<p>Well, technically it's architecturally in line with the design of Bloomberg (which will fully become part of Butler) and Wu. Since those two buildings are not being demolished (and why should they, since they are great,imo beautiful, and functional buildings), the architect has to work within the design complement range of those two buildings (as well as 1915 Hall). I personally like the design of the new Butler, but I understand that some students want all Collegiate Gothic on campus (which I find to be dull and repetitive after a while). No matter what, I'm pretty sure that most if not all can agree that the New Butler will be significantly better than the Old.</p>
<p>preguntas, for reasons of context and unity, the new butler buildings pretty much have to be (post)modern in style. they have to tie together 1915, wu, and bloomberg into as unified a complex as possible. the best and perhaps only way to do that is with buildings that, like wu and bloomberg, are red-brick and flat-roofed, with certain nods to the prevailing gothic style (limestone trim, window bays). the obvious man for this unifying task would have been robert venturi, celebrated princeton graduate and designer of fisher, frist, schultz, and lewis thomas, as well as wu. instead, the administration chose henry cobb, lesser half of pei cobb, whose previous effort on campus (friend) is simply a glorified glass box. so now butler has four architects instead of three and one main one.</p>
<p>anyway, whoever the architect, there's little danger of "clash[ing] with the grey gothic buildings," because the nearest gothics, in whitman, will be separated from butler by the three new master's houses going up on elm drive, on the site of 1942 hall. all the other surrounding buildings, including wilcox and scully, are modern.</p>
<p>as for cobb's design, here were my initial thoughts:</p>
<p>"here's the challenge: the new butler dorms have to mediate both stylistically and schematically between wu hall, which is remaining as butler's dining hall, and bloomberg and scully dormitories, which are and will be the new buildings' neighbors to the south and east. all three of those buildings are postmodern in style, executed in orange and red brick, but with echoes of princeton's historic buildings, e.g. limestone window trim. from the few images shown, it looks like the architect (henry cobb of pei cobb) has performed this mediation about as well as possible: the new butler buildings will 'feel' of one piece with both wu and bloomberg/scully. that said, i think the buildings could benefit from greater fenestration - they look at little brick-heavy and window-light right now, which is by no means necessary, given modern structural engineering. they could also use a monumental or ornamental feature or two, like wu's curved window wall, bloomberg's overscaled entrance arch, and scully's tower with its stylized princeton shield in iron."</p>
<p>since writing this (11/30/05), the butler designs have actually improved. in the first rendering, the new dorm across from wu on the site of the west half of lourie-love, was literally just a brick box with two curved window bays. in the latest rendering, however, a wide limestone band has been added to the first level (as on wu), differentiating the two floors and adding visual interest. also adding interest are some additional brick details. and according to the following article, it's possible that "green roofs" will be incorporated.</p>
<p>i still think the windows could be larger and more varied (keeping in mind, however, that unlike wu, these are private not public buildings) and that a signature, vertical element could be added, like the towers of rocky, mathey, and whitman. this would be especially beneficial, since the new courtyards don't face each other, and there's no obvious focus or identifier for the college. speaking of which, it's a truly headscratching decision to reserve one wing of the new complex for unaffiliated upperclassmen; it detracts from the architectural unity of the college. butler college now "ends" in the middle of its own new buildings, and no one would know it.</p>
<p>cobb would actually do well to give some further study to wu (my second favorite building on campus): the way venturi breaks up the roofline and surface of the western wall and the way he adds interest with patterns and historical details, however "ironic" (e.g. oversized, functionless keystones). however good his final design, though, the new buildings will probably just be torn down in another fifty years. unlike their collegiate gothic counterparts, modern dormitories just aren't designed to last for hundreds of years.</p>
<p>still, it will be a big improvement programatically over old butler, which was built to house upperclass clubmen at a time when singles were in high demand and short supply. old butler was never particularly well suited for integration into a residential college.</p>
<p>(kudos if anyone made it through this leviathan of a post.)</p>
<p>Yeah, the new Butler design is awful. I don't think collegiate gothic would be dull and repetitive. I -do- think that building another bunker-style dorm is a really bad idea. What is this, the 70s?</p>
<p>:-)</p>
<p>old butler was built in 1964. and i'm not sure either it or new butler qualifies as "bunker style." it's been promised that the bedrooms in new butler will be the largest on campus (and thus hardly bunkers).</p>
<p>Yeah, honestly, if Butler's current rooms were nice, I don't think it would be nearly as big a deal as it is now. But they aren't. That's one reason why some people in Wilson don't necessarily mind the architecture, because when you're living within a building, the room matters much more than the external architecture (and Wilson's rooms are on the whole very nice). Some of the up-campus gothic dormitories are nice on the outside, but suffer from pretty small rooms (e.g. Joline and Campbell in Mathey).</p>
<p>Plus, the new architecture is distinctive. I have Wilson and Butler friends who have either just learned or are still trying to learn the difference between up-campus dorms. At least you'll know where you are in Wilson and Butler :p</p>
<br>
<p>I have Wilson and Butler friends who have either just learned or are still trying to learn the difference between up-campus dorms.</p>
<br>
<p>and it's not just the names of the dorms, it's which ones are assigned to which college, rocky or mathey. it won't be at all self-evident, for example, that campbell and buyers are part of rocky, since they're attached to joline and blair and built in the same style. joline and campbell were built separately, but there's no clear divsion between the two, and blair and buyers were together just "blair" until the renovation. this all goes back to the unity issue. it should be obvious, even to uninformed passersby, where each college begins and ends. this is how it is at yale, where james gamble rogers clearly distinguished his original colleges from one another not only in space but in style. only a couple, like silliman, incorporate other buildings, and even then, it's adjacent ones.</p>
<p>princeton could better distinguish the up-campus colleges by giving campbell and buyers back to mathey, and giving rocky either edwards or even lockhart (in the latter case edwards, which wasn't even designed by an architect, but by princeton's "curator of buildings and grounds," could be replaced by a dining/social facility to form a college with little and dod). that would confine mathey to the three-sided quad north of mccosh walk, plus its half of the dining complex, rather than dividing its quad buildings and spreading it into parts of buildings south of mccosh. you'd "know where you are" in mathey, and at least <em>better</em> know where you are in rocky.</p>
<p>should the four-year college idea take off among upperclassmen, two other groups of dorms stand ready for conversion, with some renovation and addition of a dining/social building: </p>
<p>1) henry/foulke/laughlin/1901/pyne, with a new building west of pyne, along university place; and </p>
<p>2) patton/wright/cuyler/1903/walker, with new L-shaped building replacing 1939 and gauss and closing the complex off from butler.</p>
<p>brown and spelman could remain upperclass, since they have kitchens, as could scully, which was built for upperclassmen with mostly singles. independents would then have three very different dorms, in different parts of campus, to choose from. this whole conversion could be accelerated if the administration allows upperclassmen to join an eating club but live in a four-year college. unfortunately, i think they're going to take the hard line, and force sophomores to choose one or the other. it could get ugly.</p>
<p>I completely agree with you that Princeton should make a concerted effort to make each residential college more cohesive and self-contained. Even though Mathey and Rocky are considered the best colleges, they are so spread out that I can't really imagine there being as strong of a community identity as there would be in Forbes/Butler/Wilson, which are much more cohesive.</p>
<p>Also, regarding your idea for possible future residential colleges, I truly don't think four-year colleges will become that popular. Princeton, especially among the Ivy League, is a school that prides itself on its traditions and history. Even with today's coeducation, diversity, and political liberalism, most Princetonians still dream of having the quintessential Princeton experience: faculty access, Gothic paradise, Senior Thesis, wearing orange, and, most importantly, eating clubs. Eating clubs and Princeton are so intertwined, the administration's efforts to curb and to diminish eating clubs from Princeton life seem to be unwise. It's one thing to offer an attractive alternative to the significant minority on campus who choose to become independent. But it's another thing when Tilghman and Malkien seem to be on this Don Quijote-esque battle to slowly erase The Street from the map.</p>
<p>If anything, the administration should embrace eating clubs and work much more closely together to make sure every Princetonian has the best social experience possible. There's a reason why eating clubs have been at Princeton over a hundred years; it's because they work. A confusing 2-year/4-year residential college system? Let the controversy begin.</p>
<p>PS: f.scottie - What do you think of the idea of making, somehow, all of the colleges four-year colleges? After sophomore year, students can join an eating club, but they would still live in the college. Or would that diminish the eating clubs' identities and social activities?</p>
<br>
<p>If anything, the administration should embrace eating clubs and work much more closely together to make sure every Princetonian has the best social experience possible.</p>
<br>
<p>agreed. it's really the fault of generations of previous princeton administrators that the clubs even exist: they were formed in response to a lack of quality food on campus. a century or so later, the university is just getting around to providing on-campus dining options for upperclassmen. and now the clubs have too much history and tradition, too many happy alumni, and simply too much inertia, for any show-down to be at all profitable. the adminstration should instead embrace the clubs, as you say, work to cure their shortcomings (by, for example, providing grants instead of loans to those who need them), and, just as importantly, working more actively to combat negative public stereotypes of the clubs. the way to do so would be to be more open about the clubs, rather than pretending they don't exist in the literature sent to prospectives. as they say, a little sunshine is the best disinfectant.</p>
<br>
<p>What do you think of the idea of making, somehow, all of the colleges four-year colleges? After sophomore year, students can join an eating club, but they would still live in the college. Or would that diminish the eating clubs' identities and social activities?</p>
<br>
<p>i think it would be a good compromise. but as i said, i'm afraid that the administration intends to make it an either/or proposition, by requiring upperclassmen to take a college dining contract as a precondition to living there. many folks fear, with good reason, that this could open a significant divide within the study body. and if, in addition to segregating housing, the administration also throws money at the colleges while denying grants for eating club fees, the divide could occur along (socio)economic lines - a disastrous, if foreseeable, outcome. if the balance shifts in favor of the colleges, the first clubs to go under will be the sign-in ones, and the bicker clubs that remain will cater to a much smaller, and less representative slice of the student body than the clubs do now. (to state things differently: i don't think anyone has a problem with the provision of additional dining options, only with the financial and social handicapping of the choice in the direction of the adminstration's preferred option, in part because of likely inequities.)</p>
<p>on the administration's intentions, see:</p>
<p>The option of permitting students to live in the new colleges and eat all of their meals at eating clubs, however, is already "off the table," Malkiel said.</p>
<p>Under the new system — which begins in fall 2007 — students might be allowed to live in a four-year college and still eat one or two meals per week at their eating clubs, Malkiel said, though details have yet to be determined.</p>
<p>malkiel denies any such intention:</p>
<p>With respect to meal plans and eating clubs, we hope that it will be possible to enable upperclass students who elect to live in four-year colleges to participate simultaneously in eating clubs through shared meal contracts, if they choose to do so. That was the recommendation of the Task Force on Dining and Social Options in the Four-Year Colleges, and we are committed to trying to implement it. There would be no intention to limit those students to "one or two meals per week" in eating clubs, as your article reported. In fact, the reference I made to "one or two meals per week" goes the other way — following another recommendation of the Task Force, we hope to make it possible for upperclass students who are not residents of four-year colleges to take one or two meals per week in their colleges without any special additional charge.</p>
<p>but then tilghman airs her true feelings:</p>
<p>"But there are still five [clubs] that are selective, and they don't for me represent the spirit of Princeton. They tend to select more homogeneously than I would like."</p>
<p>(doesn't seem to bode well for the quality of administration/club relations over the transformative next decade or so.</p>