Campus Architectural Tours

Welcome to an architecture tour, A Legacy of an Architect Paul Marvin Rudolph: A World- Class Vision for a Public University  at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMass Dartmouth) campus. This virtual tour is approximately 45 minutes and includes 13 video stops. 

Visitors will learn about the life and career of renowned international architect Paul Marvin Rudolph. Explore Rudolph’s urbanist campus and become familiar with his aesthetic and design approaches for Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute (now UMass Dartmouth). Discover the cultural significance of Rudolph’s Brutalist complex and why many consider this 1960s campus an architectural treasure of the Modernist era. Ultimately, gain an appreciation for this Brutalist icon representing mid-century America, an age of optimism and idealism. 

Special thanks to UMass President’s Office, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, College of Visual & Performing Arts, Claire T. Carney Library Archives and Special Collections at UMass Dartmouth, UMassBrut, Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture, Library of Congress (Prints and Drawings Department), Harvard University, and The Charnel House for their support with this project.

Special acknowledgments to those dedicated members of the UMass Dartmouth community, including Judy Farrar, Bruce Barnes, Lasse Antonsen, and Frederick V. Grifun, whose efforts to document, interview, and collect materials related to UMass Dartmouth’s architectural heritage through exhibitions, publications, oral histories, and other academic endeavors made this project possible.

For more Information regarding tours. 

umassbrut@umass.edu or acywin@umassd.edu

In 1962 as the student population continued to grow annually, the university determined that the masterplan designed a mere seven years prior that set a course to expand from 4,000 to 10,000 students was already inadequate. This unprecedented growth would require a new vision of the campus, and would provide an opportunity for the university to realize its aims towards becoming a nationally recognized research institution.

Tasked with the creation of a new masterplan for the university in 1962, Hideo Sasaki reimagined the historically agricultural campus as an urban center. The agricultural projects and buildings would move to the periphery of the campus grounds while a ring-road would incircle the pedestrian campus-core. Sasaki's masterplan aligned with the university's vision of a forward-looking public research institution, and with his suggestion the university appointed Pietro Belluschi--then dean of the school of architecture and planning at MIT--as architectural consultant for future buildings. Sasaki and Belluschi embraced modernism as the architectural expression of the university's new image as a leading destination for higher education in the nation. Belluschi in his role as architectural consultant advised the university in hiring such architects as Kevin Roche, Marcel Breuer, Edward Durrell Stone, and Gordon Bunshaft.