Olin Library, Uris Hall, The Johnson Museum — these are three of the most controversial buildings on Campus, often panned as ugly or ill-fitting additions to central Campus. Olin Library, once described in the Sun as amongst the “finest college libraries in the country” (Vol. 77, 1967), bringing fame and fortune to the architects, is now widely criticized: a bland, brutalist vestige of the 1960s, incongruous with the neighboring neoclassical, neo-Romanesque and Second Empire buildings. Similarly, the Johnson Museum (designed by I. M. Pei of Louvre Pyramid fame) is notoriously mocked for its sewing machine resemblance, and its architectural clashes with nearby buildings. Still, its distinctive, unique design along with its mesmerizing lighting serve to redeem its negative qualities, and it is considered an architectural attraction at Cornell. Uris Hall, though not necessarily inharmonious, fell short of its original vision — the exterior was intended to develop an attractive patina, akin to the golden-brown-blue U.S. Steel Tower, but the lack of air pollution in Ithaca left the outside to merely rust, giving rise to a “special amount of acrimony” writes Jeff Stein in The Ithaca Voice.
With that being said, and acknowledging that these buildings are far from perfect, I believe they still retain a vitally important and beautiful quality which is lacking in most of Cornell’s “new” projects — whether it be the North Campus expansion, Tang Hall (the new MSE building), the new Info Science building or the Olin library remodel. Sometime in the late 2000s, this shift in the design of new buildings and remodels started to occur. The emergence of a bright, clean, inoffensive, sterile, generic style — the MDF tables, colorful faux leather and cool fluorescent lighting all serve a single goal: to be as universally tolerable as possible.
The suffix “-core” has come to characterize distinct styles for which there is not a better word: and for these new buildings, “mid-market hotel core” seems an appropriate epithet. Mid-market hotels (e.g. Marriot, Hilton, IHG, and so on) are the torch bearers of this design philosophy. No one “likes” the architecture or décor of a mid-range hotel, but they don’t dislike it. They are places to sleep, eat and take a meeting, and most stays are only a few days. Their goal is to be bland yet palatable, catering to as wide a clientele as possible. That is, inspiring no one, offending no one. It would be a bad business decision to give each hotel a unique identity, and risk shrinking your customer base. They are uniform across time and place.
Similarly, any of the new North Campus dorms (RBG, Hu Shih, McClintock) could be inserted into any business park, mid-size university or modern residential development in America without anyone noticing. Olin Library’s new furniture could belong in any library or modern office. The same is also true of Tang Hall or the in-progress Phillips Hall refit. Their design lacks vision, creativity, soul. The brutalist buildings discussed in the lede are controversial — and at least they are! The architects and planners had visions, certain ideas they wanted to present to the world, and they generated a reaction. People experienced their buildings and felt something. When you walk into Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall today, what do you feel? Nothing. A lack of offense perhaps. A lack of intrigue. A lack of soul. I want to live and study at a school in which the buildings are inspired. Maybe they can inspire us as well.
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Wyatt Sell '27 is a (British) student studying Electrical & Computer Engineering. His fortnightly column, An Englishman's Perspective critiques popular social, cultural and political phenomena at Cornell and beyond. He can be reached at wsell@cornellsun.com.
