archBOSTON ARCHIVE

[kz1000ps]

I had posted this on WiredNY a couple days back, and I figured it'd be sort of appropriate to throw it up over here since Patrick posted such lovely photos of UVM. This can be thought of as the complete opposite of that campus. So here's a sobering photo essay...

I was there for two years, 2001-2003, and lived on the North Campus in a peculiar dormitory for both years (more on that later). This school was incorporated into the SUNY system in 1962 as one of four "university centers" (Albany, Stony Brook and Binghamton are the others), and shortly thereafter plans were made to create a new campus to alleviate the overcrowding from baby boomers going on at the old (South) campus that is within Buffalo city limits.

Two sites were deemed the best, one downtown near the waterfront, and the other out in the first-ring suburb of Amherst. They chose the suburbs....and how predictable that decision is to us 40 years later. The first building was completed in late 1973, and the campus became mostly built out by the mid '80s. It suffers from the same deficiencies of any SUNY school (hell, any school..) built in this period - ugly brown brick architecture, lackluster site layouts, severe separation of uses. But this was planned to be the biggest school in the system, something it still is to this day with some 28,000 students total, and as such the campus was planned on a HUGE scale.



Google Earth is the best way to introduce you to the colossal-ness of this place. That is a 6-lane highway surrounding it - a modern day moat



Its relation to downtown....none. Instead it's at the intersection of two highways 9 miles out, and 3 miles from the South Campus


Land usage breakdown...note the sea of parking lots surounding the cluster-strip of buildings


The academic "spine" as it's known...note the east-west orientation, perfect for winds to whip through, making it useless 5 months of the year. Also note the lack of quads. What green space there is sees low pedestrian activity (such as the space to the left of the Student Union)


This is the spine, looking east...the Student Union is the low-rise to the left. Note the extensive use of concrete, as a deterrent to protesting (UB was the "berkeley of the east" back during Vietnam), and the small trees -- a consequence of building on swamplands, which can't support large roots


Crap-tacular architecture at its finest. This design was "contemporary" when built in the mid-70s


Variations on a theme...combine this with the always-cloudy weather and you have a sure-fire recipe for depression amongst the students, and probably professors too


This is the entrance to the Student Union, completed 1992, and that's the engineering tower in the background. The SU is an architectural bright spot on this campus, and you can see how little that says. All 4 engineering buildings are faced with that dark brown brick and precast concrete panels - yucky




Now we'll move to the dorms where I lived, the Joseph C. Ellicott Complex (Ellicott laid out the buffalo street grid). Crazy looking structure, its nickname is "Legoland." There are six dorms, each holding 500 kids. That makes for 3,000 undergrads in one enclosed, self-contained structure -- that's the size of many private institutions! And lemme tell ya, during those cold, windy nights when nobody dares venture outside, there was a party going on on every floor. Quite the atmosphere to live within!

There's also classrooms, a performance theatre, a lecture hall, a library, a newly renovated food court, convenience store, and the Anthropology and Classics departments all housed within this superstructure.

It's located north of the spine, and one must cross that highway to get back and forth, not to mention the fact that during the entire 10 minute walk there's hardly a buffer to protect you from those freezing Lake Erie winds



To make sense of the structure, it's just a big "L", with two dorms at each end and the bend in the center. The bus tunnel runs on the ground floor, while a second floor terrace runs the entire length of the structure. That island is a strange occurence, for it's completely exposed on all sides, yet stuff still goes on there. Here's the breakdown - oh, and that's a "food" court, not foot, under renovation


The architecture of the place....do yo see where "legoland" is derived from yet?


This is what you see going to and from Ellicott



Here is a master plan drawn up in 2001 to rectify the horrid connections between Ellicott and the main campus. Unfortunately, a new president took position in 2004 and has sidelined this project indefinitely


Also from the "Lee Road Plan"


Weather issues






Alright, to wrap it up, here's an attractive picture of campus, from across Lake LaSalle, an underutilized asset. This is as pretty as it gets folks..




It'll be interesting to see this campus 20-30 years from now, once all the shit 70s construction is renovated/remodelled or torn down. Ellicott already had to have reconstruction/replacement for its bricks back in 2001, so I know it won't be too long for the rest to follow suit.

Endnote: South Campus is much more traditional, master planned in the teens using buildings from an existing asylum, with quads and limestone-faced Georgian/neo-classical buildings, and also tons of construction from the 50s and 60s. Once the north campus opened, new construction dried up, and today it seems practically stuck in time.

[patrick0000]

awesome, thanks for sharing. dont shoot me, but i think id be willing to trade some of our buildings for some of yours. UVM might look nice in the spring and summer (when, of course, no students are here), but in the fall through winter it is just this piece of shit that no one maintains and the lack of high rise development makes someone like me feel like they are living in the 16th century. i thought the pic you posted with the sky bridge was kinda neat.

also, the pictures i posted were of the main campus, where all of the old 18th century buildings are, and the part that they show in all of the brochures. but dont be fooled, there is a "state school" element to the other half of campus, with gross 1960-ish brick buildings and all...though they are knocking many of them down.

maybe ill take some more pics of the bad side of campus before i leave.

anyway, thanks for sharing this post with us, and how do you save pics from google earth anyway, ive been stumped on that one...

[Ron Newman]

I wouldn't necessarily blame the badness of that campus on its suburban setting. Wellesley College is an example of a suburban campus done well.

[kz1000ps]

^ I didn't mean to blame it on its setting, as that of course had marginal influence over the outcome (it was a flat swampland before). What I mean is that the plan itself is incredibly separated and auto-dominated, a la the typical planning mindset of the time, which equally as well describes the suburbs and how they're planned. Ah I don't think I'm explaining myself well, but you get the point....


Patrick, all you have to do is take a screenshot. I have a Mac, and the way you do it is Apple-Shit-3, and then I just crop out the menus in a regular image editor. For a PC, I dunno....google it.