Architecturally speaking, Vermont Law School (VLS) is confronting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – one that should not be squandered in quest of the lowest common denominator.At issue is which of three distinguished architectural firms from the Boston area to task with designing the school’s new fitness center, based on preliminary proposals submitted by each. The three firms are Albert, Richter & Tittman Architects; Eck MacNeely Architects; and Kennedy & Violich Architecture. Just as there are three firms vying for the job, there are three reasons why this is a very significant choice, not just for Vermont Law School but for those who care about the quality of the built environment everywhere in Vermont.
First, there is the unique nature of the program and the site. Both are peripheral – realities that, ironically, raise the stakes. If VLS were building a new project at the heart of the campus, within sight of the school’s iconic and historic Debevoise Hall, one would certainly be constrained to design something that harmonizes fully with and does not draw attention from the 19th Century masterpiece by native Vermont architect George Guernsey. Likewise, with a new academic building, VLS would be loath to experiment, and for good reason. The Chase Center, ugly and nonfunctional, will presumably continue to hamper the mission of the school for decades to come.
In contrast, the new fitness center, slated for the site of the current (and raunchy) athletic facility, is a classic opportunity for an architectural experiment. Its site, arguably beyond the edge of what anyone understands as the VLS campus, on a side road that is pleasant but lacking in any historically significant structures, could easily withstand a new building that resembles nothing that already exists in the VLS home town of South Royalton. Program-wise, fitness isn’t frivolous but, on the other hand, it’s supposed to be fun – at least in contrast to torts, the Uniform Commercial Code and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. What an opportunity for a fun building!
Second is the reality that in these hard times, there will not be much new construction to be savored at Vermont Law School. Unlike such schools as Dartmouth and Middlebury, with its hefty endowment and penchant for big-ticket buildings by big-ticket architects, VLS builds infrequently even in the best of times. For those who hope to see great buildings at VLS, this may be the only opportunity for a long while.
Finally, there is the reality that when VLS does build, it outshines the aforesaid endowment-rich institutions. Great architecture typically struggles against limits, financial and otherwise – and, dollar-for-dollar, no public institution in Vermont builds better than VLS. (The only real competition is the Putney School, but this farm-based private secondary school’s more remote location renders it somewhat invisible to inspiration-seekers.) There is every reason to suppose that a VLS project will embolden others to make important contribution to Vermont’s built environment even in the face of difficulties. Economic crisis is a great time to make new investments in infrastructure, after all.
VLS is clearly rising to the occasion. Instead of looking to the same Vermont firm it has historically used for architectural services, Director of Physical Plant Jim McGrath reached out to three firms with national reputations and somehow persuaded them to compete for the job. This has had the salutary effect of touching off a lively architectural debate on campus – and anything that gets a bunch of non-architects thinking about buildings for once is a remarkable thing in our age of rampant visual illiteracy. The nation’s top environmental law school, VLS may have now figured out that the environment that most people encounter 99 percent of the time is wrought not by nature but by humanity.
Regrettably, though, assuming that the campus buzz is any indication, VLS may be poised to pick the wrong winner of the competition. The right choice is Kennedy & Violich Architecture. Here is why.
If one wanted a historicist building – say, one to replace the Chase Center at the heart of campus, Albert, Tittman & Richter would be the right pick. Their buildings are worthy of Henry Hobson Richardson, the 19th Century master architect who has a whole style (Richardsonian Romanesque) named after him (and whose contribution to Vermont architecture is the Billings Memorial Library at UVM). Richardson did lots of railroad stations; the Albert, Richter & Tittman proposal would coincidentally make the VLS fitness center look like South Royalton’s long-defunct train depot. Judging by the drawing on display, the interior can best be described as foofy – festooned with timber-framing (or something like it). The main entrance requires passing through a freestanding pavilion – the Victorians called such structures frolic – and crossing a bridge to the building itself. While this solves a disability access problem, it adds to the overall sense that this design is too much about decoration and too little about raw energy. And raw energy, of course, is the essence of any fitness facility.
The popular favorite seems to be the Eck MacNeely design. This is likewise the work of a very distinguished firm; nameplate partner Jeremiah Eck is both a published author and a member of the prestigious Fellowship of the American Institute of Architects. The quibble here is twofold. First, Eck’s claim to fame is the design of houses – his best-known book is called The Distinctive Home and his other volumes take up similar subjects. Predictably, his firm’s proposal for VLS looks like, well, a house. Second, Eck MacNeely’s architectural soul is all about harmonization – making buildings that fit happily into the fabric of the location. There is nothing inherently wrong with a VLS fitness center that looks like a house, of a piece with its residential neighbors. But this project is a special opportunity to do something much more bold than that.
The Kennedy & Violich proposal achieves the requisite boldness.
“Boldness” as used in this context means: (1) Facilitates the intended uses of the building by providing simple and functional spaces for use of weights and exercise machines along with aerobics classes in environments that are simple rather than cluttered, with plenty of natural light and views toward the White River; (2) Shows a respectful face to North Windsor Street through a façade featuring dormers and pleasant materials, without purporting to imitate the vernacular style of the dwellingplaces on that street, (3) Employs a straightforward plan that provides the desired convenience (when moving between exercise areas and the dressing rooms) and the desired orientation when working out, and (4) Reserves innovation for the elevations and choices of materials.
A slide show made available by the architects implies that in form and materials the proposal takes its inspiration from the region’s covered bridges. The resonance is indeed apparent, but arguably it is not because one imitates the other but because both strive to the simple and effective use of available building materials to house human motion within them.
At least one student has derisively referred to the Kennedy & Violich design as a “spaceship” – shorthand, apparently, for the notion that the building would not look like anything that has been seen in South Royalton before. How true, and how laudable, this is! The design makes understated use of shingles, glass, stone, wood and metal – this is not the self-indulgent blobitecture of Frank Gehry in Bilbao or even Steven Holl at MIT (where he designed a dorm to resemble a sponge). What we have here is a essentially rectangular box, varied in a manner that is subtle but decisive, satisfying both the craving for the familiar and for the unfamiliar.
The proposal’s rectangularity is the focus of a different but also fundamentally unfair complaint that is in circulation. Apparently the theory is that the Kennedy & Violich design is not as sustainable as its competition because the most rectangular of the designs likewise employs the biggest (and therefore the leakiest) building envelope. Even assuming this is true, isolating this variable without conducting a comprehensive comparison of the energy implications of each design is a grave disservice to the imperative of sustainability. In other words, rejecting the rectangle just because it is a rectangle is a strategy virtually devoid of logic. Better to assume, based on the proposals each firm has made, that all of these architects are capable of employing the right consultants and strategies to design a sustainable building. The competition, having been framed as a conversation about form and function, should stay that way.
Students seem drawn to the Eck MacNeely design because it occupies the middle ground between the historicist and unabashedly contemporary contestants. The Eck MacNeely drawings show a white building with a green pitched roof, just like its neighbors, but with walls of lots of glass instead of clapboard along with a few jazzy curves and angles. Ignoring certain issues with the plan (e.g., the fact that access to the dressing rooms is through the aerobics classroom, which is directly beneath the pounding of the weights and exercise machines), surely even Messrs. Eck and MacNeely don’t want their work embraced merely as the average of two other firms.
Rather, one assumes, they and the other contestants would like their suitability assessed in no small part based on what they have achieved in past commissions. In that regard, skeptics about what Kennedy & Violich can achieve are warmly advised to visit the firm’s web site and check out the combination barn and sculpture studio they designed for a couple in Massachusetts (whose respective hobbies posed a much greater challenge than merely accommodating various forms of exercise). This simple and decidedly un-lavish wood building is much humbler in both finish and purpose than what VLS proposes to construct. And yet the results crackle with tension and energy, as amply chronicled in the pages of Architectural Record. And did we mention that, like Jeremiah Eck, Kennedy & Violich principal J. Frano Violich is a member of the AIA’s College of Fellows? As is James Richter of Albert, Richter & Tittman.
As the witnesses to this battle of the FAIAs, and as legal scholars who love Latinisms, consider this epigram: “Firmitatis, Utilitatis, Venustatis.” It could almost be the motto of a law school but is, in fact, an aphorism attributed to the ancient Roman architect and writer Vitruvius. Sometimes translated as “firmness, commodity, delight,” it is an exhortation that buildings be sound as structures, useful as additions to the built environment, and beautiful to behold from within and without. That such concepts are now subject to open and fervent discussion at Vermont Law School is itself reason for celebration. Though each design is in some sense worthy of the aphorism, the one coming closest to the Vitruvian ideal is the Kennedy & Violich design. It is these architects who should therefore receive this important commission.
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