LOCATION: 285 Old Westport Rd, North Dartmouth, MA 02747 United States
ARCHITECT: Paul Rudolph // DesignLAB Architects (Claire T. Carney Library Renovation)
DATES: 1964-1971 // 2013
NOTES: Originally constructed as Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute, the school became affiliated with University of Massachusetts in 1991.  The 2013 renovation of the main campus library by Boston-based DesignLAB architects has received signification press and a number of accolades.  Along with the Yale School of Architecture, the renovated Library has been put forth as an example of successful modernization of a Rudolph structure.

Site Visit: Mon Apr 28 2014

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UMass Dartmouth is undoubtedly a peculiar place – and it’s suffered from a particularly bad reputation as of late. I hate to even mention it, but the campus’ architecture became entangled with the Boston Marathon bombings given that the younger brother was a student at the time. More than one media outlet went so far as to speculate on the architecture’s influence on this young man and his subsequent violent and disturbing actions. Again, it pains me to even pay this any credence (and no I won’t provide a link to the articles), but it speaks to the complex cultural position many of these buildings occupy.

And I’m reluctant to admit it, but as I arrived at the campus it was difficult to discern whether the sort of mild bleakness that seemed to hover over the complex was in fact just the overcast sky or if the architecture was indeed contributing too.

The pinwheel site plan with its surrounding ring of parking lots undermines any sense of entry hierarchy. There’s no grand gate; no formal promenade – not to suggest their necessity, but these are the precedents that Rudolph was shucking. And given that Rudolph has placed preference on the buildings’ interior courtyard-facing edge (towards the pinwheel’s center), one enters the campus with all the ceremony of slipping between the backsides of buildings, past loading docks, dumpsters and clusters of massive condensing units.

Yet once within the pinwheel’s center, there’s something quite compelling or at least fascinating about the cohesion of the campus’s built environment.

RELEVANT LINKS
http://prudolph.lib.umassd.edu/umassd_construction