School Notes: School of Architecture
November/December 2010

Building project faced unique challenges

Students working on the 2010 Vlock Building Project were faced with several challenges—including a considerably smaller budget than the last two projects enjoyed—which required them to be especially inventive in their design. Early in the design process, the remains of another building were discovered buried on the lot. Rather than excavating the rubble, designers placed the entire house at the back of the property, leaving the front for extensive landscaping. A low brick wall fronts the property and relates the house to others on the street. Cost-saving measures included limiting the building’s footprint to about 900 square feet (which meant a more affordable foundation), and leaving existing deciduous trees behind the house (to help cool the house in the summer and warm it in winter). The Vlock Building Project provides graduate students in architecture with the opportunity to design and build a structure as an integral part of their education. The 43-year-old program is responsible for some 22 student-designed homes in New Haven.

Yale’s architecture archives continue to expand

This past September, Yale University became the legal owner of the archives of architect Charles Gwathmey ’62MArch, adding to a small but impressive collection that includes the papers of Eero Saarinen ’34BFA, Dean Robert A. M. Stern ’65MArch, and former dean Cesar Pelli. The archives of American architect and urban theorist Stanley Tigerman ’61MArch are expected in the near future. These collections, which include such documents as the architects’ drawings, notes, plans, models, and related materials, provide unique perspectives on the lives and work of the architects, as well as firsthand sources for study and scholarship. The university began collecting architectural archives about ten years ago through the Yale University Library’s Manuscripts & Archives division.

Exhibition celebrates professor’s legacy

An exhibition in the gallery at Paul Rudolph Hall offers a rare glimpse of a towering figure of twentieth-century architecture through the prism of his former students’ work. “An Architect’s Legacy: James Stirling’s Students at Yale, 1959–1983” features hundreds of architectural drawings by some 70 School of Architecture alumni who studied with Stirling when he taught at Yale in 1959 and from 1966 to 1984 as the Davenport Visiting Professor of Design. Among the former students whose work is on display are Robert Finkle ’60MArch, Craig Hodgetts ’67MArch, George Turnbull ’74MArch, Louise Braverman ’77MArch, Robert Kahn ’80MArch, Frank Lupo ’82MArch, and Marion Weiss ’84MArch. A video documentary accompanying the show offers an oral history of Stirling’s teaching at Yale. “An Architect’s Legacy” is on view through February 11, 2011.