Place as Identity

I've always understood that the place in which you live can say a lot about who you are as a person and what values you hold to be important. I've seen the show RoomRaiders on MTV. The first chapter of Upton's History of American Architecture critically examines Thomas Jefferson, using his home, Monticello, as a lens. Now my dorm room isn't currently on the back of any legal United States tender (yet)  but I'm sure by examining it you could tell a lot about me. You'd see books and clothes and ticket stubs from subway rides and Phish concerts, and the room inventory activity tried to do exactly what I'm talking about. But there is a very stark difference between my dorm room and Monticello...besides the size, cool clocks, and dumbwaiter. Jefferson designed and created the actual building of Monticello. I wasn't even born when Hoyme Hall was built. I had no say in it's layout. Examining the architecture of a building one creates to live in is like taking the room inventory assignment and combining it with the study of sculpture. Not only are these buildings works of art, but they are works of art the artist had to live with, and in.

distraction?

In Orr's Architecture and Education he says:

"The design of buildings and landscape is thought to have little or nothing to do with the process of learning or the quality of scholarship that occurs in a particular place. But in fact, buildings and landscape reflect a hidden curriculum that powerfully influences the learning process."

This immediately reminded me of an incident that occurred just a few weeks ago in my Theology class. It was a beautiful Thursday here in Northfield: unseasonably warm, bright and sunny, and the leaves had already begun turning. It was just beautiful outside, and no one wanted to be in a classroom for an hour and twenty minutes on a day like that. One of the more favored students (perhaps because he had been coaxed by some of the less favored students) proposed at the beginning of the class that we move the class out of the stuffy classroom and into the fresh outside air. The idea was shut down by my professor because she finds class outside "distracting." This bothered me a little.  For one, it meant I would be spending the next 80 minutes inside, but it also bothered be for another reason. See, I'm not an overly religious guy and I don't claim to be either, but on beautiful days like that I just have to say to myself, "Whoever or whatever made this happen did something right." Now the point of the class I'm enrolled in isn't to convert you to a specific religion or even make you believe in a higher power; it's to understand the Bible from a more literary criticism-centered standpoint. But to really understand a collection of books like the Bible, it's important to not necessarily believe what the authors believed, but to understand it. I honestly think that going outside on a beautiful day like that Thursday would have helped me come a little closer to understanding what the people that authored the Bible risked their lives for. My professor was afraid of her students getting distracted, but by what? The very things that inspired many of the authors of the texts we were studying.

The New Mount St. Olaf

I really enjoyed the letter by Dr. Melby entitled "NEW NORMAN GOTHIC 'MOUNT ST. OLAF'" for a different reason than many might. I've always loved the look of Regents Hall, and it is without a doubt an incredible facility. But at the same time it never really seemed to quite fit. Regents seemed distant and different from the rest of campus to me, like it didn't really fit with the theme of an "extensive group of buildings in the same style and of the same beauty as this initial structure." Fortunately, Regents has finally been connected into the overarching style of the other campus buildings with the bridging building being the soon to be completed Tompson Hall. This renovated building serves as an ideal segue for a few reasons. First of all, it isn't a new building but an older building that has been renovated. The old science center was very much in the style of the buildings surrounding it when it was in use so there was a feeling of campus continuity, and with its renovations it will help reign in the somewhat dramatic change of style between Regents and the rest of campus. With its large glass faces and clean lines it neatly visually ties Regents into the community of Mount Saint Olaf.