Housing Is Encouraging, But Designs Disappoint

The Meadows Neighborhood encouragingly allows more graduate students to live in University apartments (“Beyond the Lake,” July/ August issue). But discouragingly, the desultory design of the domicile development is little more than repetitive alternating setback planes of nondescript flush-glazing. It is housing, yes, but it is disappointingly disaffecting as architecture.

Michael Graves, when a professor and the head of studio in the Department of Architecture, dutifully drilled the definitive dictum of the classic column orders, being base, then shaft, and then capital (bottom/middle/ top). In the studio, Professor Graves constantly evangelized and expounded the importance and the grounding principle of the tripartite scheme beyond just the column orders but also for buildings themselves. The scheme fits a building into place, defining its placement in space and anchoring the viewer in relation. The scheme provides a crucial psychic importance. 

The emissionless energy generated from Michael Graves spinning in his grave, from this (the Meadows Neighborhood), and other recent campus developments, just might allow the University to accelerate its forecast for reaching net zero.