Michael McAtee

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October 26, 2005

Ohio Architecture part I

Earlier this summer we took a small road trip through the great state of Ohio before Jeff embarked on his journey to the west coast. We passed through Cleveland Columbus and Cincinnati in search of baseball and good architecture. While Cincinnati will get more extensive treatment shortly, it was the Knowlton School of Architecture that really pinned the heart of Ohio for architecture in Columbus.

The Knowlton School is a very recent addition to the campus, (enlarged image)
and continues to be overshadowed by its (st)architectural brethren at the Wexner Center by Eisenmann across campus. The narrative of the Wexner Center is a fairly well known, with the grid of the project derived from the offset of the campus and city grids, occupying a former Guard armory, contributing it's castle like turrets to the design. The Knowlton School does not appear to suffer from any such grounded narrative, but seems to be derived directly from the energy and monolithic history of architecture itself. It's flowing lines and bristling skin are so startling unique that they not only are tectonically disparate from their surroundings, but also from the very conventions of architectural composition and design.

The building wraps itself in a stone blanket, seemingly turning its back on the street scape, but is gouged deeply revealing a nearly black irridescent glass surface, end terraces cantilevering boldly, perverting the sense of scale for the building. The alternating play of the marble scaled skin and curtainwalls seemly reveals the interior machinations of the building, but each of these manuevers simply reveals a density of layers an reflections. The skin nearly succeeds in concealing the almost Brutalist concrete structure, but an enormous portico at the campus entrance that is pierced with a circular occulus proclaims this structure as the architecture school, and reveals both the power and play of its discipline. The Knowlton School never makes an ambiguity between the interior and exterior, or attempts to fuse itself into its environment, but rather stands as an astonishing and boldly distinct structure, a building strongly declaring itself as Architecture with a capital A.

Posted by mdmcatee at October 26, 2005 12:25 AM

Comments

Posted by: Jeffrey at October 26, 2005 03:59 AM