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Feature Articles Sim Bruce Richards: A Legacy in Wood San Diego's Contemporary Modernists Photo Essay: Lloyd Ruocco Design Demolished Much like their buildings, there are fewer of San Diego’s post-War Architects with us Today Definition of San Diego Modernism Frank Lloyd Wright's Legacy in San Diego Gregory Ain House Discovered in Vista 2004 Julius Shulman Wall Calendar
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UC San Diego’s John Muir College and Modernist Architecture Long before Stanley Gould’s (Risley and Gould) 1961 master plan for the Graduate School of Science and Engineering and UC San Diego hiring Robert E. Alexander (in 1963) as Consulting Architect, an earlier modernist, Irving Gill, designed the Director's Office (in 1910), a crisp, unadorned, clean structure for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Originally recognized as Second College (First became Revelle College and Third was later changed to Thurgood Marshall), UC San Diego’s John Muir College was designed under the supervision of Consulting Architects Robert E. Alexander and A. Quincy Jones. Starting his role as team leader, or Executive Architect for the campus in 1965, Robert Mosher worked with a team of San Diego based firms Frank L. Hope Associates, Liebhardt Weston and Richard George Wheeler Associates. Later Dale Naegle would join the effort in designing the college’s residential and dining buildings. The earliest designs provided to Alexander by Mosher were met with resistance and thus began a rollercoaster of designs, politics, and relationships that would give birth to one of the strongest, most cohesive architectural programs within the University of California system. Alexander’s plan was in peril from the beginning as the campus worried about its impact on the student population – then witnessing campus uprisings across the US and Canada. According to Robert Mosher: The principal feature of this Plan was what Alexander referred to as the “Champs Elysées”, a monumental pedestrian mall stretching from the northern edge of the campus to a point at the southern edge, very near the present intersection of Torrey Pines road and La Jolla Village Drive, a distance of nearly 1-1/3 miles. The mall would have followed the ridge that old Highway 101 formerly occupied. At the mid-point of this mall, approximately where Thurgood Marshall College is now sited, the Plan called for an immense central plaza, measuring 500’ by 700’, rivaling the Piazza San Marco, in scale and around which were to be clustered buildings, called the Communications Center… In the center of the grand plaza, there was to be an amphitheatre seating 6000; and from the center of the amphitheatre, a 360-foot-high communications/navigation bell tower was to rise. This tower would have been more than one third the height of the Eiffel tower. The twelve colleges, as programmed in the Academic Master Plan, were to be located as individual separated clusters of buildings, evenly placed along each side of the Champs Elysées. The Plan required, in Alexander’s words, “that each of the twelve colleges would by physically distinct,” and different in character. Each, as delineated on the Master Plan, showed a different pattern of buildings, some large and formal, some smaller and informal. No consistency of scale, design or character was implied; in fact, these characteristics were discouraged. On the positive side, one of the most compelling elements of the proposed Master Plan was the landscaping component, which called for informal treatment at the campus edges and more refined landscapng on the campus interior. The San Diego firm of Wimmer Yamada ASLA was retained to be the permanent Consulting Landscape Architects, to insure continuity and harmony in both the landscape and paving elements, such as roads, walks, terraces and courtyards. Had this landscape policy been followed throughout the entire development of the campus, the resulting landscape design would have created a unifying character that would have helped to produce a greater sense of place… …Alexander recognized that the selection of individual architects for each building within a college could very well result, to a degree, in undesirable visual chaos. Therefore, he proposed that, after each college had been master-planned by the Consulting Architect, in this case himself, all of the executive architect assignments be made simultaneously for all of the buildings in the college. Robert Alexander resigned his position as Consulting Architect during the summer of 1965 after William Pereira’s request to move his library design from where the Campus Master Plan placed it. Additionally, Robert Mosher, meeting with the campus architect, members of Alexander’s staff and UCSD faculty had agreed to move in a more “humanist planning” direction and away from the 1963 plan. Robert Mosher, as Muir College’s Executive Architect and his team of architects began meeting soon thereafter. According to Mosher, Alexander’s plan “was shelved and I was instructed to make a fresh start…” Mosher continued, “The executive architects began the work of designing their separate buildings, for which I established the relationship of each to the others within the complex, the material and color palette, and the design of the fenestration to be used on each of the academic buildings. The fenestration for the residence halls required a different treatment because of the differing nature of their internal needs.” The purpose of this coordination was to achieve as much continuity of design as possible, given the requirements of the five building programs. The buildings were to be comfortably related to one another, be visually compatible, and create informal garden spaces, courtyards and walkways, which would invite people to linger there and enjoy their passage through the campus. Wimmer and Yamada produced a landscape plan that supported and enhanced the informal environment we were seeking. The… Architects were cooperative. Each made a conscientious effort to contribute to the sense of place that I hoped to achieve – an informal, humanistic environment… According to The UCSD Master Plan Study and its Antecedents, “carob trees in formal rows were to be planted along all major pedestrian malls and roads... the eucalyptus trees were described as being ‘of inferior material.” In addition to landscape design, uniformity throughout the campus would be expressed through building materials (concrete), color, paving, outdoor furniture and graphics. Unity within each college would be achieved by an executive architect master planning each. Alexander approved of each college having a distinct program as long as each followed one of four “forms”: and Open form would have the maximum variety in building forms (see Revelle College); the Cube form would be characterized by square building forms of varying height; the Tower form would utilize north-south oriented buildings mimicking an “Italian hill town”; and lastly the Cloister type was “recommended for east of the ridge, where the interior court would be similar to Christ Church, Oxford in scale.” During that summer of 1965, the Regents of the University of California appointed A. Quincy Jones (Jones and Emmons) as Consulting Architect. At that same time William Pereira offered “A Master Plan for University Center” to the Regents, which justified his library siting and the new campus center, or University Center, just south of his Central Library plan. While there is some debate over whether or not Mosher’s plan followed Alexander’s “tower” form, he did follow Alexander’s proposed method for achieving unity with the college by leading a team of (San Diego based) architects to design the buildings: Electrophysics Research (later Applied Physics and Mathematics by Robert Mosher), Biology Building (Liebhardt & Weston), Humanities and Social Sciences (Richard George Wheeler and Associates headed by designer Gayne Wimer), McGill Hall (Frank L. Hope & Associates led by designer Fred R. Livingstone), as well as Muir Commons, Muir College Apartments, Tioga Hall, and Tenaya Hall all by architect Dale Naegle. While not under supervision of Mosher, the construction of neighboring Second College (later John Muir College) buildings Mandeville Arts Center (A. Quincy Jones) and the campus Gymnasium and Natatorium (Liebhardt & Weston) complete Muir College. While the design of Mandeville Center for the Arts began as early as 1968, the project was not completed until 1975. Siting of the structure within Jones’ 1966 Campus Master Plan revision interrupted Robert Alexander’s north-south axis as well as altering the focus of the campus from the sciences to a more balanced curriculum. According to Cory Buckner (in the text A. Quincy Jones), “the structure is of reinforced concrete, except for the second-floor studio space, which is heavy timber with a plaster-and-wood siding on the exterior. The roof of the auditorium is a steel truss with metal decking that can adapt to a variety of stage and audience configurations." Buckner’s research uncovered Jones’ own thoughts on the building as well. The building would “include ‘People Spaces’ that could relate indoor and outdoor areas for student and faculty work and that could also serve for exhibits, music recitals, meditation and outdoor functions.” Jones, in Mandeville Center Festival Program, stated his design approach by “creating a facility that would encourage an open community, provide opportunity for fortuitous encounter, be person-scaled and considerate of the user; one that would welcome all, be subservient to human activity, meet the needs we could perceive, be open to surprise…” Resources Used: A Walking Tour of UCSD Modernist architecture would not be complete without stopping by the following structures: 1. Applied Physics
and Mathematics, (1969) Architect: Robert
Mosher 2. Biology Building,
(1969) Architect: Liebhardt Weston 3. Humanities and
Social Sciences, (1969) Architect: RGW and
Associates 4. McGill Hall,
(1969) Architect: Frank L. Hope & Associates 5. Muir Commons
(1969) Architect: Dale Naegle 6. Muir College
Apartments (1969) Architect: Dale Naegle 7. Tioga Hall (1969)
Architect: Dale Naegle 8. Tenaya Hall (1969)
Architect: Dale Naegle 9. Mandeville Arts
Center (1975) Architect: A. Quincy Jones 10. Gymnasium and
Natatorium (1965) Architect: Liebhardt & Weston Architect bios Frederick
Ralph Livingstone Robert
Mosher Dale
Naegle A Brief History Originally conceived
in 1963 by Los Angeles architect Robert Alexander (formerly of
Neutra and Alexander), the campus plan intended to grouptwelve
academic colleges around a “Champs Elysées” on
the path along the ridge occupied by Highway 101. The twelve colleges
would be organized into three self-contained clusters of four each.
Each college would be physically distinct from the others. In July 1965, Robert Alexander resigned his post as Consulting Architect. With William Pereira proposing to move the campus’ center to the east around his library design and newly appointed Consulting Architect A. Quincy Jones placing his design for Mandeville Center blocking the north-south promenade, much of Alexander¹s plan was changed in the 1966 revision.1 By 1966 it had been determined that John Muir College would take the “tower” form outlined in Alexander’s campus master plan; San Diegan Robert Mosher, of Mosher and Drew was named executive architect for the first Muir building and, following Alexander¹s proposed method for achieving unity within colleges, was also commissioned to head a team of architects to design the remainder of the college buildings. Thus, Muir College, planned and designed under the eyes of both the founding fathers and the architect of the master plan, would serve as the model for the “unity” concept in campus development. 1 1. The UCSD Master Plan Study and It¹s Antecedents
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