The Yale Herald
Morse, Modernism, and fifty years of Yale
Hannah Kieschnick, September 24th 2010

Hannah Kieschnick finds out what it means to be Modern at a school where old is gold, and tradition is king.

Morse has always been a new college. Constructed in 1961, Morse is less than thirty years younger than the original colleges, most of which were designed by John Gamble Rogers and built in the ’30s...Read Article

Recently released: the Design for Reuse Primer, a free e-publication project by Public Architecture. In this comprehensive guide to repurposing materials directly from the waste stream, read about the reclaimed lumber and stone used at our LEED Platinum-rated Sidwell Friends Middle School in Washington, DC, including lessons learned and material sources.

Eero Saarinen with a model of Morse and Stiles Colleges, courtesy Yale University Archive

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the first retrospective on the Finnish-born architect, is currently on view in New Haven, Connecticut through May 2. The tour concludes at Yale, where Saarinen studied architecture and designed some of his most significant buildings and where the major archive devoted to his work resides.

Details of our current renovation of Saarinen's Morse and Ezra Stiles College are included in the exhibition. The project includes the restoration and renovation of all existing facilities, the reconfiguration and updating of living quarters, and the addition of a below grade, naturally-lit, 30,000-square-foot common space, all while retaining Saarinen's original design intent. Morse College, named for Samuel F.B. Morse (Yale, 1810), artist, physician, and inventor of the electric telegraph, and its companion, Stiles College, named for Ezra Stiles (Yale, 1746), theologian, lawyer, scientist, philosopher, and Yale president, were conceived as a single design, intended to be both responsive to and distinct from Yale's other residential colleges.

Continue Reading »

Brockman Hall is composed of two bars nestled between existing buildings

In the spring of 2008, we began design for Brockman Hall for Physics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. This 110,000 SF facility will house research, teaching, and office space for the Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Electrical & Computer Engineering. Nestled between existing buildings in the dense Science Quad, the building envelope respects the scale of the historic masonry vocabulary of the campus while extending it into a 21st century model for architecture and research at Rice. In this manner, lightness and transparency become the foil to weight and opacity. Further, as is common among other buildings on campus, subtle references to the building's program will be made with iconography incorporated into elements of the building skin.

Continue Reading »

Yale School of Art Gallery and Sidwell Friends Middle School
photos © Peter Aaron/Esto (left) and © Halkin Photography LLC (right)

It was announced last month that the Yale University School of Art Gallery and Sidwell Friends Middle School have received 2008 Western Red Cedar Architectural Design Awards, presented by The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association and The Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau.

Continue Reading »