Contents 1
Introduction by John Morris Dixon, FAIA
5
Comments by Dr. John L. Lahey, President
7
Prologue by Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, Architect
13 14 15 18 20 28 32 36 40 42 44 48 50 51 52
Mount Carmel Campus—The Early Years Original Campus, 1966 The Campus Upon Our Arrival, 1978 Concept Plan and Design Guidelines, 1978 Preliminary Campus Master Plan, 1980 Small Steps, 1980–81 A Bold Step: The Complex, 1980–81 The Completed Campus Master Plan, 1981 Great Flood at Centerbrook Architects, 1983 More Small Steps: Computer Center, 1982–85 Sun Traps, 1984–85 New Entry Road, 1985 Lloyd House Renovation and Addition, 1986 Riley House I Addition and “Memory Lanes”, 1986 Carl Hansen Student Center and First Dining Hall Expansion, 1985–91
65 66 82 83
Design Principles at Work Character of the College, Humanism, and Our Seven Layers of Allure Design Restraint A Belief in the Power of Architecture
85 86 94 98 102 106 108 134 135 136 137 138 169 170 172 176 180 182 183 184 191 192 194 220 222 223 232 236 238
Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years Arrival of Dr. John L. Lahey and the Echlin Health Sciences Center, 1987–89 The Proscenium, 1991 Library Wings, 1991 The Village Residence Hall, 1991–92 First Recreation Center, 1991 Lender School of Business Center, 1989–93 Centerbrook’s First Book—Reinventing American Architecture, 1993 Olin Library Proposal, 1991 Several Small Projects, 1988–94 New Main Entry Gate, 1991 School of Law Center, 1991–95 AIA Gold Medal, 1991 First Pine Grove Building, 1990 Rathskeller’s Renovations and Additions, 1984–95 Commons Residence Hall, 1994–95 Proposal for The Olin Arts and Sciences Building, 1995 Second Revamp of Dining, 1995 Centerbrook’s Second Book—Centerbrook Volume 2, 1997 Ledges Residence Hall, 1997–99 AIA Firm Award, 1998 Facilities Center, 1999 Arnold Bernhard Library, 1998–2000 Quinnipiac College Becomes Quinnipiac University, July 1, 2000 Centerbrook’s Third Book—The Enthusiasms of Centerbrook, 2001 Pine Grove North, 2001 Development, Public Affairs and Alumni House and Garden, 2002 Science Laboratory Upgrades, 1995–2017 Mountain View Residence Hall, 2002
244 250 252 260 276 280 294 295 296 300 304
Expansion of the Recreation Center, 2003 In Memory of Martha Shattuck, March 29, 1920–August 21, 2004 Village II Residence Hall, 2007 Dining Hall and Student Center Additions and Renovations, 2007–12 Bobcat Way, 2009 Heart of the Campus Admissions and Financial Aid Offices Move to Echlin Center, 2012 Learning Center, 2013 The School of Engineering, 2014–16 Soccer/Lacrosse and Field Hockey Stadia, 2016–17 Summary of Mount Carmel Campus, 1978–2018
307 308 314 322 324 360 362 366
York Hill Campus Preliminary Steps and Master Plans TD Banknorth Sports Center, 2002–07 Parking Garage, 2005–07 Crescent Residence Hall and Rocky Top Student Center, 2007–11 Proposal for a Campus Inn, 2010 Greening of York Hill Campus Theatre Arts Center and Music Rehearsal Studio at the Foot of York Hill, 2017
373 374 375 382 404 406 432
North Haven Campus Transforming a Pre-existing Campus Schools of Health Sciences and Nursing, 2007–09 Center for Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, 2011–13 School of Education, 2012 School of Law Center, 2015 Biomedical Research Laboratory, 2017
433 434 437 448 458 460 464
Where Quinnipiac Goes From Here The Formula for Success Mount Carmel Campus Updated Master Plan, 2017 York Hill Campus Updated Master Plan, 2017 North Haven Campus Updated Master Plan, 2017 Development of Whitney Avenue Centerbrook’s Fourth Book—Centerbrook 4, 2017
465
Evolution of the American College Campus and Lessons Learned by Chad Floyd, FAIA
482 482 483 485 486
Contributors Quinnipiac’s Team Centerbrook’s Team General Contractors Design Influences
487
Shaping This Book
488
Photographer Credits
492 Index 501
About the Authors
502
The Sleeping Giant by Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA
The Architect’s Early Years
A prescient hike up Sleeping Giant Mountain overlooking Quinnipiac College while I was still a student in the School of Architecture at Yale, 1969. Note Quinnipiac’s library spire at right. I had no inkling of the adventure that awaited me.
A celebration of our new firm in 1975—from left: Charles Moore, Ginger Rutledge, Glenn Arbonies, Mary Ann Rumney, Mark Simon, Jeff Riley, Ron Eichorn, Bob Harper, and Bill Grover. Quinnipiac would be our first institutional client.
August of 1975 was hot. I was 29 years old, a newly minted architect engulfed in an economic firestorm. The country was in the midst of an historically severe recession marked distinctly by “stagflation”—the combination of high unemployment, peaking at over 10% nationally, and high inflation, as high as 15% to 20% per year. To top things off, there was an oil embargo in 1974 and again in 1979 when the Shah of Iran was overthrown and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. The cost of gasoline had doubled to about $4.40 per gallon in today’s dollars, and shortages were widespread. Three years earlier, as the Vietnam War reached its nadir and the Watergate scandal was unfolding, I received my Masters of Architecture degree from Yale University. Now, I had completed the arduous 6½-year ordeal of becoming a registered, licensed architect—3½ years of graduate school plus 3 more years of apprenticeship, during which I studied and sat for the professional examination. I look back on those years and view them as an early test of my resiliency, optimism, and perseverance, traits I correctly sensed would be needed in abundance as an architect. I was apprenticing at the firm of Charles W. Moore, FAIA, who was my dean at Yale’s School of Architecture. Upon passing the exam, I was asked to join him as a partner in a new firm to be managed by Bill Grover, also a
(left) Self-portrait, c 1975, oil on canvas, 20x31 (right) Here I am displaying one of our solar-heated house designs for the New Haven Register in 1974. 8 Prologue
former student of his but 10 years my senior. Two other architects were in the partnership: Robert Harper, who had worked for Charles for six years, and Glenn Arbonies, another young architect also newly registered. The firm was named at the time, Moore Grover Harper, PC. We would soon be joined by Mark Simon and Chad Floyd and rename ourselves Centerbrook Architects and Planners after the small Connecticut village we called home. Charles would eventually leave the East Coast for UCLA to be dean of its architecture school. We had scant work and a $300,000 debt to pay down.
The College’s Early Years Quinnipiac College, too, was young— 25 years away from becoming a university. It had been founded in 1929 in New Haven, Connecticut, as the Connecticut College of Commerce. It was just now growing into its first campus, which it had occupied only since 1966. It was enchantingly set at the base of Sleeping Giant Mountain in the Mount Carmel section of nearby Hamden, Connecticut. It had relatively few students, mostly commuters from Hamden and New Haven, a mostly local reputation, and very little money. In 1978, chance, that unpredictable impresario of our lives, would bring us together at precisely the right moment for us both, and for the next 40 years I would be Quinnipiac’s architect, and Quinnipiac would be my devotion. It would be an epic journey for us both, at once humbling and grand.
The Connection Fourteen years before, in 1964, a small, improbable chain of events was set in motion when, as a senior at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, I rebelled against expectations set by those close to me and chose Lawrence College (now University) in Appleton, Wisconsin, rather than the prescriptive Ivy League. As it turned out, Lawrence would change my life for, significantly and surprisingly, it connected me to Quinnipiac College, albeit along a rather roundabout path. I arrived at Lawrence in the fall of 1964, the same year the Beatles first arrived in New York, and found that I was one of only a handful of students interested in architecture as a major. As a result, under the tutelage of professor Charles (Charlie) A. Brooks, I effectively received a private four-year mentorship in architectural design, history, and practice, a magical one at that, and in Frank Lloyd Wright’s northern stomping grounds, no less. It also happened that Appleton’s nearby sister city, Neenah, was home to the Kimberly Clark Corporation, founded by Franklyn C. Shattuck, who also later ran the Schrafft’s Candy Company in Boston. Heirs to the Shattuck fortune were two grandsons, Frank, Jr. and James (Jim) Harwood Shattuck. Frank, a Neenah native, became a local architect who would design several buildings at Lawrence.
Jim, who also grew up in Neenah, eventually headed east to Yale and Tufts University near Boston where he met and in 1941 married Martha Merrill of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jim and Martha Shattuck settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and soon became significant philanthropists and major supporters of the then developing Quinnipiac College. Martha, in her own reserved and dignified manner, was quite influential at the College and served on its Board of Trustees for many years—as its chair from 1980 to 1983—until her death in 2004. Jim and Martha’s son, Bradlee Shattuck, also attended Lawrence, where he and I were classmates and fraternity brothers in Beta Theta Pi. After graduating from Lawrence in 1968, Brad and I both headed back east to New Haven, I—as the prodigal son—to attend Yale University’s School of Architecture, and Brad to live with his parents. Thus I was introduced to Jim and Martha Shattuck, who quickly befriended me and for whom I was to design a large, solar-heated house in Guilford, Connecticut, in 1980. The pieces were thus advantageously in place for my lucky future with Quinnipiac College, when, under the presidency of Dr. Richard A. Terry, it determined that it needed a master plan. Martha spoke up to recommend me for the commission, and with enthusiasm, I assume.
Members of Moore Grover Harper included Glenn Arbonies (far left), Bill Grover, Jeff Riley, and Robert Harper, (third, fourth, and fifth from left). From the start we designed solar-heated and energy-conserving projects. Here we are displaying a solar furnace we made as a prototype for a farm in Kansas. We also had just completed the first fully solar-heated building in the country, the National Guard Armory in Norwich, Connecticut.
The welcoming front door to Centerbrook Architects’ offices in an old mill building we purchased in 1972. We were 45 minutes from Quinnipiac’s campus.
We made our offices in an old mill building on the Falls River into an experimental laboratory for sustainable design strategies including vegetated roofs, photovoltaics, pondsource geothermal, and hydropower from our waterfall. Prologue 9
APARTMENTS G NEW EXERCISE TRAIL
APARTMENTS F
RATHSKELLER
NEW DORM
NEW SUN TRAPS DORM D DORM A DORM B
INFIRMARY
DORM C EXISTING PARKING LOT
DORM E
TENNIS COURTS
EXISTING BASEBALL FIELD NEW TRACK EXISTING RECREATIONAL FIELD UPDATED GYMNASIUM
EXISTING SOCCER FIELD
NEW PLAYING FIELDS
Preliminary Campus Master Plan
24 Mount Carmel Campus—The Early Years
EXISTING COMMUTER PARKING LOT
NEW EXERCISE TRAIL THROUGH THE PINE GROVE STAFF/ FACULTY PARKING
SERVICE ENTRANCE
REMOVE TRAILERS NEW PARKING
FACILITIES
NEW FACULTY ADMINISTRATION
STUDENT UNION ADDITION CAFETERIA RENOVATED STUDENT UNION
NEW TREES
TATOR HALL ALLIED HEALTH
SCIENCE BUILDING
ALUMNI HALL
STAFF PARKING PROSCENIUM AND LIBRARY BASE
LIBRARY EXPANSION INTO SOUTH WING
IMPROVED QUAD
NEW
ART AND MUSIC NEW ENTRY ROAD AND TURNAROUND
RO AD
HEDGE ROW
CLEANED-UP RETENTION POND
EXPANDED STUDENT PARKING LOT
PINE FOREST
ENHANCED ENTRANCE TO GYMNASIUM
ALLÉE OF TREES TO BE MAINTAINED
EXISTING FACULTY OFFICE BUILDING (FOB)
NEW EXERCISE TRAIL
REMOVE TRAILERS
EXISTING SOFTBALL FIELDS
NEW VISITORS’ ENTRY GATE STUDENT ENTRY
Mount Carmel Campus—The Early Years 25 MOUNT CARMEL AVENUE
Rathskeller’s Renovations and Additions 1984–95 A New Landmark Along Dorm Road The original Rathskeller served beer to seniors, the only ones on campus of legal drinking age. It was, to be candid, a dive. By 1993, with a growing student body, there was a real need not only for a casual food offering closer to the dorms, but also for more recreational space available to the whole student body. In 1984 we had already renovated the upper floor into a full service Student Affairs office.
By 1995, it was time to complete renovations and build our addition to provide a café and cabana, which by day was a sunny spot in which to sit, eat, mix with friends, or read, and by night to party. From the vaulted ceiling we hung four chandeliers we designed to turn into disco strobe lights by hitting a switch (pages 174–175). Beer continued to be served but in a separate room, eventually dubbed “Bobcat Den”, that could be easily monitored.
Dorm Road, before, with the original Rathskeller at right
Rathskeller, before
172 Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years
An organizing and memorable axis along the village street
A Memory Lane
Site plan
We set the new addition right on the edge of the dorm road to create a prominent landmark on the axis line of the “Village Street.” The addition also made a small courtyard that adds to the sociability of the street. BAR
BOBCAT DEN SERVERY
COURTYARD
N
TIO VA
O EN
R
N
TIO
DI
AD
CABANA
“VILLAGE STREET”
First floor plan
Master Plan sketch 1980
Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years 173
Village II Residence Hall 2007 Home Improvements By 2006, the University needed more junior and senior housing. The issue of seniors moving off campus was beginning to cause a stir within the local community, as was common at many other universities. We were running out of land on the main Mount Carmel campus, but had one last chance to squeeze in 236 beds in apartment-style houses as a continuation of the Villages project completed in 1992. This time around we made several improvements to the original Villages’ design by providing separate entrances on the uphill side, which made the unit more versatile in adjusting to different degrees of slope in the grade and allowed the uphill side to be used as an entrance with a status equal to the downhill side. We also added bay windows in the living rooms, which we arranged in plan, some on the sides and some on the front, according to different vantage points both from inside and out. We liked using them as small landmarks within the village complex (facing page). Site plan
252 Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years
Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years 253
Soccer/Lacrosse and Field Hockey Stadia 2016–17
Rendering of initial field hockey scheme rejected by Inland Wetlands Commission
Up to Snuff The men’s and women’s ice hockey and basketball teams were flourishing in their new TD Banknorth Sports Center we built back in 2010 (see the next chapter on the York Hill Campus). Now it was time for several other sports to get equal treatment. The men’s and women’s varsity soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey teams were performing superbly and merited their own stadia. Since lacrosse and soccer can share the same type of turf on their playing field and field hockey requires an entirely different type of turf, we planned two separate stadia.
Regulatory Buzz Saw The project took over two years to get through the town agencies’ approval process. All planning, zoning, and wetlands regulations were not just met, but exceeded. Nonetheless, there will be no playing field 300 Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years
The Field Hockey Stadium now borders the wetlands
lights, despite the fact that state-of-the-art LED lights today have precision focusing that would have prevented any light-spill onto neighboring properties or the wetlands. This means that the artificial fields will be underutilized (it gets dark around 4:45 p.m. when the lacrosse season starts in February) and night games will not be possible. As for the wetlands regulations, we had originally designed the Field Hockey Stadium to be on the side of the playing field opposite the wetlands, as close to the Alumni Affairs building as we could get (rendering, left inset). This, however, meant the playing field itself would have to encroach upon the wetlands buffer zone, not the wetlands itself, in one spot by a few feet. As compensation, the University offered to create additional wetlands and clear the existing wetlands of all invasive plant species. This proposal was nonetheless rejected. In the end, we were able to avoid encroachment on the buffer zone only by flipping the stadium structure (right inset) to the
other side of the field where it would sit precisely on the buffer setback line. So now, rather than an open field bordering the wetlands, a two-story building saddles right up to it. Unfortunately, government agencies can often be self-defeating in their strict adherence to the letter of a regulation. The ability of regulators to use judgment in complex matters has been all but lost entirely. As a result, rapidly evolving universities such as Quinnipiac are often saddled with repetitive and wasteful approval procedures, less-than-sensible outcomes, and often huge expenses. Also lost is any faith that a university wants to operate responsibly with regard to the environment, parking, and neighbor relations, precisely because doing so is, more often than not, in its own best interest. In this case, the plan the University originally embarked upon would have been a more sensitive solution for the surroundings than the one that precisely met the regulations. We all need to do better.
Field Hockey Stadium with Soccer/Lacrosse Stadium in the background, facing page
Soccer/Lacrosse Stadium (left), Field Hockey Stadium (right)
Mount Carmel Campus—The Lahey Years 301
Where Quinnipiac Goes From Here “We build, in the end, because we believe in a future—nothing shows commitment to the future like architecture. And we build well because we believe in a better future, because we believe that there are few greater gifts we can give the generations that will follow us than great works of architecture, both as a symbol of our aspirations of community and as a symbol of our belief not only in the power of imagination but in the ability of society to continue to create anew.” —Paul Goldberger, winner of the Pulitzer Prize as architecture critic of The New York Times
Where Quinnipiac Goes From Here 433
The Formula for Success Past, Present, and Future We recognize that constructing a new building has high risks for a university or college. There are, for sure, significant financial, reputational, and opportunity risks. But, there is also, importantly, the risk that the wrong building will get built, even though it is fashionable in style, sound in construction, and functional in use. What is at stake with a new college building is its significant impact on the institutional campus as a whole. A new building can open up views or close them off. It can facilitate circulation and connectivity or impede them. It can form enclaves of intimacy or provide characterless voids. It can make a dramatic setting for celebrations or relegate them to bland gymnasiums. It can capture an expansive sky and distant panorama or cast the ground in shadow. It can allow the “lungs” of the campus to breathe or it can choke them off. It can establish an organizing, iconic, and memorable landmark or it can remain faceless. It can convey important messages or remain voiceless. It can uplift our spirits and give us some sense of our part in the Divine Plan, or leave us unmoved. It can extend the genetic code or fabric of the campus architecture or rip it apart. It can become beloved over time or merely used and tolerated. Eventually, it will either last for generations or it will be covered over or torn down prematurely. At Quinnipiac, the concerted goal of everyone has been to arrive at the right building for each particular situation, one that enhances the virtues of the campus and preserves them forever. Quinnipiac now has the awareness and the tools to advance that goal as it fleshes out and expands its campuses.
Recap of Our Seven Layers of Allure Admittedly I am as proud of the North Haven campus as I am of all we have done on the other two campuses. It is a pride shared by everyone who labored on it, including my fellow Centerbrook team members, engineers, landscapers, and builders, to say nothing of key members of the Quinnipiac community. I feel certain that the “seven layers of allure” to which I and others at Centerbrook had devoted our professional careers were put into play well here. At Quinnipiac,
434 Where Quinnipiac Goes From Here
students, faculty, staff, and parents alike can take a journey from their initial captivating view of a building to a deeper appreciation of its beauty, an understanding of its organization, a sensing of its emotional impact, an enjoyment of its sociability, a hearkening to its ritual, a learning from its symbols, and a transcendence through its art of the familiar and earthbound. I am confident that at Quinnipiac we have made a community of special places that are focused on people, places where humanity can be fully sensed, and where a person’s integrated self can flourish. All of this, I believe, has helped to form Quinnipiac’s unique character.
Machine or Animal? Eventually, I found myself asking a question you might at first think odd: “Is a building a machine or an animal?” The modernist architect Le Corbusier famously stated that, “A house is a machine in which to live.” After all, he argued, a machine is made of manufactured parts that work together to fulfill certain functions and that a building, too, has parts that must work together, such as doors and windows, roofs, walls, lights, climate control systems, hallways, stairs, and floors. I considered that an animal is not much different in that it, too, has parts that perform functions, such as arms and hands, legs, feet, mouth, eyes, ears, and nose. But an animal is more than a machine. It has its own feelings, desires, experience, emotions, and memories, all of which add up to a personality that makes it unique. Some buildings are merely intended to function efficiently like a machine. But the best ones, the ones that become beloved by the people who use them, are like animals. They have a special spirit. They dance, cajole, act out, sooth, comfort, welcome, startle, inspire, recall, tell stories, amuse, shout, whisper, laugh, and smile. They have a beating heart, and we humans succumb to the beat, even if just subconsciously.
“Generally, the proposal for any significant building or renovation (on a college campus) starts with a fresh search for a design firm. The administration—or a major donor—may see the opportunity to call special attention to the new construction, to make a splash that may boost student and faculty recruitment while impressing other potential donors and rival institutions. In this book we can see, instead, what happens when an institution relies on the design wisdom of one architect for decades.” —John Morris Dixon, FAIA “This book documents a remarkable story in both higher education and architecture: virtually an entire university was envisioned, designed, built, and put into use at the hands of a small team of people, which included a single architect, Jeff Riley of Centerbrook Architects and Planners.” —Dr. John L. Lahey, President of Quinnipiac University “Centerbrook is probably one of the top half-dozen architectural firms nationally known for quality. They do powerful, unique, special buildings that are not so powerful, unique, and special that they cast everything around them into doubt.” —Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA “I have been happy to follow the course of Centerbrook’s work at Quinnipiac College, whose campus lies not far north of my house in New Haven, directly under the grand long body of the mountain called “The Sleeping Giant.” It was upsetting to watch earlier buildings at the college rise on that splendid site without much distinction of detail or general order, but as soon as Centerbrook took over, everything changed. Centerbrook’s Law and Business Schools at Quinnipiac have gone far toward relating the campus to the mountain with tact and dignity. The organization of the site as a whole looks better every day, and the buildings themselves have become ever more solid in detail and massing and increasingly worthy of their noble situation under the mountain mass. At Quinnipiac, Centerbrook has done the best thing that architects can do anywhere. It has made a place where the natural and manmade supplement each other in quiet grandeur. It is a mythic setting, the Sleeping Giant, a sacred mountain where the citizens of New Haven once sent their women and children for refuge when the British invaded the city during the Revolution. I remember walking and climbing there with a profound sense of coming home after the Second World War. If Centerbrook’s architects had never done anything else, they would have to be remembered for saving this place.” —Professor Vincent J. Scully, Jr.
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