Programme

The post-war campus of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was hewn from a knotted and polluted site, severed by a river and a railway viaduct. Its bright, modernist buildings of the 1960s, cast from Snowcrete, stood in stark contrast to the soot laden city that surrounded it and came to literally embody Harold Wilson’s ‘White Heat’. The development of the campus though has its roots two decades earlier – in the US McMahon Act of 1946 (that stopped the sharing of atomic weapon research), and its curriculum drew precedent from visits by the first Principal to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1940s. Britain was forced to pursue its own nuclear programme, instituted by Atlee’s government in 1947, closely followed by a series of parliamentary reports which advocated the expansion of further and higher technological education. Manchester was home to pioneering computer research and the north-west of England was one of several clusters of early nuclear industries, making the city an obvious location for new education facilities. UMIST, with Imperial College London, was an outlier in university expansion, it was in advance of the Robbins Report of 1963 and predated almost all the Redbrick university post-war development plans and each of the New Universities. In this paper I will explore the transnational context for the development of the campus, the urgency of its construction, the agency of various governmental tiers and how each of these informed a collaborative process of design by important local architects.  

After the student riots of 1968, a meaningful signal of change was triggered by City University New York (CUNY). On 9 July 1969 CUNY adopted a policy of Open Access and overnight facilitated all who wished to access third-level could do so. By September 1969, a whole new cohort of students could cross a racial barrier and enter the first Open Access System. Course numbers burgeoned. Classes in sociology grew even more than college enrolment and to match job opportunities this put pressure on teaching applied skills. One of their new hires was editor at FORTUNE William H Whyte who joined CUNY at Hunter College as a Distinguished Professor in Sociology. 

Whyte had just edited the 90,000-word introductory volume to the 1969 Plan for New York City and brought together enthusiasm for user participation and his connections to City Hall to develop a live planning project. He ran an applied research seminar on ‘Street Life Research’ using urban open spaces as his classroom from 1970 to 1973 during which time he set up his influential Street Life Project. 

Whyte was already interested in social psychology but by his immersion in academia, he sharpened his knowledge of prevailing social theories. The period therefore captures a pivot in Whyte’s career and for CUNY’s civic engagement.  

Set in the tumultuous context of the late sixties and with a view to contemporary relevance, the spirit of the paper is captured by ‘Mending Wall’ quote- a conversation between different world views on campus planning. 

Technical innovation in the industry and the representation of scientific progress have changed not only the requirements, but also the style of university architecture in Switzerland. This paper will present selected cases of building alterations and additions from the mid-1920s to the early 1950s, while scrutinizing the influence of industry, technology, and its scientific agents on the buildings of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.  

The buildings of ETH have been an architecture of national interest since the school’s foundation in 1855. From the mid-1920s onwards, university architecture increasingly took on the task of identifying Switzerland in Europe and internationally as a location for advanced science. To provide suitable space for the rapidly evolving scientific disciplines within the dense urban environment of the historic university district of Zurich, the authorities decided to modify the existing classical buildings. In 1928, ETH professor Otto Rudolf Salvisberg (1882–1940) was commissioned to transform the historic Machine Laboratory for the age of technology. Among other materials, Salvisberg introduced aluminum in the interior design. Unsurprisingly, AIAG, the local aluminum company looking for new markets after WWI, was an investor at ETH. 

The entanglement between federal institutions and local industry resulted in a variety of patents in the fields of material processing with a significant impact on architecture. The buildings of ETH showcase the complex network of industry, science and its representation involved in the transformation of the school into a modern urban university.  

 This abstract sets out a conference paper proposal which will examine the full extent of this importance. It does this through the prism of the legislation which underpins the development of the Grangegorman site in north inner-city Dublin; as a location for education, health, and other facilities—and which is now part home to Technological University Dublin.  

An Irish Government decision of 1999 set in train the purchase—by the Department of Education and Science from the Eastern Regional Health Authority—of c.25ha of the c.30ha Grangegorman site. In 2001, the Taoiseach then set up an inter-departmental working group, with a view to examining the project and reporting back to Cabinet with its recommendations. The group was chaired by the department of the Taoiseach and represented key government stakeholders along with the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Eastern Regional Health Authority.  

In July of that same year the working group appointed consultants to investigate the potential of the site for education and health purposes. The consultant’s report provided conclusions and recommendations to realise the potential of the valuable state asset. In April 2002—and on the back of the detailed proposals set out by the consultant’s report—the Government decided that a state development agency should be established to manage the development of the site. The ‘Grangegorman Development Agency Bill’ was drafted to provide for the establishment of the Grangegorman Development Agency.  

Between the summers of 2004 and 2005 the Bill passed through five stages of scrutiny by Dáil Éireann. Seanad Éireann then debated the Bill for a further two weeks—after which, in July 2005, the Bill was signed into law by the President of Ireland.  

During a lower house debate, the Minster for Education accepted reservations emerging from an earlier Committee stage scrutiny. The Committee was concerned that the emerging Bill provided a disproportionate interest to those living directly proximate to the c.30ha Grangegorman site—and so; with ‘Amendment 2’, the ‘Grangegorman Neighbourhood’—an area of c.300ha, containing eight electoral wards—was defined graphically and statutorily; with its interests to be enshrined in law.  

The final form of the Bill—and then the subsequent Act—contained a schedule which listed 21 properties in the ownership of the Dublin Institute of Technology; all of which the Agency was to accept the vesting of, along with the Grangegorman site itself. The subsequent Strategic Plan, published in accordance with the requirements of the Act, set out the funding model for the initial phases of the educational aspects of the development by several means, primarily—and in the first instance—to be from the proceeds of the disposal of these 21 properties. The future development of these properties was therefore separate to and apart from the functions of the Agency.  

Within the much broader context of this complex project of moving urban parts, this paper reflects on its far-reaching impacts on all Dublin and interrogates how far is fair.  

This paper wishes to draw wide discursive boundaries around the recently opened [Nov. 2022] new Bezalel campus building in central Jerusalem, to allow the building the freedom to exercise its own authority, and yet to publicize its transformative potential in and for Jerusalem. My aim is to position the building in an architectural discourse, widen the ideational borders around it, and evaluate the making and reception of its ‘newness’. The meaning of Bezalel new campus building, like any new building, is built ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of it through a prolonged discussion. Literally and ideationally, meaning is built once by ‘looking-out’ of the building, and once by ‘looking-in’ to the building. In contemporary Jerusalem both actions are intrinsically political, especially on such a sensitive site, because the building is enveloped in glass, and with a client of Bezalel Academy’s historical and cultural pedigree in both the city and the Israeli national project. The paper traces the history of the project commission, how the building was developed in Tokyo by the Japanese architectural firm SANAA, how architectural ideas and concepts migrated across international borders to the former Russian Compound in central Jerusalem, and how they were translated there into architectural form and placed in and on site. 

With its founding date in 1388, the University of Cologne represents one of the oldest universities in Germany. The foundation was the result of an initiative of the city of Cologne. Closed by the French occupation forces in 1798, the city remained without a university for a long time, despite founding efforts. It was only through the efforts of leading Cologne politicians and interested parties from the business world that the city's university was reestablished in 1919. With the election of Konrad Adenauer as Lord Mayor in 1917, the reestablishment of the University of Cologne was given top priority, although the citizens of Cologne were initially skeptical about the project due to the financial burden. However, it seemed unacceptable to the supporters that a large city like Cologne, rich in tradition, did not have a university. Especially Konrad Adenauer, later the first chancellor of West- Germany, strove to change the urban image of Cologne by rebuilding the university buildings. Thus, the construction of the buildings was closely related to his urban redevelopment plan, through which the medieval city was to be adapted to modern needs. Thus, the city council chose a site near the planned green belt area, which was to serve as an inner-city recreation area. The university buildings played a prominent role in this prestigious project. In this lecture, the interplay of both urban development projects (University & Greenbelt), their effect on the appearance of Cologne and the design of the university plan will be shown. In addition, role of the university as an urban planner should be considered, including in the area of building design. To this day, the university is under municipal sponsorship.  

On January 21, 1871, Rome became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy. As a result, huge transformation occurred. The period ranging from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, in fact, has been crucial in the invention of a new entity displaying both National ambitions and the identity of the rising bureaucracy. 

Several figures contributed to this ambitious plan, notably Marcello Piacentini in 1916 just returned from a long trip across the United States. In the same year Piacentini drew a plan for the “Grande Roma”. The plan consisted of a belt of parks which recalled the American way of planning. Not coincidentally, Piacentini named this ring “thread of gemstones” after Olmsted’s ‘Emerald necklace’ in Boston. In the plan, all parks and gardens were connected by parkways, in order to let people have “the illusion of living in a picturesque landscape”. From the mid-20s, Piacentini became the official architect of the Fascist regime. Quite naturally, Rome represented a crucial endeavor. In the years that followed, Piacentini was entrusted with some major urban plans. Amongst them, the new University Campus (La Sapienza) and the plan for the 1942 World Fair (EUR). The Sapienza Campus became the first real opportunity to give voice to the American lesson. The design for La Sapienza mirrors Piacentini’s interest towards American planning and landscape design. 

This paper aims at exploring the influences in the Italian search of a new urban modernity thought the development of an urban campus. Piacentini’s La Sapienza help to focus on this exchange towards the definition of a modern and cosmopolitan urban culture in Rome.  

University campuses located in historic centers contribute to urban revitalization by preserving, adapting, and utilizing heritage buildings. However, sustainable campus strategies require innovation and integration with the existing urban environment, which can present both design and implementation challenges in historical areas, where the local neighborhoods and the historical city center must be considered in planning.  

The Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá has consolidated sustainable campus strategies through actions that have combined historical and contemporary buildings. This has created a unique urban space that supports a leading Latin American university with cutting-edge spaces that blend history and the natural surroundings. As the identity and experience of university communities are critical for universities, the institution strategically associated the conservation of historical buildings with academic activities and the natural surroundings. These characteristics form part of the planning strategy and vision of a sustainable campus immersed in an urban environment that has a historic connotation with social inequalities, as well as complex and diverse dynamics.  

 To promote sustainable campus strategies, institutions of higher education need to understand the context and explore the options for sustainable growth. This presentation seeks to explain how sustained conservation of heritage buildings over time has consolidated a sustainable campus within the historic center of Bogotá. It also highlights the research that has been conducted through this endeavor, with an emphasis on the evaluation and implementation of new technologies to support the conservation and sustainable development of a university community located in a historic city center. 

The lecture deals with the spatial concepts of German post-war universities and their relationship to the contemporary theoretical debates on knowledge and university concepts of the 1960s. The starting point for my considerations is the building complex for the humanities institutes of the Free University of Berlin, 1963‒1967 according to designs by Josic/Candilis/Woods. The non-hierarchical, modular structure with internal ‘streets’, ‘squares’ and cafés marked a Copernican Turn in the twentieth-century university architecture: the shift from the (historical) university in the city to the university as city. Unlike British and American campus universities of the time, however, ‘city’ was not understood here as an ensemble of individual buildings. Rather, the university was conceived as an integrated large-scale structure that could potentially be expanded to infinity.  

The core thesis of my lecture is that such open architectural concepts were not only the result of a discourse intrinsic to architecture, as summarised by Reyner Banham in his volume ‘Megastructure’ (1976). Rather, concepts such as the Josic/Candilis/Woods design were influenced by contemporary educational theories and university concepts. Especially in the writings of the philosopher Helmuth Plessner, the demand for a processual, open understanding of university can be found (‘knowledge acquisition’ instead of ‘knowledge ownership’ [»Wissenserwerb« statt »Wissensbesitz«]). At the same time, Plessner formulated that research could no longer be thought of as ‘linear’, but had an ‘evolutive’ character, i.e., was unpredictable in its directionality and structure. I therefore understand the ideas of the German architect Eckart Schulze-Fielitz—for example for the buildings of the University of Bochum in 1962—for a spatially expandable, flexible megastructure as a materialisation of these concepts of knowledge. 

Between 1959 the Constantinos Doxiadis Associates office operating from Athens, Greece, designed the master plans for several university campuses in Pakistan, (University of Punjab, 1959; University of Agriculture, 1965), Syria (University of Aleppo, 1964), the USA (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1964) and Greece (University of Patras, 1972; the Pierce-Deree College 1964). These proposals, either completely new or building upon existing settings, represent Doxiadis' principles of design as expressed in his Ekistics theories. At the same time, his US contemporaries by the likes of Joseph Hudnut (1886–1968), William Wurster (1895 – 1973), and Josep Lluís Sert (1902–1983) elaborated on a long discourse about the reorganization of university campuses. All of them, however, shared common ground in terms of their principles of humanism, and habitat, and their connections to the philosophical ideas of Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes.  

This paper aims to bring in comparison the work and theories of Constantinos Doxiadis with his US contemporaries in terms of the approach to student life, the relationship between campus and city-centre, and the interaction between different university faculties and departments. A particular point of interest is the consideration of the criticism that the Ekistics theory received in the US, in parallel to a convergence of design thinking. Considering the urban design and planning principles that campus projects represent, how far where really the claimed "different" approaches? 

Leslie Martin’s and Trevor Dannatt’s radical restructuring of the Georgian fabric of Bloomsbury through the Development plan for the University of London (1959) exemplifies an important pivot in the planning of urban universities. While only partly realised in Denys Lasdun’s Institute of Education (1970–1976), this paper draws primarily on the remarkable series of original urban drawings and their iterations of the Development Plan, to argue for an important conceptual shift in a trajectory that leads from Adams, Holden and Pearson’s ‘ivory tower’ project for a new headquarters of the 

University of London (1932), of which only Senate House was built, to Stanton Williams’ Central St Martins (2008–2011), a building that embodies a new trend in the design of university buildings in its layered intersection of inside and outside spaces, seeking to draw the life of the city and the life of the institution closely together. The paper examines how a family of university buildings and projects by Leslie Martin (Cambridge, Oxford, Hull and Leicester) can be seen as experimentation of concepts about the university and its relationship to the city that culminates in the civic and democratic learning landscape envisioned in the Development Plan. The comparison with the contemporary ‘Knowledge Quarter’ centred in Bloomsbury, Euston, and King’s Cross yields important questions about architecture’s contribution to the urban formation of a civic university. 

This paper considers the building of Cravath Hall on the campus of the Historically Black College of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. A towering eight-story neogothic design built in 1930 by the acclaimed campus architect Henry Hibbs, the university’s new library was distinctive compared to the many Neoclassical and Colonial Revival buildings being built on segregated college campuses in the first decades of the twentieth century. While built by a white architect, Cravath Hall’s development came at a time when the university was hiring literary and cultural figures from the ‘Harlem Renaissance’ which looked to establish a new racial identity and pride, and the library’s walls featured famed murals reflecting on African American history by the modernist Black painter Aaron Douglas. Yet this time also saw Black colleges facing fierce criticism for seemingly abandoning the fight for progress in favour of philanthropic funding and comfortable jobs. Using archival sources from local architects, Fisk’s university leaders, and the philanthropists who funded the $1 million project, this paper explores how Cravath Hall was situated within these political developments and an already eclectic and architecturally ambitious campus. Exploring the design and development of Cravath Hall therefore helps draw into focus how national and international currents of racial identity were reflected in the architecture of the oppressive culture of the US South, and how Black college leaders looked to reflect a new set of values during a time when the relevance and necessity of these institutions was being called into question.  

Australia’s first two universities, established at Sydney in 1850 and Melbourne in 1853, were decidedly ‘modern’ and secular in their academic orientation, catering for an urban professional elite and located in two of the fastest growing capital cities in the British Empire. Both universities were initially intended to be adornments to the civic core of their respective cities, but in both cases extra-urban campus sites were ultimately chosen as the permanent location of the two institutions. Both universities adopted similar spatial and architectural design features, but Sydney University was perhaps more influential as a model for future university projects in Australia because of its priority of foundation and the magnificence of its buildings. In the first phase of campus development, the Sydney buildings were designed by two of Australia’s most eminent architects, Edmund Thomas Blacket and William Wilkinson Wardell. By 1863, Sydney University’s building stock consisted of a large Gothic Revival main building and two residential colleges in the same architectural idiom – St Paul’s (Anglican) and St John’s (Catholic) – but none of these structures were yet completed, nor would they be for many decades to come. What was it about this incomplete suite of buildings at Sydney University that had such a formative impact on university design in Australia? To what extent did the archetype remain dominant during the next century when higher education in Australia developed under very different circumstances to those attending the birth of the universities in Sydney and Melbourne? Did the archetype have any influence during the Australian university boom of the 1970s and 1980s?  

Thailand higher education rapidly expanded during the Cold War. As a bastion of anti-communism, Thailand received various support from the U.S. including financial aid for education expansion. This paper explores the construction of Thailand’s third provincial university: Prince of Songkla University (PSU), as an agent of national progressivism at which the policies of Americanization were put into practice. Unlike previous provincial universities at which many government architects were responsible for the design of universities buildings, PSU’s founders urged the coherence of the university image and deliberately employed only one architect team led by Amorn Srivongse and Rachot Kanjanavanit to design a master plan and all the university’s buildings that could hold its own with the best of the modernist style of architecture. Started in 1967 and completed in 1979, the new university stood out at the very edge of Hat Yai as a city within a city, housing all daily functions of urban life within its self-contained territory. Drawing primarily on the architect’s archives, the paper aims to show how the modern university emerged from the larger historical contexts of higher education expansion and Cold War anxiety. Besides, as almost all construction of the early university’s buildings adopted precast components to minimise the cost and time of the construction, the paper investigates their practical exigencies and material relation within the circumstances of the otherwise rural area. The paper argues that the progressive preoccupation conditioned by the Cold War situation and the rural context transformed the landscape of Thailand's post-war universities.  

When Mies van der Rohe became the head of the School of Architecture at then-Armour Institute of Technology (now IIT), he designed a curricular structure that would go on to shape generations of discursive and pedagogical agendas in architecture. Beginning that fall semester, and until his retirement, Mies would challenge students to design a new university campus—a pedagogical frame that mirrored the design problem through which he was simultaneously designing IIT’s post-war modernist campus expansion into Chicago’s Black Belt. While the implications of this alignment would linger across the American landscape long after Mies’s tenure, the vast range of scholarship on Mies’s legacy in America rarely diverges from a discussion about form and architectural ideology and into the bureaucratic, racial, and social realities underpinning the work. This paper re-examines Mies’s IIT campus expansion by drawing parallels between his pedagogical and representational strategies at IIT and the “disposition of disregard” of the federal-state-municipal-corporate alliances that enabled the university to practice absentee landlordship and to capitalize on linguistic and representational abstractions prevalent during urban renewal. Such alignments sought to affectively neutralize the design of a modernist campus that predicated on the negation of material records and the strategic displacement of the black subject to cast the myth of a tabula rasa enacted by an “apolitical” architect intent on creating an “apolitical” architecture in the name of progress. In drawing these parallels, this paper re-examines Mies’s IIT vis-a-vis constellations of post-war and ongoing urban campus expansions into primarily black and immigrant neighborhoods that commenced not long after—in some cases led by Mies’s former students—to point to the longer shadows cast across the American landscape by the politics of disregard. The paper concludes by reframing the material record that was literally, figuratively, and necessarily suppressed to ultimately contribute to a counter-historiography on Miesian modernism and the urban university.