A century ago, a cornerstone was laid for the building that was to become Lovett Hall, and the live oak trees that are the signature of our campus were planted.
to be designed to connect social gathering to campus beauty and to project both welcome and activity onto the campus. Similar goals underlaid the design of the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center. It is wonderful that one can exercise while admiring the beauty of the campus, but the design was as much — perhaps more — determined by our desire to have the activity and community taking place within the center projected to those outside. For more than a century, Rice’s commitment to architectural design — both its beauty and its functionality — has been central to our goals and ambitions. Our founding president, Edgar Odell Lovett, toured the world and brought back concepts that today still greatly influence the look and function of our campus facilities. Rarely does a visitor to our campus not comment on its beauty, which is now being further enhanced by our new campus art program. Now we may be on the cusp of fairly radical change in the nature of both university instruction and the learning community, changes being brought on by the confluence of economic pressures and rapidly improving educational technologies. Major universities are exploring the possibility of providing a significant part of their instruction in online-only format. We are told of students — not at Rice, of course — who wake up in their dorm rooms and flick on their computers to watch a class rather than rolling out of bed to actually attend the class.
The bricks and mortar laid and the trees planted have produced more than buildings and shade. They have created an intellectual and social space where we teach, learn, discover and forge enduring friendships and, yes, sometimes, marriages. Our architecture has played a significant part in shaping our destiny, and I remain in awe of those who created — and are still creating — it. —David Leebron
Our success in the future will, in my view, require continued attention to the physicality of our campus and what that physicality makes possible for the community we have gathered, quite literally, from the far corners of the globe. If we enable our students and professors to achieve and learn through their proximity to each other things they would not be able to do in a virtual environment, then we can be assured that the basic elements that have made the Rice experience extraordinary for the generations before us will be so for the generations that follow. This is not to say that technology will not change Rice. It will assuredly change us fundamentally. But those changes, like our architecture, must be in service of a more humanistic and holistic sense of what it means to be educated and to participate as a community in increasing the understanding of our world. A century ago, a cornerstone was laid for the building that was to become Lovett Hall, and the live oak trees that are the signature of our campus were planted. The bricks and mortar laid and the trees planted have produced more than buildings and shade. They have created an intellectual and social space where we teach, learn, discover and forge enduring friendships and, yes, sometimes, marriages. Our architecture has played a significant part in shaping our destiny, and I remain in awe of those who created — and are still creating — it. It’s a noble endeavor, and we take pride in being both thoughtful consumers and, through our school, creators.
Rice Magazine
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No. 9
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2011
21