The Rice University Campus: The Second 100 Years

The
Rice University Campus: The Second 100 Years
…………………………………………………………………

In 1909, Edgar
Odell Lovett, the first president of Rice University, met
with the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson of New York
and Boston to develop a general architectural plan for what
was to be the Rice Institute.

The original
campus master plan of Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Goodhue
has been the guiding concept for how the Rice administration
and trustees have thought about the campus layout and architecture
for nearly 100 years.

But the original
plan was drawn at a time when Rice existed in isolation
and could not take into account the important opportunities
offered today by the south campus.

The university
has now begun to think about the next decades and about
what Rice may be and look like in the future. As part of
this planning process, the university engaged Michael Graves,
FAIA, award-winning principal and president of Michael Graves
& Associates Inc., who also is the emeritus Robert Schirmer
Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.

Graves’ firm
had previously designed Martel College and developed the
master plan and execution of the Jones and Brown Colleges’
upgrade and expansion.

Rice News recently
interviewed Graves, Rice Provost Eugene Levy, and Dean Currie,
vice president for finance and administration, on the initial
stages of the campus-planning process.

Rice News:
What goes into a master plan?

Graves:
Master plans exist as strategies of accommodation, with
a vision and a certain amount of rationality and feeling
in what you do. But you are also trying to keep from precluding
options that successors to all of us will have in their
minds in terms of when the future is finally here. It’s
not a way of sidestepping issues; issues are really what
the exercise is about.

Levy:
The specific essence of this planning, as I see it, was
to try to accomplish two main things: The first objective
was to find a rational way to articulate the campus toward
the intersection of University Boulevard and Main Street
and toward the intellectual and urban opportunities that
open up there.

We are increasingly
aware of the opportunities presented by the Texas Medical
Center, as well as the expanding urban opportunities offered
by the light rail transportation system and by future developments
that one can envision along Main Street.

The second objective
was to establish a conceptual framework that could provide
Rice the freedom to realize its continuing academic aspirations
in a manner that preserves the existing graceful academic
livability and aesthetic quality of the campus.

Rice News:
What is the history of master planning at Rice?

Currie: Rice
was blessed with having a great master plan at the beginning.
The plan did a couple of things for us: For one thing, it
was enormously arrogant in that it said, "This is going
to be a great university, not just a small Texas school,"
so it set a certain standard. The other is that it was a
very thoughtful plan that we have used for a century and
followed very faithfully in its conceptual structure.

But the plan
stopped at Alumni Drive, where the Ley Student Center is.
And it really gave us no guidance about what to do past
that. So when Gene raised the question that he alluded to
earlier, which is "with this explosion of intellectual
interest with the institutions across the street in the
Medical Center, how should we begin to think about how the
campus should grow in the future," that was the triggering
initiative for us to hire Michael to come help us think
about that uncharted part of the campus and how this might
relate back to the main campus.

One of the important
reasons that Rice has a great campus is that it has paid
a lot of attention to master planning, in the sense of each
generation thinking about the campus-not just to say, "we
need a building, let’s plop it down over here," or
to put it where the donor particularly likes it placed.

Rice News:
What are some of the considerations that go into campus
planning at Rice?

Currie: There
are certain planning principles that have come out of these
exercises that we try to carry on between generations. One
is that Rice is a campus of medium-size and smaller buildings.

We have very
few buildings that are gigantic in footprint, although as
we grow into the future, the kinds of buildings we need
may change. We may need to learn how to expand the Rice
architectural vocabulary.

Rice News:
In what way?

Currie: For
instance, we like connecting our buildings at the ground
level with arcades and with lines of live oak trees, so
we don’t have a lot of skyways connecting buildings.

We like a bow-arched
design with formally defined spaces, although I think we’re
getting better at making richer intimate spaces, the absence
of which has been the weakness of the campus. One of the
things Michael’s input has shown us is that we need to stay
an intense and more tightly packed campus than I think we
imagined before, because as we grow, it’s important that
we be able to walk from building to building between classes.

So before Michael
came up with this plan, we had imagined a campus stretching
out toward Kirby, but that’s really too far to walk. And
Rice is a pedestrian campus.

Graves: It’s
assumed that if you put too many buildings on an existing
campus, you’ll somehow become more urbanized, which isn’t
necessarily so.

In fact, by making
arcaded enclosures and more intimate spaces, you start to
develop a characteristic of the campus that may be, in certain
instances, too open.

Openness is an
American ethos-like motherhood.

But on a campus
scale, we need places where the students can convene, where
they can identify one part of the institution as separate
from another.

From academics
to living to recreation and so on-all those things come
into play, rather than isolated buildings on their own turfs
standing there, sort of foursquare and not having arms to
embrace the landscape and the students.

Currie: What
Michael did with the Brown, Jones and Martel projects was
a planning stroke of genius-making an identifiable space
for each of those colleges within the larger campus.

But another major
planning issue was the Texas Medical Center. For most of
our history, we’ve turned our back on it-this gigantic entity
that was not Rice. I think we’ve got the beginnings of a
way to make a transition.

Rice News: So the planning process is taking into
consideration all of the work Rice is doing with the Medical
Center?

Levy: Looking
at the three leading Texas Medical Center research institutions
— M.D. Anderson, UT Health Science Center and Baylor
College of Medicine — I originally drew, in fall 2001,
a diagram showing a 2,000-foot radius circle centered on
the old Tidelands Motel property, which had served as graduate
student housing for many years.

If you think
of this intellectual complex, comprised of Rice and these
three medical research institutions, the Tidelands property
forms a natural focal center.

The implication
of the analysis that I had suggested is that we ought to
at least think about the heretofore neglected intellectual,
academic and programmatic value of this southern part of
the campus.

Michael and his
associates envision recreating the campus in a way that
encompasses both the extraordinary original Rice campus
concept and the potential connection to the Medical Center.
In addition, the concept put forward by Graves creates a
natural connection to the light rail line and to what one
hopes will develop in urban Houston with the advent of mass
transportation.

Although the
primary focus of this study is on the campus itself, it
is also important to see the larger context in which we
seek to develop campus life.

Even at the outset,
the light rail line, with natural access points from the
campus, has the potential to greatly enhance campus life
by providing an easy, fast link between the campus, the
museum district and lower Montrose, the downtown arts district,
as well as to what is beginning to develop as an attractive
downtown pedestrian life.

Furthermore,
envisioning the eventual possibility of a high-quality bookstore
(an urgent campus need) at University and Main Street, along
with other possible amenities, one sees the possible development,
over time, of a very attractive and complementary connection
between the cloistered Rice academic campus and urban Houston.

It is not difficult
to see the ways in which such developments could greatly
enhance Rice campus life.

This is a long-term-and
tentative-vision, but it is very important to think holistically
and long term about something so important as the life of
a great university.

Rice News:
Tell me a little about these architectural schemes.
(See Figures 1-2.)

Currie: Scheme
A is the one that responds best to most of the issues; it
seems to attract the most enthusiasm. But there may be elements
of the other schemes that will be incorporated. In fact,
the scheme is already being changed. It’s a living document,
constantly changing.

Rice News:
How long will this process take?

Currie: The
initial work extended over about six months to build this
preliminary framework.

We will revise
this and think about it again in the context of whatever
the next issue is. It’s an ongoing engagement.

Rice News:
Michael, what interests you about working at Rice?

Graves:
I
think most architects would find the beginnings of this
place so engaging. Cram’s preliminary plan was so thoughtful
in the way it was developed-both in the overall strategy
and in the detail of every building.

It set the stage
for the physicality of this university. You can think of
alternative examples that are not so interesting-other schools
or universities where it was more haphazard.

A single building
was built, and the next building was built, and whoever
needed this or that would make the determination where those
places would be relative to the first building.

As an architect,
you’re forever in that situation, playing catch-up, trying
to make something new out of decisions that have been made.

That happens
everywhere-mistakes are made and decisions are made where
there was a better alternative. You can do things as an
architect relative to those decisions and make them look
absolutely wonderful. It’s not that you are disguising them,
but what you are adding or subtracting turns them into something
else.

One instance might be what people saw as the limitations
of Jones and Brown. The students in those colleges might
not have seen it, but how they interact with each other,
with the servery that’s shared by three colleges and with
their own dining halls-all of that is something that becomes
an opportunity, rather than a compromise. And that’s the
kind of mindset that you have to have, doing something like
this.

Rice News:
Rice owns a lot of property that is off campus. Have
you thought about developing that area?

Currie: There’s
been an important development there, which is that about
30 acres located on Main Street have been donated to Rice,
and the property is less than a 15-minute drive from campus.

There are many
things that don’t have to be right on this precious, very
bounded campus. Very soon, we will start building a library
service center at that site, which will be a tremendous
help to Fondren Library, which is overcrowded.

Graves: Many
universities do that-build back-up space somewhere else,
where you don’t have to have immediate access to it. You
don’t want to take space on the walking campus for things
that don’t have to be there.

Currie: There
are rare chances around the campus itself to acquire space,
but because we have such wonderful neighborhoods that need
to retain their character, there’s not much that we can
do there. When we do have a chance to acquire property in
the direction of Kirby, we do, because we’re always going
to be here.

Rice News:
How big is Rice going to get?

Levy: The
university has-without a specific sustained growth policy-grown
steadily over time. Looking back several decades, one sees
that, over the past 40 years, Rice has grown at an average
rate of two percent per year, a little more than doubling
in that period of time.

Of course we
cannot know what decisions will be made in the future about
the growth of the university. That uncertainty itself points
up some important aspects of the campus concept that Michael
has developed.

As Michael has
already noted, the purpose of the plan is to open possibilities.

In that respect,
the concept that Michael has developed provides the possibility
of substantial expansion over time while retaining the character
and positive physical attributes of the campus. Whether
or not such expansion will actually take place, or what
its precise nature might be, is not determined by the drawings.

The campus concept
itself is largely generic. What we have in front of us is
a framework, a way to think about the physical future of
the campus.

Except for a
couple of obvious aspects having to do with possible interactions
between Rice and the Medical Center and a few other programmatic
needs, neither the functions nor the scale of the buildings
is specified. Most importantly, however, by opening our
eyes to physical possibilities, Michael’s campus concept
helps us to conceive and visualize what opportunities may
lie in front of us.

Currie: The original master plan had the first 100
years of Rice there. It took us roughly 100 years to build
out into that plan. Likewise, what we’re looking at here
today is not something that will be accomplished in the
next five years.

But if you imagine
how an organization will evolve over very long periods of
time, you need to set it up so it evolves in the right direction.

Rice News:
What about the library?

Levy: As
far as the building is concerned, the continuing development
of the library has several components extending over a period
of time.

The next immediate
steps depend on completion of the off-campus library service
center next year and on the move of humanities faculty out
of the library building and into the soon-to-be-renovated
Herring Hall.

The space made
available by these two moves will provide the flexibility
to undertake staged physical improvements within the existing
building. We also plan to convert the former Jones School
Business Information Center space in Herring Hall into a
library annex, most likely to be used as a digital access
center.

Members of the
library staff, working in consultation with the Library
Committee, are developing plans for these relatively near-term
enhancements.

Most importantly,
the library-not just the building, but the collection and
access as well-will necessarily be a continuing preoccupation,
as responsive as possible to the academic programs and to
the unfolding development of the campus.

There is sure
to be a continuing conversation about how best to meet evolving
needs in the library.

Currie: The
Building and Grounds Committee of the Board of Trustees
is a major client in this.

One of the reasons
that Rice has such a wonderful campus is that the president
has always referred architectural decisions to a committee
of the board, which has been very interested and very protective
of the campus.

The committee
is creative, yet very thoughtful, in overseeing campus development.
That’s been an important part of Rice’s success.

Graves: Not
all universities operate this way. Rice has had such a large
measure of success because of the interest of the individuals
on that board-collectively-in everything from the detail
of a building to its planned strategy.

Rice News:
What is the main thing you see as distinguishing Scheme
A?

Currie: This
particular scheme shows the important value of green space
because what you don’t see are vast acres of asphalt surface
parking lots.

Most of the new
parking is expected to be underground and along the perimeter
of the campus.

Graves: You
might actually end up gaining green space, even with the
addition of the buildings. So it’s a definite quality of
life that’s being portrayed.

Levy: Altogether, I see the most distinguishing attributes
of the concept in the degree to which it opens the possibility
of realizing so many potentially valuable academic objectives
and relationships, while enhancing, rather than compromising,
the aesthetic quality of the physical campus.

Leaving aside
the details-which, in any case, will change many times,
if only to accommodate the features that do not yet appear
on the drawings-my own reaction on first examining the drawing
was (metaphorically) to slap my ample forehead and cry out,
"Of course!"

What Michael
has presented strikes me as an extraordinarily graceful
and functional schema, one that-whether or not it is ever
actually realized-helps to liberate our thinking about the
future and fits both the existing campus and future potential
needs in a natural way.