, of course justin and i are going over there tomorrow to take a look for ourselves. CAN'T WAIT!
