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KEVAN WILLIAMS
WHAfS
Southward, Ho!: I spent my undergrad years
on North Campus and rarely travelled south
of Tanyard Creek. Circling back for grad
school, HI be spending the next chapter of
my academic life on Ag Hill. Settling into a
routine in this seemingly dated portion of the
nation's oldest public university, I've started
to appreciate the vision of the place. Subtle
details, like the hyperbolic lamp posts lining
those stretches of Sanford and Cedar Streets,
contribute to the aspirational glow of the dis
trict, with pure geometries drawn from science
as the drivers of form, rather than historical
tradition. The character of this portion of
The Modernist science complex on Ag Hill is another take on the same ideas that
inspired North Campus.
campus, as well as other, more far-flung build
ings of the era, is a forward-looking one, even
if it hasn't aged as well as it could. While
the often utilitarian buildings have plenty of
flaws, it is worth pondering what they symbol
ize at their best
Not a Total Disaster: The cluster of scientific
buildings ringing Ag HiU, affectionately known
as "the train wreck* by some, is a Modernist
Acropolis, an echo of the same impulse which
defines North Campus. They are a fascinating
composition, from an era when public confi
dence in rational science and its role in soci
ety was high: the mid-20th century was a time
of splitting the atom and putting men on the
moon. Buildings like the Stegeman Coliseum
channel a similar daring. White Greek Revival
architecture calls up general feelings of his
toricity, the scientists of South Campus are a
different sort of heir to Greek tradition.
The 'train wreck* forms quads, plazas and
geometrical groves of trees, abstractions of
the older campus' forms. The structures of the
science complex are aligned perfectly north
and south, and beyond any cosmological
associations, these future-thinking structures
anticipate many of the features that have
become commonplace in contemporary sus
tainable architecture. For instance, many of
the south faces of these buildings feature
the sorts of solar shades that are found on
newer sustainable structures like the Lamar
Dodd School of Art and the new Pharmacy
Building, both of which are candidates for
L£ED certification. A small green roof atop
the Geography-Geology Building was decades
ahead of the more recent ones installed on
campus. Looking back, it's easy to find flaws,
but some initial steps were made back then in
which we are now walking.
Branching Out: I've travelled down to Sapelo
Island a couple of times, the setting of an
as-yet unwritten horror flick. Accessible
only by ferry, the island is primarily home to
the small township of Hog Hammock and the
UGA Marine Institute, on the former plan
tation of tobacco magnate RJ. Reynolds.
Scattered around the rest of the island-are
an old airstrip, Native-American shell rings,
an old church standing among forest fire-
ringed palms and
i Victorian green-
louse, in need of
epair. The research
station, once a
thriving community
if scientists and
3rad students, is
i somewhat deso-
ate shadow of its
Former self, a long-
Forgotten outpost
if a state scientific
irder which has Ag
Hill as its capital.
Futures Past: Urban
egends surround
ing the circa-1950s
aeorgia Center,
just down Sanford
From the science
romplex, flesh
lut the Modernist
microcosm. With
its United Nations-
inspired bicameral
auditoria, the convention center is rumored
to have been designed to function as an
emergency seat of government for the state
of Georgia, should the communists have laid
waste to Atlanta.
A master plan from the era calls for all
sorts of futuristic features, like an elevated
railway looping through campus in a figure-8,
and residential towers studded in greenspace.
The high-rise dorms, divisive as they are, were
only a first phase. While their model has been
disproven time and time again as a solution
to urbarv planning issues, it does function well
enough in a campus setting.
The Real Tomorrow: Ultimately, it's a good
thing that the vision was never carried out
fully. It was based on a theory for how the v
world could work, now disproven. The ideas
embodied in those buildings are a half-century
out of date, and ''modem" has come to refer
to the past Questions are starting to come
up: do we fix these places here and there,
renovate them fully, or take it all down and
start over?
The Coliseum has been wonderfully
reworked, as has the Journalism Building, with
its new wall of new north-facing windows. The
old Lamar Dodd is getting fixed up now, too.
Rather than being static monuments, perhaps
the truest test of these buildings will be how
well they will evolve and adapt Based as they*
are on the simplest geometric forms, the suc
cess of these structures' rigorous designs will
be determined by whether the simple building
blocks can host as-yet undreamed futures.
%
Kevan Williams athensfising@fiagpole.com
7YM
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