Yale Daily News

Good article, but i have a few comments.

1) The statement that Whitman College's structure is stone rather than concrete or steel is 100% wrong. The entire college is indeed a contemporary concrete and steel structure, simply with the gothic stonework as a facade. Although it looks in many ways indistinguishable from the old collegiate gothic, on the old ones, the stone was both structure and facade.

2) Using hallways rather than entryways was much more of a social decision than a cost-saving one. Princeton students have shown in many surveys that they prefer hallways and feel that entryways lead to social isolation. This is why, in renovations of older Princeton gothic entryway buildings like Little, Blair, and Holder, hallways have been added wherever possible.

Anyways, those points are all very minor. To me, it seems kind of wrong to be attempting to reproduce a historical style totally out of context on science hill. There is little tradition of gothic up there and I think two new colleges in gothic style would look absolutely out of place, especially if Yale doesn't have the money to do it right (i.e. real stone instead of brick). If Princeton couldn't even get the ornamentation and details right, how is Yale supposed to make something memorable with an even tighter budget?

How about something contemporary? Not bland contemporary like Morse and Stiles but something really blazingly contemporary? The last five years have really been an architectural renaissance with architects like Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Morphosis showing that contemporary architecture can be every bit as great as the staid old gothic. Even better. Think about it.

It doesn't matter what it is built out of. What matters is the fact that the proposed location will completely obliterate the intimate campus experience of Yale.

Whitman certainly is not concrete or steel...it's stone.

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/07/0924/whitman/

Princeton should be celebrated for its willingness to spend big on a sound structure.

GREAT ARTICLE. Let's just hope Yale's new colleges are VERY "distinctly Yale." No need for a Princeton invasion of our fine campus.

Dear #3, at least read the article carefully before making assertions on stuff you clearly know nothing about. When they mention "stone" so many times they're only talking about the stone as a cladding/veneer. It's just stone on the outside to make it look nice. Everything that actually holds the building up is concrete and steel. You just don't see it because it's hidden behind the stone. Go look up some construction photos of the project. I visited friends at Princeton numerous times during the construction and saw how they put it together. I'm right.

There is a lot of fun in reviewing the Princeton-Yale architectural experience, Bulldogs-on-the-Chapel-stories aside. Princeton was certainly a leader with Collegiate Gothic, but then felt pressure from Yale on more modernist buildings. The horrible experiences with what are now Wilson and Butler Colleges were sad attempts to keep up with Stiles, and other campus buildings like the Princeton Art Museum were even paler imitations of Yale's Art Gallery or Center for British Art. It's amusing that Yale is now following Princeton in the race back to neo-traditional.

By the way, love the teasing notes in the article -- Princeton's "suburban" campus? The suburbanization of the larger Princeton area is a recent event - the campus is decidedly small-town rural. And Forbes is only relatively isolated - it's about 2,500 ft or less from there to most of Princeton's academic buildings. The Yale sites on Science Hill are more than 4,000 ft from the rest of Yale.

Morse and Stiles are better than Wilson and Butler. Butler is now torn down and they're replacing it with a boring contemporary college designed by IM Pei's partner Harry Cobb. I love great contemporary architecture but this new Butler at Princeton is just plain boring.

By the way, Forbes isn't much if any farther closer to the main campus than the new sites for colleges on Science Hill. Both are about a 10 minute walk from the respective campus center.

Yale doesn't have to be a copycat just because it looks at how other universities have built residential colleges. Learning from others' mistakes is a good thing.

Mother Yale can take some comfort in the fact that many its residential college system (OK, and Harvard's too) is being emulated in universities all over, including Princeton's recent conversion, Vanderbilt's and Middlebury's. Oddly enough, Duke has resisted, the last excuse being it didn't have enough money to create the necessary dining hall systems within each dormitory complex. For a site devoted to reporting about and advocating for residential colleges, see http://collegiateway.org/

YDN covers Princeton better than the 'Prince' does...sad.

Yale's campus is far more interesting and significant to the history of architecture than Princeton's because at pivotal moments in its history, Yale's leaders have taken a stand and decided to think and act outside the box. Some clear examples of this are Dwight Chapel, Beineke Library, the Louis Kahn buildings, Morse and Stiles, and the Rudolph building, each of which was groundbreaking for its time.

My plea to those involved in the planning, design and construction of these new colleges is to not botch this chance to at once be respectful of the context and campus fabric that have made Yale the most beautiful campus in America and to be on the cutting edge.

A second thought is that it would be beneficial to all if the cemetery were not seen as an obstacle but as an opportunity to link and connect the areas around it, which have been so abandoned over the recent years. There are a number of historic cemeteries that provide beautiful and reflective points of passage across a city, rather than merely remain morbid urban wastelands. Those should be our models.

i prefer the cinderella's castle look. this university is founded on the faux-ye-olde look. why stop now?

This is awesome.

I found a website that helps the construction industry find jobs and workers.

It is http://www.eBIDroom.com